How We Clean Our Home’s Original Hardwood Floors
Answering all of the questions about our home’s original 60 year-old floors and our method for how to clean hardwood floors.
Ever since we moved into our 60 year-old colonial, we’ve gotten a ton of questions about our hardwood floors over the years. Seriously… a LOT.
Are you going to replace them?
What color are those?
How do you clean and take care of your original hardwoods?
Are those parquet?!!!
I’m here to tell ya it is NOT easy trying to protect our 60 year-old hardwood floors with these two young’uns and a dog who thinks she’s human on the loose.
But the hardwood floors were one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with this house nearly 3 years ago.
I went through FOUR hardwood floor cleaners before I found one that truly left them squeaky clean and didn’t require me to scrub ’til I was blue in the face.
When Bona asked if I’d like to share a post about them, I figured, “Cool! I use this all the time and love it anyway.” And I’ve never really addressed the hardwood floor situation.
To answer the questions…
We have no plans on replacing them. The floors were refinished before we moved in with the exception of Regan’s nursery, which we matched as closely as we could with Minwax Provincial stain. And we LOVE the parquet pattern! As for the cleaning part…
Here’s our “how to clean hardwood floors” care method that works for us:
- Use the Bona Premium Microfiber Mop with Microfiber Dusting Pad under furniture and tight spaces to remove any dust bunnies.
- Mop the floors with Bona PowerPlus if floors haven’t been cleaned in an extended length of time (a few weeks or more).
- Mop the floors with Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner every week for maintenance.
- And use the Bona Express Hardwood Floor Wet Cleaning Pads for quick jobs (like when our kids spill).
That’s usually the goal anyway. The floors don’t always get cleaned as often as they probably should because life happens.
But whenever we do clean them, it does the job SO well.
We use the Bona Stone, Tile, and Laminate Floor Cleaner on our tile in our bathrooms and to degrease our kitchen floor too.
Although, I cannot WAIT to rip out our beige kitchen tile one day. Patience, Lauren, patience.
When I’m all done, I toss the mop pads in the laundry, and they’re ready for the next cleaning sesh.
Our kiddos sprawl and crawl all over these floors, so we feel good knowing they’re cleaned with a GREENGUARD GOLD certified, very low VOC cleaner that’s safe for them.
Because there is no such thing as a 5 second rule around here with Regan putting every single thing in her mouth that’s hanging out on the floor. #lifewithatoddler
So that’s the scoop on the floors. We figure as long as we take care of them, they’ll take care of us.
And maybe just maybe, they’ll last another 60 years. I can’t even imagine the stories they could tell already, but adding our own history to them makes me love them even more.
If walls (and floors) could talk…
Our hardwood floors are losing their shine, even after using bona. Do you use anything else on real hardwood to keep that shine?
We’ve only used their hardwood cleaner so far, but you can use Bona Hardwood Polish if they’re losing their shine. That should help restore them.
We built 30 years ago but added hardwood in the whole house about 15 years later. I only used Bona products & was very happy with it.
We have since moved & I miss those beautiful floors. We actually went to the sawmill & picked the wood & stain.
My parents built in ‘51. Our son bought their house. One thing he loved was the hardwood floor. But what he didn’t understand is the floors had to be waxed & buffed. I think most houses built back then were the same. You are not supposed to put water on them. I don’t think you are supposed to even use Bona on them. Lots more work.
Yes but you didn’t tell us you have two (little) helpers! lol I’ve used Bona also; you’re right it is great. I love your beautiful shiny floors.
Oh, they help all right. 😉 Help make a gigantic mess on it. Haha! That’s what it’s all about though. Making messes = making memories and growing minds.
We have parquet floors too and I absolutely loved them when we first looked at the house. However, what I didn’t notice was that the finish was coming up and before we moved in, I had the whole house flooring cleaned by Stanley Steemer. Big Mistake. The finish that was already coming up a little bit has been consistently flaking off for 2.5 years. We haven’t had the money to replace or refinish and it drives me bonkers trying to sweep up finish flakes all day long.
Oh no! Were they real hardwood parquet or the vinyl kind? We have a couple small knicks here and there that we’re trying to give a lot of TLC. I’m sure that’s so frustrating!
Are your wood floors finished with a polyurethane or wax? Mine have a wax finish and I was wondering if these products would be appropriate.
I’m pretty sure they’re finished with polyurethane (most of the rooms were refinished before we moved in by previous owners). When we refinished the floors in my younger daughter’s nursery, we did a poly finish. But yes, it’s safe for wax finish floors as well. Here’s more info about it, if that helps: https://www.bona.com/Consumer2/I-want-to/Clean–Maintain/Waxed-Wood-Floors/