BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Cleaning Cleaning a Basement Floor

Our basement floor is cement and completely covered with junk. How do we even think about cleaning it? Or is it just hopeless?

My suggestion would be to either make a day of it and get it sorted, bagged and out. (this can be very overwhelming, but you get a lot accomplished in one day). Or just make time (like 15 minutes) every day and work on it. You will be surprised how much you can do in just 15 minutes.

Dear Tammy -

OK so you're recommending emptying out the basement, cleaning it all at once, then reloading the basement? It's November so maybe we should have started this earlier I'm not even sure we have enough room to put everything from Quadrant 1 into the other quadrants to clean Quadrant 1's floor. It's tightly packed in there ...

What does one clean a basement floor with? A mop and detergent?

Actually what I said was you had two options. All at once or a little at a time. Your choice.
At the construction/do it yourself stores they have products for cleaning concrete floors (which I am assuming that is what your basement floor is). They even have 'natural' type products available. You can always use vinegar and water or Baking Soda.
Good luck!

Dear Tammy -

I think we need to do the little option, I'm not sure how we'll clean little amounts of the floor. But we'll do the best we can! Yes it seems to be concrete ... I'm on a kick of making my own supplies so I'll look into the vinegar and water idea, maybe with some essential oils? I'm not keen on the smell of vinegar and Bob really dislikes it more than I do.

I love the scent of vinegar. I think it smells clean. But you can put some lemon (or lime) juice in it from the fridge. It helps the smell and adds more cleaning power.

Maybe it's because we drink wine, but for Bob and me vinegar smells really awful, like something has gone wildly wrong. It's like the smell of a wine that has turned and gone rotten. Lemon and lime sound like great additions.

Dan is not a huge vinegar lover either, but he is picky about scent. He doesn't like wine but has a very strong sense of smell.

I drink wine but like the vinegar smell. I think a lot of scent images have to to with association. There is a certain minty gum smell that I don't like because it reminds of cadavers. I know a lot of people enjoy that spearminty scent, but that's what the preservative smelled like on the dead. I don't hate it but it's not a nice association.

That is so true that each of us has associations with smell that can be powerful!

A steam cleaner is the best way to clean without using a pressure washer. We have a McCulluch heavy duty one (not handheld) with a scrubber on the end. Best way to clean the kitchen floor and kids stuff by the way. We had the same problem in our house from dirt in the basement. Years if neglect, totally disgusting. We had to start in small areas and use tons of towels to wipe up after wards, lucky for us the washer is in the basement.