8. I need a good mop

I have a beautiful kitchen floor. It is marmoleum, which is Forbo's reworking of the old-style linoleum. Many people use the word "linoleum" and mean any sort of sheet flooring, mostly vinyl products. But linoleum is a specific thing. It isn't vinyl. It is actually biodegradable. It is made of linseed oil and wood pulp, for the most part. When we replaced our kitchen floor, it was an excavation project--went through two layers of peel and stick vinyl (the very worst kitchen floor imaginable), a layer of plywood, a glued-down vinyl, another layer of underlayment of some kind, and below that, the original actual linoleum floor, this time sheet linoleum with a felt back, no worries about asbestos, a really pretty vintage mustard yellow and green checkerboard. I loved it, but my house had been a boarding house and badly abused--and this floor suffered greatly. So we used the original linoleum as the underlayment for the new click-together linoleum and I LOVE IT.

I love the feel under my feet, a bit of spring, so so smooth. We did a staggered chevron-esque pattern in a corn yellow and a nice subdued orange. The only problems I've ever had with it involve scratching on the yellow--but I have buffed them out with steel wool and then made sure my chairs had felt pads on the bottoms. No big thing. I have the refinishing fluid, too, under my sink, which I will eventually use to improve the shine on those buffed areas, but overall, this floor is my favorite thing.

I need a good mop. I had a sponge mop but hated it. Got a string mop but it was over-engineered and twisted against itself and that may be an improvement but I never felt like it was all it could be. Then I picked up a string mop without the new-fangledness...cheaply, and it worked fine until it got upended in the kitchen closet/bathroom and the cats decided it was close enough to the litter box to stand in as one in a pinch.

I got home from Florida and washed the floor on my hands and knees. It was very gratifying, and very clean afterward. Very. Maybe the cleanest it has ever been. But yeah. Don't want to do that too often. I was mopping the floor about 4 times a week, but I haven't washed it by hand in a week. It needs it, and so I'm gathering my rags up to go do it again here at naptime today, even though it's the spring thaw and the immediate result will be footprints from the backyard making me crazy. I need a good mop. Astrid suggested Home Depot for the industrial mop and bucket, which would be perfect...except I would then need a place to store the wringer bucket. Hmm. Any ideas?