What’s Clean? And…the incredible wastefulness of cleaning products

Sunday afternoon: reduced to cleaning the filthy house. There’s a limit to how much dog hair and floor stickum a human can live with.

I also was reduced to having to buy another Swiffer dustmop, since I’d worn the old one completely out. It was eight or ten years old, and it’s dust-mopped many an acre of flooring—so it was no surprise when it pretty much fell apart.

The new, more chintzily built Swiffer came with two FREE!!!!! dry Swiffer rags and one FREE!!!!! wet-mop rag. I don’t use those things, having found that a microfiber rag works better with less hassle. But since they’d tossed them in with the push-mop duster thing, I decided to use them up.

Have you ever noticed how wasteful cleaning gear that’s marketed to Americans has become? All these individual throw-away paper towels impregnated with this, that, and the other chemical, to say nothing of a different chemical for every purpose…bathroom cleaners, kitchen cleaners, tile cleaners, plastic “wood” floor cleaners, real wood floor cleaners, wall cleaners, window cleaners, counter cleaners, special sanitizing throw-away wipes for the kitchen, special sanitizing throw-away wipes for the bathroom, special toilet cleaners, special shower cleaners, special throw-away wipes to dust the furniture, special stuff to clean off the top of the useless glass stove…holy mackerel there’s no end to it!

Swiffer seems to me to be a special case in point.

The stupid little throw-away dust rags you’re supposed to clip to the gadget…have you noticed how they clog up after one or two rooms? Okay, at 1860 square feet of tile, I suppose my house has more hard flooring than most…but maybe not. A lot of people like to be able to clean under the sofa and the bed, and quite a few think carpets aggravate their allergies or are simply dirty, because it’s impossible to get them clean. Which, of course, it is.

So there you are with your tile floor. You Swiffer up a couple of rooms, take a look at the bottom of the gadget, and see the throw-away duster rag is chuckablock full of dust and dog hair.

But you have miles to Swiffer before you rest. (Click on the image to appreciate its full, high-res glory. This is how a Swiffer looks after I’ve vacuumed the floors: to get this place clean, first I have to vacuum, then dust-mop, then wet-mop or steam-mop. Yes. Here in the low desert we do have dust, and here in the Palace of the Queen of the Universe, we have dog hair. A lot of dog hair.)

Now you think, ah! rather than throwing this thing away, I’ll flip it over and do another room or two with the backside, thereby extending its life a little and cutting the waste a tiny bit.

Well, no.

Proctor & Gamble has designed its Swiffer rags so that they’re puffy and absorbent on one side and shiny and UNabsorbent on the other—the better to block consumers from doubling up on their use!

Cute. How much environmental degradation is a dollar worth, anyway?

Absent the questionable throw-away towels, Swiffer dust mop gadgets come in handy, and you don’t have to buy into clear-cutting Montana for the privilege of using them. The trick is pretty simple: get yourself a bunch of microfiber rags. These are available in lifetime supplies at Costco, and you may be able to find them at hardware and auto supply stores.

Attach a microfiber rag to the bottom of the Swiffer duster in exactly the same way as you attach the Swiffer cloth, by punching the fabric into the little punch-in clips.

Et voilà!

Because a microfiber rag is bigger and softer than a Swiffer paper, obviously it’s going to flop around the floor a bit. But for me, that’s just fine—provides a wider pick-up swath and makes it easier to push into corners. If you want it tight and neat, you can fold it envelope-style around the Swiffer head and clip it on with clothes pins or binder clips.

Microfiber fabric is much more efficient at picking up dirt and pet hair than a disposable Swiffer paper. Here’s what happened when I ran the clean rag over the area that I’d already Swiffered:

And a microfiber cloth will dust your entire house, not just a room or two. So you’re not having to fiddle around with changing the things out every five or ten minutes, as if throwing one dustrag in the trash every time you clean the floors weren’t wasteful enough. Here’s how the microfiber rag looked after I’d gone over the rest of the house:

Why can’t dog hair stay as cute when it’s off the dog as when it’s on the dog?

Jeez. Just imagine how much I’d spend on these Swiffer paper dusters if I went through four or five of them every single week? And think of the incredible waste of forest products, energy to produce the stupid paper rags, more energy to package them, still more energy to ship them, and still more energy to cart them to the landfill. Think of the waste of landfill space!

Microfiber rags last for-freaking-ever! There are some out in my garage that have gotta be eight or ten years old. Do they get grungy when you use them to clean the floor? Sure…that’s why we have clothes washers. Though they do get stained and tired, that doesn’t interfere with their ability to magnet up dust and animal hair, a job at which they are very, very efficient.

Well, anyway, now the floors are as clean as floors can get.

It was Erma Bombeck, I think, who once held forth humorously about how different people have different ideas of what makes their homes “clean.” She was talking about women, but it applies to men, too. Bombeck reflected that she didn’t feel like the house was truly clean if there were finger smudges around the light switches. Other women felt the house wasn’t clean until the kitchen counters were spotless or the baseboards dust-free or the house redolent of furniture spray or the bathroom fixtures polished bright enough to blind all comers. Everything else could be dirty, but as long as those things were right, the house was “clean” enough.

😀

It’s true, I think. For me, it’s the furniture and the floors. I can’t abide dust on the furniture or grime on the floors. And when I can write my name on the top of the file cabinet and feel the grit under my bare feet, I know it’s time to clean. SDXB was obsessive about the bathrooms: if they weren’t clean and sanitized, the house just was not clean. La Maya believes clean baseboards make a clean home.

What’s the gold standard of cleanliness around your house?