Author: Lize van der Merwe

How does one wash a floor? I was over eighteen the first time I washed a floor. Can you believe it? I remember early in my first year at TUKS telling my friend Kholofelo I had never washed a floor before. She was flabbergasted. Her reaction made me realise that there was a part of life I had up to then not participated in. The next weekend at home I took a bucket and a mop and washed the kitchen floor. It wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t terrific. But it resulted in a clean floor and I could say I’d washed a floor. I felt enabled.

The reason I missed out on all those life skills of course is that mine was a traditional South African middle class family of the eighties. We had a sleep in maid most of the time. The maid always washed the floors!

I started late but I’m an expert by now

Well, I am forty-five now and for most of my adult life I have done the cleaning myself. No-one can count how many times I have washed floors. In fact, I am quite a pro. I can even write a blog about my preferences. 

• I hate traditional mops. They stink. And all they do is slop dirty water around on the floor.
• I hate dipping my mop into a bucket of dirty water. I cannot imagine dirty water cleaning anything.
• I dislike wax based detergents that promise to clean and polish your floor at the same time. They cause wax build up that eventually discolours and then your grouting is permanently dirty!

First, the traditional way

If you do not mind the bucket method, here is how to do it: Pour roughly four litres of clean water into your bucket. Add 2 tablespoons of Mrs Martin’s FLOOR Ready To Use soap into the bucket. Dip your mop and start cleaning! (Remember, our FLOOR Concentrate is very strong. Do not pour concentrate into the bucket or your solution will be stronger than necessary. Two tablespoons of RTU is really strong enough.)

How to wash a floor the Mrs Martin’s way

My method? I like a broad, flat microfiber mop. I spray our very own FLOOR onto the floor, neat. Do not overdo it. One spray per m2 should be enough. I wipe it off with a damp microfibre mop. Then I rinse the mop in clean water (normally running water at the bath or whichever tap is closest at the moment) and repeat until the job is done. The next time I go over the floor with water only. This way I know the microbes are on the floor long enough to do their job, and the soap is eventually rinsed off. Not that leaving it on the floor would be a problem, really. FLOOR does not contain anything that could build up.

And my kids help. I will not let them turn 18 before washing a floor! Washing floors is as much a part of life as brushing your teeth and I will teach them how to do it. I will resist the notion that certain mundane skills are not important to learn because someone else will do it. Any skill enables. And being able to just ‘get on with it’ is priceless too.

Still, my house is only ever spotless two minutes before guests arrive. Even with help. Please tell me I am not alone?

Till then

Pet urine smell? HELP!

If you own pets, you have been there. Cats and dogs pee on your carpets, no matter how well you train them. Puppies can make a mess but we feel cat wee stinks the most… who agrees?

When a pet wees (or poops!) on a carpet or other porous surface, you can wipe all you want, you will not get all the filth out. That little bit of urine or poop that is left, contains bacteria and these cause the bad smell.

So how do you get rid of the stink?

Mrs Martin’s FLOOR cleans all types of floors without leaving residue or fumes that will harm your fur baby. The microbes inside clean very deeply, and sorts out bad smells at the root. Mrs Martin’s PERSIAN does the same for carpets.

Mrs Martin’s ODOUR can be sprayed onto any surface or textile, and does not need to be rinsed off. The fragrance is safe for your four-legged friend, and the microbes destroy all traces of bad smells. (Did you know that ODOUR was designed for this?)

How to clean up where the cat peed:

1. Clean the accident site as well as you can with a strong solution of FLOOR and water, and a sponge. If the slip up happened on a carpet, use PERSIAN foam. Do not wet the carpet too much, because damp amplifies the smell.

2. Spray with ODOUR twice a day for at least a week. Small doses regularly work best. ODOUR contains friendly microbes that eat and crowd out the stink producing bacteria, so you are treating the problem at its roots.

This solution works so well that it often inhibits dogs from going back to the same spot.

If it still stinks?

In severe cases a deep clean of the carpet may be necessary. Consider using experts such as Clean For Sure in such cases.

Antibiotics destroy your microbiome because they cannot discriminate between good and bad bacteria. They just kill them all.

When Alexander Fleming discovered antibiotics in 1928, the number of deaths from infection went down rapidly. It was a breakthrough discovery that saves lives to this day.

Unfortunately, antibiotics also get misused. It should be used to cure life threatening infection, but many people today take it for anything from a cough to an itch. If you do this, you destroy your microbiome to get relief from minor inconveniences.

Gut microbiome?

Every single person has a unique mix of microbes that live in and on his body. It is called your microbiome. This mix of bacteria, viruses and fungi creates a microbial fingerprint of sorts, and gives you all kinds of health benefits such as creating vitamins and anti-inflammatories and neurotransmitters.

When you take antibiotics, the medicine does not choose which microbes to kill. It kills the pathogens AND all the good bacteria in your gut. Harming these old friends make you less healthy.

If your life is at risk, take antibiotics for sure. If not, antibiotics might be doing more harm than good.

Home microbiome?

In the very same way, antibiotics destroy the microbiome in your home. Your home has a unique mix of microbes that helps you stay healthy. For example, the microbiome in your home helps train the immune systems of your children. Infants who grow up in extremely clean homes, seem to get more asthma and allergies (read more here and here).

This does not mean your home should be filthy. We also know washing hands and cleaning surfaces help you not get sick. Proper hygiene is very important.

So while you want to keep your home free from harmful microbes, you absolutely DO NOT want to kill the good ones. What are you to do?

Stay away from antibiotics in your home. Choose probiotics instead!

Use cleaning products that add the good bacteria! Stay away from products that claim to be anti-septic or ‘kill 99,9% of germs’. These products do not help you stay more healthy (in 2016 for example, the FDA stated that washing with antibacterial hand soap hadn’t proven to be any more effective than washing your hands with ordinary soap and water.) If you keep your home microbiome healthy, the friendly bacteria are more than the harmful bacteria. Your old friends crowd out and devour any bad bacteria that might land on the kitchen counter. This means you have a much safer, healthier home!

Our products do not contain any chemicals that kill germs. This is great news for your home microbiome. We do include spores of good bacteria, and these sort out the bad guys on a microscopic level.

Now that’s responsible, INTELLIGENT and safe for you!

How to clean your persian carpet at home? Don’t get it too wet, and use the correct soap.

Your persian carpet is a investment and you don’t want to ruin it. But it does need cleaning now and again.

A good deep clean is recommended about once a year. Use professional carpet cleaners like Clean For Sure for that. They use Mrs Martin’s PERSIAN, and excellent carpet shampoo, and machines that can extract the water and the soap so the carpet does not stay wet for long.

What if I cannot take it to the professionals?

As long as you do not wet your carpet too much, you can give it a good surface clean at home. Here is what Martin from Clean For Sure recommends:

Prepare the carpet

Turn carpet upside down so that the base faces up. Then shake the carpet on all four sides for two minutes each. This will help loosen dirt trapped in knots at the base.

Lift carpet and clear the dust and soil that was shaken out. Now place carpet right side up and vacuum for at least ten minutes.

Use a fine hand brush to brush the carpet in the direction of the pile (the ‘grain’). Never brush in the opposite direction, against the pile. Repeat vacuuming as in step 2.

Rinse your brush under tap and allow to sundry as you will use it again in step 7.

Prepare the soap

Pour exactly 3.5ℓ cold tap water into a bucket. Add 5ml of Mrs Martin’s PERSIAN carpet shampoo. DO NOT EXCEED THE DOSE AS IT MAY DAMAGE YOUR CARPET

Agitate vigorously to create as much foam as possible.

Soak the sponge provided in the soapy water, and pump it several times to create froth on and in the sponge.

Clean the carpet

When the sponge is saturated with foam, wipe the Persian carpet in the direction of the pile or ‘with the grain’, in long strokes from one side to the other. Usually this will mean from one short end to the other. In the case on a large carpet, clean it in sections. DO NOT SOAK THE CARPET AS IT MAY DAMAGE YOUR PERSIAN PERMANENTLY.

Lay the carpet on a clean, flat surface to sun dry for at least 6 hours.

When the carpet is completely dry, use the brush provided to brush the carpet a last time in order to soften the pile again. Do not vacuum your Persian for at least 48 hours after a surface clean.

There you go! Remember this is only a surface clean of your Persian and not a deep clean. Deep cleaning should only be done by a professional carpet cleaning company.

Mrs Martin’s wish list makes it easy to keep track of your favourite products.

Recently one of our clients mentioned that she would love the option to make a wish list on our site. This way she would not need to wade through the whole site every time she wanted to make a purchase. She could simply visit her wish list, add to cart what she wanted, and check out.

So we built it. You can now add products to your Mrs Martin’s wish list on our website!

Here is how the wish list works

First, create an account for yourself on mrsmartins.co.za (look for the My Account tab at the top of the page) and log in.

Then find the product you want to add to your list. Click on the heart underneath the desired product. It will now be added to your wish list, and it will stay there until you remove it whenever it suits you.

When you want to view your wish list, simply click on the heart at the top right hand of your screen.

The fantastic thing is that you now have all your favourite products in one place. Simply choose which you want to add to cart, and you are good to check out!

You can also share your wishlist to Facebook, or send it to a friend on Whatsapp just before your birthday (;)) Who knows? Perhaps someone out there will get the hint.

Or turn it around! Ask your friend to create a wish list before her birthday and to share it with you, and then you get her some of her favourite products. The possibilities are endless.

I hope this makes your shopping experience even more enjoyable. Let me know how you have used Mrs Martin’s wish list.

Until next time

The best floor cleaner in South Africa is strong, yet allergy friendly and pet friendly. It is Mrs Martin’s FLOOR!

In South Africa we wash a lot of floors. We live outside and do not have the habit of taking off our shoes when we go inside.

End result? We constantly have to quick mop our floors!

That might be part of the reason that FLOOR is one of our bestsellers. Here are five fantastic things you probably did not know about Mrs Martin’s FLOOR.

1. FLOOR can be sprayed neat onto the floor, or further diluted in a bucket of water. 

The easiest way to use Ready To Use FLOOR is to spray roughly one spray per m2, then go over with a damp microfibre mop to rinse off the soap, then with a dry microfibre to make it shine. If you prefer the bucket method, you can pour 30ml of the Ready To Use FLOOR into your 3l bucket and mop as usual.

2. FLOOR is a soap – remember to rinse.

With rinse we mean go over the floor with a damp microfibre mop. If you do not rinse, the left over soap will make the floor dull.

3. FLOOR is strong – use less.

Even the Ready To Use FLOOR is quite strong. If you use too much, you have to work extra hard to rinse it off. Rather use less and work less!

4. FLOOR can be used as a multipurpose cleaner.

If you are a one bottle person, FLOOR is your product. It was designed for medium duty cleaning. It has some degreasing action and it has anti streaking properties so you do not need to buff too much. 

5. FLOOR cleans waste water

The probiotics in the soap actually keep on cleaning long after you wrung out your mop. They clean drains and pipes (and mops!) so bad odours become something of the past. They also start the water treatment process right away, lightening the burden on the sewage treatment plants, which are not coping well in this country. That is why we call Mrs Martin’s FLOOR the best floor cleaner in South Africa. It helps clean our precious water!