If you’re looking for an easy, effective, economical way to keep your wood floors sparkling, try this simple homemade wood floor cleaner recipe!
We have a number of different types of flooring throughout our house, and we’ve used each in different areas for different reasons. We have stone and ceramic tile in our mudrooms and bathrooms and super durable laminate throughout most of the other areas of the main floor. We have kids and pets so these types of flooring have been great in the high-traffic areas. Upstairs though, we installed beautiful pine flooring using basic hardware store lumber and we just love the warmth it adds to the bedrooms upstairs. It also looks like it just might be original to the house, which is always a nice touch in an old farmhouse like ours. I thought it would be nice to share an easy recipe for homemade wood floor cleaner that I like to use when I’m cleaning the floors upstairs. I find this recipe does a great job of removing dirt and leaves my floors looking and smelling fresh and clean.
Ingredients Needed for the Homemade Wood Floor Cleaner
I always say that you should spend more money on your cleaning tools than your cleaning solutions. I don’t love the idea of having a cluttered cupboard full of hundreds of different types of harsh chemical cleaners, so I like to make my own cleaners using simple ingredients whenever I can. For this recipe you’ll need:
- 3 cups warm water
- 1/2 cup plain white vinegar
- 5 drops lemon essential oil
Mix all the ingredients together in a bucket and you’re good to go!
What Tools to Use with the Homemade Wood Floor Cleaner
With wood floors, you definitely want to use as little moisture as possible. Just use enough to remove dirt and smudges so you don’t risk having the wood become warped and damaged. I like to use something like this mop here (the same one you see me use often), with a removable cleaning pad. I just dunk the mop head into the bucket, wring it out really well, then put it back on the mop. I keep rinsing and cleaning every few square feet until the whole upstairs floor is done.
If you’re just cleaning a small area, any kind of soft cloth will work just fine. That is, if you don’t mind getting down on your hands and knees to wipe! 🙂
And that’s it! It really is a super simple recipe, but it does the trick. I always feel like I really win the cleaning game when I use something that doesn’t leave behind harsh chemical fumes for my family to breathe in, but that also leaves a really nice fresh scent!
Do you have a favourite simple homemade wood floor cleaner recipe that you use? I’d love to test it out! We have one more room to finish in this same flooring upstairs so I’ll have even more wood flooring to work with! 🙂
MORE IDEAS LIKE THIS
- How to Wash Feather Pillow Inserts
- Homemade Grout Cleaner Recipe
- Everything You Need to Know Before You Install Open Shelving in Your Kitchen
- Natural Oven Cleaner Recipe
- Two Minute Cleaning Tasks
- The Creek Line House Cleaning Archives
This post contains affiliate links.
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.