How to Quickly Clean Tile: Tips You Didn't Know About

The laborious process of washing ceramic tiles can be made easier and shortened in time if you follow our tips and life hacks. Did you know about them?

What inventory will you need?

• A soft but resilient brush to clean dried dirt. Too hard bristles will damage the tile surface.
• An old toothbrush. Useful for cleaning grout lines between tiles.

• A sponge. To apply cleaning agents to tiles and remove dirt.
• A microfiber cloth. It's convenient to wipe up excess water after cleaning and polish glossy tiles.

Life hack

To speed up the process, consider buying technologically advanced equipment — a steam cleaner and an electric brush. Window cleaners with vacuum pumps can also be attached to any smooth surface, including tiles. This gadget is convenient for use on large areas tiled with tiles.

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What will we be cleaning? Grease and micro-particles of food

Light contamination can be removed with dish soap or a baking soda solution: add four tablespoons to a liter of water, apply it to the tiles, and leave for several minutes. Clean and rinse with water. More complex contamination is removed with a cleaner designed for kitchen tiles.

Life hack

Before starting to wash the tiles, try steaming them: fill a bathtub, shower, or kitchen sink with hot water, or pass over the surface with a hair dryer. The pores of the tiles will open up, and it will be easier to remove dirt.

Calcium and soap residue in the bathroom

The best way to deal with contamination in the bathroom is with bathroom cleaning products. However, tiles can be damaged by acids in their composition. Additionally, the bathroom is a humid space with poor air circulation, and it's easy to inhale fumes from cleaning products during cleaning. Therefore, caustic acid-containing products should not be used here and should be replaced with milder ones based on citric, lactic, or other organic acids.

Life hack

Strong acids in cleaning products will emit a sharp chemical smell from the bottle. These products can only be used with gloves and with open windows in the room.

Pay attention to the content of aggressive cleaning components. The most harmful are anionic surfactants (aPAS). Regularly using cleaning products with high levels of aPAS is unsafe: they accumulate in the body and can cause disruptions in virtually all vital systems. This manifests as dry skin, dermatitis, and allergies.

Safe level of aPAS in a cleaning product is up to 5%, as in the universal cleaning milk Meine liebe. This is a concentrated cleaning agent for daily cleaning of any surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom. Its gentle formula based on natural chalk effectively cleans but does not damage the surface. It quickly removes calcium deposits and soap streaks, decontaminates tiles and grout lines, cleans ceramics, enameled and stainless steel fixtures and taps, glass panels, and electric and glass-ceramic cooktops.

Due to its eco-friendly composition, the product is safe for use in homes with autonomous sewage systems — septic tanks.

Streaks on glossy tiles

They appear if the tiles are not dried thoroughly after cleaning. A microfiber cloth can help polish them. It's important to carefully wipe glossy tiles after each shower or bath, first rinsing with water.

You can use glass cleaner or try polishing the tiles with ammonia spirit (2–3 tablespoons per liter of water). But it's better to reserve these methods for emergencies and not get addicted to spirit-containing products: alcohol vapors are unsafe for health.

Life hack

Start washing wall tiles from bottom to top, finishing from top to bottom. This will help clean them quickly and without extra movements.

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Darkened grout lines

Chlorine-based products can decontaminate and lighten darkened grout lines. However, chlorine is very harmful to the body and can damage the tiles themselves. This despite the fact that during production, it undergoes several stages of firing at very high temperatures.

Design: Anna Akopyan

The advantage of such products is that they solve the problem only with white grout. If the grout is colored, after such disinfection, pigments will lighten and the color will become uneven. This can be fixed with special acrylic grout paint, but to apply it neatly, you’ll have to work a bit.

More gentle methods of fighting discoloration and mold on grout lines include steam cleaning, using weakly acidic products, or using pencil-shaped cleaners.

LIFE HACK

Grout lines usually become moldy, darken, and acquire an uneven color if too little effort was put into filling the joints with cement-based materials.

To avoid wasting time and effort maintaining grout lines in a clean state, choose epoxy two-component grout. It costs more but is almost impermeable to moisture, unlike cement-based grout. Bacteria and fungi don't multiply well on it, it doesn’t change color, and it's nearly indestructible.

Design: Julia Kaufelt

6 Tips for Clean Tiles and Grout Lines

Avoid black glossy tiles.

Or cover only a small area with them. This is the most noticeable option among all available.

Avoid tiles that are too rough.

It's almost impossible to slip on such tiles, but it’s also almost impossible to clean them: a cloth will catch on the rough surface, leaving fabric fibers behind, and fine dirt gets stuck firmly.

Wipe down the kitchen backsplash and floor tiles after cooking each day.

This daily ritual will take very little time, and you won’t have to spend a long time removing deeply embedded dirt.

After laying tiles, treat the grout lines with sealant.

This will extend the life of the grout, especially if it's cement-based.

Keep tiled surfaces dry.

A reliable preventive measure for mold and mildew is good ventilation in bathrooms and toilets, always slightly open doors in humid spaces.

Don't use soap solution.

Soap creates a microfilm on tile and grout surfaces, which is an excellent environment for growing fungi and mold.

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