What is up with the Swiffer Wet Jet? That little gizmo designed for cleaning smooth floors.

In Mr. Oatmeal’s home we have pets, as those who have pets know we also deal with all the issues that having pets comes with. We have always had pets and will most likely always have pets, that has forced us to make certain choices with regards to our home decorating style, specifically what is the optimum flooring to accommodate pets. We also have a pool which imposes some additional limitations when it comes to our flooring choices. My bride and I have lived in four apartments and owned two houses, our flooring has ranged from cheap to very expensive carpeting to parquet wood floors to ceramic tile to plain old concrete I painted to look like ceramic tile and sealed with urethane to a stained concrete with an indestructible epoxy finish. Through all of those floor coverings I believe we found the ideal flooring. It effectively deals with dogs and cats that have occasional accidents, cough up hairballs and shed all over the place and it also addresses the additional water brought in from the pool, epoxy coated stained concrete.

About three years ago, we had this installed throughout our home. The installer made the flooring mimic the look of shiny white marble with grey veining. While there are some installation flaws, as there are with any flooring installation, but we love the overall look and feel, it is easy to clean up animal messes without the fear of smells lingering or stains remaining after cleaning. It is also impervious to the water we may bring in when coming out of the pool. It did require me to install felt feet on everything we own, that was a lot more involved than I thought it would be. Some furniture required drilling and tapping of the legs, others required hammering in a felt covered foot and yet others required a double sided tape application of the felt. It was a time consuming thing to do it correctly, I did not want to be constantly worrying about them coming off and damaging the epoxy coating. Plus, I do not know how to repair the epoxy coating anyway, so that was a contributor to the felt feet decision as well.

This is where we then needed to find a gizmo to clean the floor, no more vacuuming the carpet. I see advertising for noodle mops, sponge mops and even a wonder mop but then I see a thing called a “Swiffer Wet Jet” and I was sure that is what will make cleaning the floor enjoyable, the woman in the commercial was actually humming her favorite tune while running this thing. I was excited, the perfect flooring and the perfect cleaner. When I started using the Swiffer Wet Jet I found I too would hum my favorite tune while using the thing. I was ready to strike of a letter to the manufacturer telling of my positive experience with their product. It did not take me long to realize though that I should wait for a bit before sending off the letter. After the first month I realized this was indeed not an ideal solution, they tend to be very expensive if you clean the floors of a whole house. I also noticed that you had to almost sweep the floor first to get most of the animal hair up before “Swiffering” and I also learned the traditional broom was ineffective on this type of flooring. I was back to square one looking for the ideal cleaning product.

So there I was one day at the hospital visiting a friend, stay with just a minute, and noticed some tools they were using to clean the floors throughout the hospital. When I started inquiring about the devices from the hospital employee using them I thought for a moment I might be hauled out by security. After assuring her that my intentions were honorable and I just wanted to see the gizmos and ask about their performance all was OK. Well come to find out Rubbermaid corporation makes an entire line of industrial cleaning gizmos that far exceed the consumer grade “Swiffer” type products in many ways, in my humble opinion. The Swiffer dusters now that is a different story, for around the home they are second to none in dust collection but their Swiffer floor cleaning products left me wanting.

The Rubbermaid commercial product line include many products but under the cleaning sub-category there are two I want to talk about. The microfiber dry dust mops, like the ones janitors use to clean long tile hallways and the microfiber damp mops. They offer both these products in a smaller 18 wide versions that I found to sized perfectly for the home. I would will need to purchase the handles and frames separately. So I found for what I was spending on the Swiffer Wet Jet I would pay for the commercial grade products within the first couple of months of use. These products claim the ability to be washed up to 300 times, since we clean house only once a week that meant they should last me about 6 years before needing replaced. That 6 years is the life span if we religiously cleaned once a week, sometimes we go two or three but never four. So the commercial cleaning solution was looking better and better from the economic perspective as well as the performance of the product perspective. I am long past being easily impressed by anything but these products impressed me, both in their ability to clean well and their durable and rugged construction, they are the perfect product for cleaning my perfect flooring. We have been using the commercial products for quite some time and none show any wear at all yet.

So do you use a Swiffer wet jet to clean your floors?