Grout cleaning is an unpleasant task that most homeowners or cleaning company employees abhor. It takes a lot of time and your knees end up hurting because you have to spend so much time crawling around on the floor. I’m sure that everyone can use a few helpful hints about how to clean grout lines. You want to get them as clean as possible with the least amount of effort.
My first piece of advice is to use a medium hard bristled brush. Most scrub brushes are rated as soft, medium or hard and those classifications pertain to the hardness of the bristles. Bristles that are too soft will not adequately penetrate the grout to loosen dirt because they will just bend as soon as they encounter a hard surface. Bristles that are too hard will chew up the grout and leave holes in your grout lines which is bad for both the tile and the rest of the grout. Medium hardness is best.
Another helpful one of my grout cleaning tips is to use circular motions when scrubbing. It is tempting to just scrub along the grout lines because you feel you are not wasting effort by scrubbing parts of the tile as well. The problem with that approach is that the back and forth motions do not get you anywhere. Each forward stroke will loosen dirt and grime, but each backward stroke will just move everything you loosened back into the grout you just cleaned. Circular scrubbing motions dislodge the dirt and then push it out to the sides. Even though it seems like you are doing more work than if you just scrubbed the lines, you will get much farther in a shorter amount of time.
One final hint is to use a grout cleaner that is thick if you can. A baking soda paste or an oxygen bleach paste work best because you can spread them o the grout lines and let them sit for ten to twenty minutes. Liquid grout cleaner run all over the place and it is hard to get them to soak in and work at the dirt while you wait.