If you’re looking for a natural way to clean hardwood floors, this ‘perfect cleaner for wood’ helps ‘cut through grease and grime’
Cleaning hardwood floors can be a bit of a faff, particularly when you open your cupboard and realise you’ve run out of floor cleaner. But if you’re a tea drinker, you might just have the solution in your kitchen cupboards.
According to cleaning buffs on the Our Old House Facebook page, black tea is the answer. Posting a snap of her gleaming hardwood floor, group member Hirley Shaw wrote: “My 77-year-old unfinished hardwood floor. I clean them with a gallon of lukewarm black tea.”
Fellow cleaning enthusiasts were quick to comment their positive experiences using black tea to rejuvenate wooden floors, reports the Express. Thanks to its high tannin content, black tea can enhance the natural colours of the wood, giving it a revitalised appearance.
Plus, the compound can lift and cut through dust and grime, keeping your floors spick and span for longer.
Deborah Hertz shared: “My mother cleaned our floors with black tea water. The floors were all dried up and faded when we bought our old house. Years later, when we moved out, they were a rich, beautiful colour. She added a drop or two of lavender. Our place smelled so good!”
Norma Barber recalled: “After events at our old church, I always remember as a young child, the kitchen ladies cleaning the old wooden kitchen floor with black tea, before, and it kept the dust down.”
Sharing their technique for using black tea to clean wooden floors, Korie Elrod explained: “Brew one gallon of water on the stove and drop eight tea bags. Remove the tea bags and let them steep for five minutes.
“Allow the water to fully cool before using it to clean your floor, or else you risk marring it. Transfer the brew into a mop bucket, and you’re ready to begin.”
Beyond making them gleam, cleaning fans observed that black tea can also help disguise scuffs and scratches on wooden floors. Glenda Headrick explained: “If I ever had a scuff mark, I would use a used wet tea bag and rub it over the area until it stains it.”
Thomas Marallo said: “My grandfather worked all his life in a large furniture store. He used to say they used black tea for cleaning and to cover scratches.”
Jesse Cook added: “I’ve used tea as a stain many times. It’s amazing at glossing over any scratches or marks.”
Laura, who runs a lifestyle blog focused on sustainability called Our Oily House, has revealed how she enjoys using black tea to make wooden floors “shine”. She explained: “It doesn’t take much to make a natural homemade wood floor cleaner.
“It may seem odd to use steeped tea to clean your floors, but it’s actually the perfect cleaner for wood! Black tea is slightly acidic, so it will cut through grease and grime without being too harsh on the floors. Tea also has antibacterial properties that will help to wash and disinfect the floors.”
In addition to black tea, Laura suggested incorporating olive oil into the mixture. This is to “condition the wood floors and make them shine”.
To whip up this floor cleaner, boil some water before popping in six tea bags and letting them brew for a minimum of 10 minutes.
Take out and bin the tea bags, let it cool down, then mix in the olive oil if you’re using it. Pour it into a mop bucket or spray bottle and mop following the grain of the wood.
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