How to keep your grout looking clean all year round?
You may wonder why your walls and floors don’t look the same compared to when they were first installed. This is probably because your grout has collected dirt and dust and has changed colours over the years. If you just installed new tiles and have clean fresh grout lines, great, here are some few cleaning tips to maintain that fresh look for as long as possible.
If your walls and floors are older, don’t fret, with some heavy-duty grout cleaner and elbow grease, you can get your grout looking close to new. Here are some tips and tricks to keep your grout looking clean all year round.
Add Grout Cleaning to Your Everyday Cleaning Routine
Whether it is in your kitchen or bathroom floor, your grout is bound to get marked by coloured liquids, soap scum, mildew, crumbs, dust, dirt, and grime from mop water. Adding grout cleaning to your daily routine is one easy way to keep your new grout looking fresh all-year round. One quick easy routine you can incorporate is wiping and spraying your tiled area after use. For example, after your shower or after doing your nightly dishes after dinner, run a squeegee over the tile to remove any excess water. Doing this will prevent premature staining and will preserve your fresh-looking grout for a longer time.
Take Your Time and Do a Weekly Deep Clean
Despite your daily efforts to clean, oils, soap scum, dirt and more will still cling to your grout, making it dirty overtime. This is when you should incorporate a weekly grout deep clean. Give your grout a deep preventive clean using a mixture of baking soda and water or baking soda and vinegar. Apply the paste over the grout and go over the lines with a grout brush or an old toothbrush and rinse when complete. If your grout still looks a little dirty, try hydrogen peroxide instead of water.
...For Seriously Stained Grout
If the plaster is relatively new, you can proceed by patching up any cracks or holes with spackling compound and sand the surface until smooth.
Sometimes these cleaning routines can slip your mind and you might have reached the point where the basking soda paste just won’t cut it. In this case, you might need to break out oxygen-bleach to get your grout looking fresh again. Oxygen-bleach typically comes in powder form and will require mixing with water (in a one-to-one) ratio to create a paste consistency. Once you get a paste apply the mixture with a brush to the areas where the grout needs cleaning. Let the mixture sit for 10 to 15 minutes before rinsing.
If that still doesn’t work, your final resort would be to invest in a heavy-duty steam cleaner. Steam cleaners are powerful enough to cut through any grease or grime while gentle enough not to damage the tile or leave any watermarks.
When all else fails, and you are sick at looking at your old dirty grout, maybe its time to treat yourself and your home to a new floor, backsplash, or wall. Trini Tile is the place to go to find all the tiles you need for your next home renovation project. Come visit our showroom in Vaughan or click here to browse our select online products.