After nearly 30 years of marriage and 28 years of children, I have had my share of messy, dirty, crummy floors. And I’ve discovered the best two rules in the world for keeping the floors in the house cleaner.
Rule #1 – Take off your shoes at the door. We haven’t always done this but when we do, there is significantly less dirt on the floors throughout the house. I don’t like shoes left at the door because the front door opens up right into the dining room. So the rule is, take off your shoes at the door and take them to your room. Oh, and I don’t ask guests to take off their shoes, that’s just something we do here at home.
Rule #2 – Eat at the dining room table. No food allowed in the living room, no food allowed in the bedroom, no eating at the computer, no food allowed anywhere but the dining room table. This one rule has itself given us a much cleaner house. 
Now, if you’ve already got some dirty floors, here are some ideas for how to get them clean.
Most of the house has hardwood floors. Some time ago we got rid of all the carpet in the house and put down wood laminate. The very best thing to clean wood laminate in my opinion is the Swiffer Wet Jet. And no, I’m not selling them. Its just a great product for laminate. I can use it on my regular wood floors, too. So my usual routine is to sweep, run the dust mop because I have a dog that sheds, then use the Swiffer. I like using it because the cleaner is right there on the handle. No dipping, rinsing and squeezing involved. It uses paper pads that last a pretty long time depending on how dirty your floor is.
When we had carpet, I used baking soda regularly to keep it smelling sweet and clean. Just sprinkle it on and vacuum it off after about 20 minutes. To clean stains and spills I used OxyClean. Its the only thing that ever really worked on my pale colored berber carpet. There are other brands of Oxy cleaners that I have tried which work just as well, I think its the Oxy part that does the trick.
All day long when the children were very young, I found it easy to enforce the 2 Rules. But as the children got older and with dearest hubby who is used to doing things the other way, it wasn’t quite as easy to do…. Its not a perfect plan, but its obvious that the 2 Rules make a big difference in the house. When the older children want to have guests over, they realize that the 2 Rules make a huge difference. When hubby sees that it means less work for all of us, he’s in too.
Hello and welcome! I'm Sylvia Britton, and I've been online since 1996 offering encouragement and help in the spirit of Titus 2 and Proverbs 31 at Christian Homekeeper. CHK is the original Homekeeping site on the internet
Stumbled over the website here and I love it! What a lovely way to communicate with others who share your same views across the country.
Candy I’m so glad you did find us! Please make yourself at home and let me know if I can be of any help to you.
Here, here, I like and we do the no shoe rule, and limited areas to eat! Leaving my Swiffer buddy to some time off! 8+)
Your floors are beautiful. We are in the waiting stage of getting rid of the berber carpet and putting in a hard floor. I can hardly wait! I had wonder if those wet jets had any value. Thanks for sharing. Have a great day!
Hello Sheri,
Glad you stopped by… are you joining in the Journal? Do you have a web site you can post it to?
Yes, I really like my wet jet, it is a time saver for me.
I really need to post those two rules up in our house, I find myself sweeping and mopping constantly through out the day. Mostly due to food eaten in the living room and mud and snow being drug into the house from outside.