It is essential to clean the floor as regularly as possible, both to feel good at home but also to avoid damaging the covering. For laminate or tiled floors, it’s easy to prepare a cleaner, especially with hot water and black soap. For parquet, you must be careful not to use harmful products. In a book entitled “Natural cleaning: biodegradable, local or zero waste ingredients“, the author Aurélie Valtat shares many tips for cleaning up the house, without using chemicals. And she hasn’t forgotten the maintenance of the parquet floor.
What ingredients to make a parquet cleaner?
THE parquet is generally very fragile. It is even more so when it has lived well and been poorly maintained. Like any piece of furniture or wooden object, it must be taken care of. To clean it, Aurélie Valtat created her recipe. In fact, she has basic recipes that she modifies depending on the surface she is going to wash. For example, for parquet flooring, she takes her “special stone and tile” cleaner recipe and adapts it.
The “special stone and tile” cleaner is composed of 1.2 liters of hot water, 100 g of concentrated soda crystals and 200 ml of liquid black soap. When cleaning, she puts 1 or 2 caps of this preparation for a liter of water. For the parquet, she takes this recipe but replaces the 100 g of soda crystals with 250 ml of White vinegar.
Can I use the “stone and tile” cleaner with the crystals for my parquet floor?
If you do not want to multiply the production of products or you do not have space, then you can use the “special stone and tile” cleaner for your parquet, unless it is oak or chestnut because “soda crystals can turn it black“, specifies Aurélie Valtat. However, the reverse is not possible. Do not use the recipe with white vinegar for your stone floors. “Acids (alcoholic vinegar, lemon and citric acid) attack limestone such as marble or blue stone.“, notes the author.
How much water should I use to wash my parquet floor?
If you are going to wash your hardwood floors, be careful about the amount of water you use. In any case, if you fill your bucket a lot, make sure to wring out your mop or canvas before putting it down. As previously indicated, parquet flooring is fragile and large quantities of water could infiltrate it.