The Common Kitchen Essential You Should Start Adding To Your Mop Water

What's white, powdery, cheap, and can clean and deodorize nearly anything? That's baking soda, my friend. This nearly magical multi-purpose product keeps our fridges from stinking, scrubs away grime from sinks, and even stands in as toothpaste in a pinch. Among the many baking soda cleaning hacks that are worth trying, mixing a bit with hot water for mopping floors might be your new favorite one.

This money- and planet-saving concoction digs deep into grease and grime, making it easier to wipe away. Plus, you may also be eliminating stinkiness as you rinse away the residue. Keep in mind that baking soda is mildly abrasive, and there are a few types of flooring it should never touch. If you have wood, marble, or quartz tile floors, this isn't the best choice for them, since baking soda can scratch and damage their surfaces.

If you have durable flooring made from laminate, porcelain tile, luxury vinyl plank, or another option you know to be scratch-resistant, you can give your floors a top-notch scrub for pennies a gallon. Fill up a bucket with 2 tablespoons of baking soda per gallon of warm water for an old-school cleaning concoction that won't disappoint. What's more, this is an ideal use for that box of baking soda that's been absorbing fridge stink for months. It still has the potential to keep your floors looking like new, even if cooking with it is out of the question.

Before you give this a try on your own flooring, test out the mixture in an area of the floor that's less visible than others. (Under a table or in a lesser-seen corner works.) However, keep in mind that what might appear to be a stain left behind in that spot could actually be a very clean area still surrounded by very dirty flooring. If this makes you too nervous, you may not want to continue to the remainder of your floor.

Lots of homeowners swear by adding either some white vinegar, a squeeze of dish soap, or both to the mixture to give it a power boost. You're getting an arm workout while scouring those floors with just a mop, but if you have grout, you can take sodium bicarbonate a step further. Mix up a paste with baking soda and a bit of water, and you have a powerful scrubbing agent to attack the dirt magnet that is grout. It's probably a good idea to do a once-over with the mop and cleaning solution before tackling the grout, and it will probably take several passes with just clean water on the mop in order to whisk away the baking soda's residue.

This classic cleaning formula, unfortunately, is notorious for leaving behind residue. Some cleaning experts suggest spraying or wiping the area with white vinegar. Vinegar is a versatile cleaning tool that is said to help remove excess residue by neutralizing the baking soda. However, you can just opt for mopping with several rounds of straight warm to hot water to get rid of white, streaky leftovers.