I wonder if there are many these days who get down on their hands and knees and actually scrub the floor. We might bob down to clean up a spill or dirty mark but I think the days of heavy scrubbing have long gone.
Years ago when I first met her (and also for many years after) my mother in law would do just that. She would get down with a bucket of hot soapy water beside her and using a flat brush (like the one above) dip it in the water and then scrub an area of the floor. Then she’d take a rag kept just for that purpose and with a wiping motion move it over the floor where she’d scrubbed and gather all the wet water together, then wring the rag out over her bucket. ‘Rinse’ the rag and rub it over the floor again. And so on until she’d washed all the floor.
Then she’d lay newspaper all over the clean wet kitchen floor to allow my father in law (but nobody else) to walk to his favourite chair without taking off his shoes/boots. Everyone else had to be inside the house before the floor washing began or find something to do outside until it was dry.
Me, well I wasn’t what you would call a floor scrubber, more a mopper lol So old fashioned I used to say; no way was I getting on my hands and knees for anyone, with all our children in their younger days coming and going in and out of the kitchen I was an everyday mopper.
Then they found out that if they did as they were told and took their shoes off at the door Mum wasn’t yelling at them all the time and needing to wash the floor everyday. Mum also discovered that all she needed to do was to clean under the kitchen table everyday – for dropped food etc – as the rest of the floor stayed cleaner than before. So out would come the mop and bucket and I’d swish away after each meal.
I bet you know where I’m going now – yes after a while I discovered it a lot easier and a lot less troublesome to get down on my hands and knees and just clear up under the table with a wet cloth.
Nowadays, with no messy footprints and no food drops under the table, all the floor needs after a sweeping is a weekly clean over with a wet mop. But there are times when I would love to be able to get down (and then get back up again without grunting and groaning ) and give the floor a good old scrub on a regular basis.
For all those who need to know – How to mop a floor: 12 step (with pictures)
Oh yes, and here is the purpose of this little bit of reminiscing.
It’s Friday and we need some fun
And have I got the joke for you 🙂
A policeman call the station on the two way radio
‘Hello, Is that the Sarge?’
‘Yes’
‘We have a case here.
A woman has shot her husband for stepping on the floor she had just washed.’
‘Have you arrested the woman?’
‘No Sarge’
‘The floor’s still wet’
Hope this Friday is a fun day for you – with no need to wash the floor!
Still Waters 
Nope I have never got down on the floor. I’ve always a been a mopper. I just moved all the furniture out, that was easy like finding chairs, and mopped away. I usually did this last thing at night while all were in bed and then I’d get up first out everything back and start the day
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I remember my Mom would do the floors like that and I had forgotten about the newspapers over the clean floor. My gosh now we have such modern buckets that wring mops or use a swifter. Things certainly are easier today. I don’t think the modern Moms today worry about floors usually they are working and concentrate on making meals and doing laundry. We have come a long way thank heavens. With dishwashers and washers that you don’t have to use a wringer is no work at all.
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That’s a funny joke. Aren’t the noises we make when we exert ourselves as we get older interesting. I have noticed I have started doing it and I am going to try to stop.
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Cathy, my mom’s 80 years old and still scrubs the floor on hands and knees once a week. God bless her! The policeman joke made me smile, and I needed to smile today, so thank you! 🙂
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If I did half the thing my mother did about cleaning the house, my life would be filled from dawn til dusk. My mother cleaned the baseboards with a toothbrush. Her house was spit-shined. I will never forget the happiness my sister expressed when she found dust bunnies under the bed of our elderly mother. Finally mom had missed spot. LOL
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funny, off to check out your instructions. I don’t scrub but maybe I should.
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I remember scrubbing the kitchen floor when I was young, It was often done late in the evening and newspaper sheets left there until morning. It always fascinating how interested I was in scanning the pages for items I had missed first time round. Now it is a mop & bucket job.
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Every once in a while I do wash the kitchen floor that way. And do a better job than the mop can. Hard work though – and crawling across the floor to find something to pull myself up on is not pretty.
Love that joke.
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I have a black tiled kitchen floor which I sweep and wipe every day. I prefer to get down on my hands and knees rather than use a mop!
xx
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Great joke! And I got down on hands and knees for a long time, but I stopped doing that . . . about the same time I decided to skip fetching firewood to build a fire to boil water to do my laundry!!! 😉
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I do the bathroom floor like that quite often .. well, not with a brush, just a bucket and rag. It’s not worth getting the mop out for!
LOVE the joke!
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I knew a woman years ago who divorced her husband because he insisted she rinse the floor three times when she washed it. She told me this when I shared that my ex-husband expected the floor to be spotless at the end of the day. And I had three small kids at home.
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oh yes, I remember some of those house proud women! What I could never understand was why they also left the plastic covering on the best sofa, so it creaked when you sat on it! They still had to wipe it over every day, and never got the comfort of the sofa!
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Good joke Cathy! I have been both a ‘down on hands and knees wiping’ (rather than scrubbing) and a ‘mopper’, but I read somewhere recently that the former method is actually a good cardio workout. I find that the skirting boards and ‘trimmings’ around the lower walls of a room need a wipe with a damp cloth so that’s a ‘hands and knees’ job. Julz’s comment about plastic on the sofa reminded me of a friend of my mother’s… her couch was ghastly to sit on!
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I don’t remember my mom getting down and scrubbing, but when I was old enough to help with the housework, I’d have to vacuum first, and then mop the kitchen floor. Well, I was lazy, and so instead of dragging the tube vacuum around, I’d sit on the floor and use the vacuum scooting across the floor. I also have washed the bathroom on hands and knees, but that was mainly because I was angry, that the kind of exertion which went into it helped me to work it off lol Now I have a Dyson vac, and I use a spray bottle to clean up the spots on the floor and then lightly dry mop the it.
GREAT joke!
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I am in full floor scrubbing season here, with the melting snow, the dog is leaving footprints every five minutes. I use a mop, but sometimes, if I want to give my back a good stretch, I’ll do it by hand with a rag and the hottest water ever. The floor comes out SO much cleaner!
I’m one of those “house proud” housewives of yesteryear, but you’d be hard pressed to find plastic on anything. I like my house to feel comfy.
Also, you can tell my state of mental health by how clean things are. The cleaner it all is, the angrier I am about something.
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