On Mopping

I don't mop my floors regularly.

There it is.

I do clean house regularly. I dust and I lint-brush the furniture regularly. I wipe the windowsills and the blades of the ceiling fan, regularly. I sweep the floors almost every day, and I clean the kitchen floors regularly. But I don't mop the wood floors in the living room and dining room except rarely. We certainly have had guests for dinner without me having mopped the floors.

My mother-in-law regaled me once with stories of how she labored over her first home as a newlywed, including the daily scrubbing and polishing of her hardwood floors. You have got to be kidding me, I thought to myself. Aloud I said, "Good thing cleaning products have come so far since then."

Today I mopped my floors. It was fun - the poorly kept secret to housekeeping is music. Having cleared out the furniture in order to mop, there was lots of space for dancing.

Hurrah! Clean floors!

Then I thought about the Quick Shine floor polish that Mom swears by and had given me last year and I still hadn't used. I had felt bad about not using it, but my bad feelings didn't help the floors, which had gotten pretty dull and, in fact, gray on the well-worn paths used by Chaco and the rest of us (mostly Chaco). My newly mopped floors were clean, but they weren't shiny. They weren't glowing that warm, butter yellow that they glowed four years ago when we moved in.

We keep it pretty non-toxic at home, and that hasn't happened by accident. It takes a good amount of intention to use exclusively natural, chemical-free cleaning products (e.g., dish soap, laundry soap, etc) and personal care products (e.g., shampoo, hair care products, etc.). I read labels like a fiend. I make the simplest products myself, at home, and they've all got real short lists of ingredients. As a result, I've got a heightened sensitivity to chemical fumes and synthetic fragrances -- both a physical sensitivity, and an intellectual one, as in, I've committed to running non-toxic and I can tell you're not that.

So it's unusual that I wouldn't look at the contents list on the Quick Shine bottle. But I didn't. I banished the dog to the yard, and opened some windows, but I didn't look at the contents list before I applied a coat. (This is sounding like a setup, but the story doesn't end badly.)

Initial results? Lovely. In the hardest-worn areas, though, the floor still looked a little parched. I dobbed on another coat, as per instructions. Even lovelier. We'll see how it dries, said my inner skeptic. Any floor looks good wet, even if you're just using vinegar and water.

So there I was, appreciating the second coat in the living room, but as it dried, I was seeing...not streaks, but marks. There clearly were marks, such that even a lackadaisical homemaker like me would find herself thinking, that floor looks like it needs to be buffed.

Buffed! I was unhappy with this thought, because it made me think I would need a buffing machine. Isn't that how you buff a floor? I forget where, but I've met a buffing machine before, and it was there to buff the floors.

At this point, I was getting upset, because I don't where to secure a buffing machine rental, and Quick Shine is not a good cleaning product, if it requires heavy machinery to finish the job. People don't have buffing machines at home. That's not just my personal failing. And what's my alternative, getting down on my hands and knees with a shammy? My mind balked at the image.

And then I remembered I was wearing socks.

Conveniently, that's when Wham! came on the stereo, talking about "Everything She Wants".

I buffed that floor. I gave it one song, and was inventively thorough about it.

Afterwards, even the formerly worn and gray spots achieved a nice kind of patina, like "I'm not worn, I'm seasoned." It was like an eyebrow wax for the floors - not too much had changed, really, but the overall appearance was vastly improved. I credit the Quick Shine, not my buff job, but I think my buff job took it over the top.

Now I can admire the colored lights twinkling on the Christmas tree and in their own reflection on my shiny-ass floors. Looks like holiday cheer.