4 Ways To Clean The Tile Flooring In Your Bathroom After Your Toilet Overflowed

Overflowing toilets are the direct result of lost water pressure and internal clogs. If that was not disgusting enough, anything left floating in the toilet is now on your floor! Thankfully, you have stone/ceramic tile flooring in your bathroom, which is easily cleaned. You want to get a deep down clean, however, so that there is no microscopic feces or bacteria on this floor. Here are four ways to clean your bathroom tile flooring to get that deep down clean.

1. Pure Bleach and a Cleaning Rag

Whatever you use to wipe up the toilet water, be sure to either throw it out in the garbage or immediately put it in the washing machine with bleach. Bleach will kill the bacteria while cleaning the load. Similarly, your next step is to get a cleaning rag, one that you do not mind being destroyed, and use pure bleach, undiluted, to wipe down the tile. You will want to do this step first, or you will be walking on microscopic remnants of the contents of the toilet overflow. 

2. Steam Mop

Next, use your steam mop, if you have one, to steam-clean every square inch of tile around and near the toilet. The steam will help pull up any remaining ammonia from urine to reduce odors and help remove unseen "soil" from the tiles. You will know that the steam mop is working when you remove the cleaning head and see black or brown stains all over it. (Be sure to wash the mop head with bleach, too, unless you use a disposable head.) If you do not have a steam mop, you can either buy or rent one from the hardware store.

3. Grout Cleaner

A tile flooring cleaning after an overflowing toilet mess is not complete until you steam-clean the grout. Sure, you just steam-cleaned the tiles with the steam mop, but the steam mop cannot get all the way into the cracks where the grout is. Additionally, the grout itself has tiny little pores in it that can hold onto bacteria and more soil of various kinds. After you steam each grout crack, you have to run a clean rag along the crack to wipe up the moisture from the steam. 

4. Have the Pros Do It

If all of this seems like a lot of work, it is. However, you want to be absolutely certain that your bathroom floor tile is really clean. If you do not feel up to the job, there are professional cleaning services that provide this level of deep cleaning.

For more information, reach out to a company like Leo's Holland Floor Maintenance.