3 Tips To Help You Clean Your Grout

Maintaining clean floors can be a simple and effective way to improve the appearance of your home. Tile flooring is simple enough to mop, but mopping merely cleans the surface of the tiles and not the grout lines between them.

Here are three simple tips that you can use to help get your home's grout lines cleaner in the future.

1. Get rid of stains using shaving cream.

Unlike the tiles covering your bathroom or kitchen floor, grout is a porous material. This porosity means that any substances spilled onto the surface of your tile floors could seep into the grout and create stains.

If you notice that there are some unsightly stains marring the appearance of your grout, you can get rid of these stains by using a bit of shaving cream. Non-gel shaving cream can be applied directly to a stained area. Letting the shaving cream sit on the stain allows the shaving cream to draw the food or beverage molecules causing the stain out of the grout. Just wipe the shaving cream away, and your grout stains will be wiped up as well.

2. Whiten dingy grout with baking soda.

Many tile floors are finished using white grout products. While these white grout lines can provide a neutral color palette inside your home, they can also become dirty and dingy over time. Whitening your dirty grout lines can give your tile floors a more aesthetically pleasing finish.

Making a mixture of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide gives you access to a solution that can easily whiten grout lines. Sprinkle some baking soda along the grout lines. Then add hydrogen peroxide. Allow the mixture to sit until it quits bubbling. Then wipe away with a damp cloth to reveal whiter grout lines.

3. Scrub away grime with a toothbrush.

Grout lines are often very thin, which can make them difficult to clean. Any dirt or debris that is swept off the surface of your floor's tiles can become lodged in the slightly-lower grout lines, creating a grimy mess.

You can easily get rid of dirt and debris that has become trapped in your grout lines by using an old toothbrush. Scrubbing at the surface of each grout line with a soft-bristled toothbrush allows you to get your tile floors cleaner than ever before.

Finding simple and effective ways for tile and grout cleaning allows you to better care for the tile floors in your home. Try using shaving cream, baking soda and peroxide, and a toothbrush to get your grout lines clean in the future.