best way to clean hardwood floors?

[♥ms.pacman♥]

most of the first floor of our house (living room, breakfast area, kitchen, dining area, and entryway) has hardwood floors. Before we just used to sweep stuff up and clean up the very occasional spill with a rag or whatever. But now that DS has been eating solids 4x a day and is throwing food etc the floor in the kitchen area has been getting pretty dirty. Also, our hardwood floors are handscraped so it's a lot harder to clean and get stuff out...simply sweeping doesn't seem to be doing the trick.

so i am just wondering, what is the best way to clean hardwood floors? some sites say to use a mop and soap and water, but then others say using water will mess up hardwood floors. so is a steam cleaner the best? i want to use something as natural as possible as my son is crawling/walking around these floors a lot.

[bubbaray]

1 cup white vinegar to 1 gallon of warm water

[WatchingThemGrow]

We use Bona spray.

[BabyH]

I go between the Method hardwood floor cleaner (it smells SO good) and just vinegar and water.

[vludmilla]

Bona spray. We had our hardwood floors refinished this summer when we bought the house and FWIW our contractor said no vinegar on the floors.

[bubbaray]

Weird. Our hardwood installer told us to use vinegar.

[edurnemk]

I'm very happy with our steam cleaner for HW. In between deep cleaning with that one, we mop with a damp, not wet, microfiber towel.

[artvandalay]

Don't use a steam mop, even though it says it's safe, it is not good for wood floors. I'd never use a real "mop" on wood floors.

We use the Bona Wood Floor Cleaning mop. I bought it at Bed Bath & Beyond.

Basically I sweep, then swiffer, then use the Bona once a week, but I use it for spot cleaning if my kids drop stuff on the floor.

It is really good, I highly recommend it!

[robinsmommy]

Yeah, the vinegar/no vinegar depends on the finish you have - I would say that they most important things are to not leave a lot of residue (like soap) and to use as little water as possible. Maybe for the really tough areas a really well wrung-out rag (microfiber or terry) with just a bit of dish soap suds and hot water? Sadly, heavy-duty cleaning of any floor works best on hands and knees.....

I'd recommend a splat mat of some sort, even if you just use an old table cloth that you launder a lot - much easier for the areas of high concentration....

[wellyes]

Cleaning lady uses (and recommends) just water for clean up. We use Bona once every 6 weeks or so.

I know Murphy's Oil Soap isn't all that recommended anymore but I miss the smell of it!