Spam, Vodka, and Other Wacky Floor Cleaners

We all have certain tasks that need to be completed no matter how mundane they may seem. Among some oft-neglected tasks is the painful but necessary task of maintaining our floors. Between our homes, workplaces, and places we visit, there is a lot of cleaning to be done. Budgeting magazine reports that the cleaning industry generates approximately $168 billion in revenue per year. Luckily, people have come up with numerous ways to make cleaning a little more interesting.

Fed up with scrubbing, sweeping, buffering and everything in between, people have come up with weird ways to get around the usual cleaning methods. Online bloggers brag about how easy it is to remove carpet stains with toothpaste or vodka. They also rely on the idea that a small piece of pantyhose-wrapped spam will give hardwood floors a shine and sheen that might otherwise only be revealed by a used floor polish. While I don’t question the validity of these claims, I certainly question how they discovered these strategies.

While people have come across strange cleaning methods, they have invented even more unusual cleaning devices. Robotic shoes for sweeping and mopping are an unconventional and popular invention. Although these would only be fashionable for a Star War Stormtrooper, they do feature some attention-grabbing tech. The cordless shoes have real rotating wipers that kill bacteria and feature LCD monitors to indicate battery levels. Also, there is a floor cleaning machine created by a Japanese robot company that scrubs the floors and projects movies at the same time. The unique machine looks like “Rosie” from The Jetsons TV show, and it costs $85,000. Although these inventions definitely have a cool factor, their practicality is questionable.

While feeling like you’re on a mission to capture Princess Leia while she’s running or sweeping the floors can be fun, you’re better off simply investing in a quality floor cleaning machine. A floor scrubber takes 10 minutes to cover what a mop and brush cover in an hour. Many commercial cleaning companies trust floor scrubbers to get the job done because they are affordable and efficient.

According to Advance, a popular brand of floor scrubbers, labor alone is responsible for 90% of cleaning costs, a statistic that floor cleaning machines can easily improve. Time and cost efficiency, as well as cleaning performance, make floor cleaning machines irreplaceable in the world of commercial cleaning. In the end, while it’s nice to fantasize about making floor maintenance fun, investing in an actual floor scrubbing machine can save time and money.