Clean Your Floors Day

…I have to go home and get a few things done. If I don’t get out the Pledge soon, the dust bunnies are going to be leaving tracks on my furniture…

Carla Foft, Addressing Spirits

Well hopefully it hasn’t quite gotten that bad around your house yet, but if you’re anything like us, mopping and sweeping are things you put off even when all the other cleaning is done. For that matter, we’re not terribly good at vacuuming either. That’s why Clean Your Floors Day exists, to remind us that getting down and scrubbing that floor clean is just as important a part of your household cleaning ritual as the counters and dishes.

History of Clean Your Floors Day

The history of Clean Your Floors Day is rather the history of floors and their cleaning. Throughout history keeping the house clean has always been a bit of an important chore, but the methods by which you’d clean it were sometimes difficult to fathom. In some years entire floors were covered with ‘rushes’, a type of plant that would make the floor easier to walk on, help prevent making the bottoms of your feet filthy, and generally making the home more pleasant. Every year all of the rushes would be hauled out of the home to be replaced by fresh new rushes.

At various points in various cultures rugs became popular, rugs were intended to keep ones feet off the dirt and filth of the floor, or in castles to keep one from walking on the hard, cold, unforgiving stones of the castle. Thankfully, things have advanced since then. Brooms were always nice (once called besoms), but now we have vacuum cleaners and steam cleaners, rubber gloves and scrubbing pads, and of course mops, all perfectly designed to clean various kinds of floors.

How to celebrate Clean Your Floors Day

You celebrate Clean Your Floors Day by finally getting down and cleaning your floor, of course! Whether it’s a rug that needs taken out and being beaten to get all the dust and grime out, or a carpet that needs to be steam-cleaned and well-vacuumed, Clean Your Floors Day is the day to make it happen. Make sure if you have a tile floor or a hardwood floor that you use a cleaner that works for it, some cleaners will rip the finish right off a hardwood floor, and you’ll have to rewax as well as clean it. Clean Your Floors Day isn’t about making more work for yourself after all!