love it. hate it. cleaning.

Cleaning my kitchen floor has always been one of my least favorite chores. Problem is it has to be done. At least once a week. Problem is I procrastinate. So at my worst it goes three weeks. This time around it's been about 3 weeks since a true scrub. So I broke out the big gun. The steam cleaner. So this was a christmas gift from my mother-in-law. She got sucked into the whole infomercial hype and bought me one with all the attachments.
I let it sit in my basement for a year before I pulled it out to try it. Until then I only used my swiffer. I finally pulled the thing out hooked it up and went to town.
My official review of the monster steam, is that it works great but is a pain to use. The bad: It's bulky. I have to fill the thing with water and then wait for it to heat. The pad doesn't sit on the mop properly. The good: I don't need soap. It cleans everything so quickly. And the floor dries quickly with no stickiness left behind.
I still use the swiffer on a regular basis but I am falling out of love with it. Though it's wasteful to use the wet-jet pads (versus the washable cloth on the steamer) it sure is super convenient. The floor gets done in half the time then it does with the steamer. One of my biggest pet-peaves of cleaning is that I have to clean up after I've cleaned. With the steamer I have to wait for the thing to cool then dump the left over water and then I can put it away. With the swiffer I tear off the used pad throw it away and I am done.
I am no longer a big fan of the swiffer because I don't think it works as well as it used to. I go through two pads (when the box claims I should be able to do two rooms with one pad) in my kitchen. And it leaves behind a little bit of stickiness sometimes.
So when my floor gets really bad I pull out my monster steam cleaner and get the job done. But for the quick cleans my swiffer does the job.