How to Recycle Sawdust as a Floor Cleaner

While not many people think of sawdust as a cleaning product, the fact is this natural substance can make a huge difference, when it comes to keeping your floors clean. Best of all, there are no harsh chemicals and you get to reuse something that many people tend to see as useless.

When combined with a couple of other ingredients, old-fashioned sawdust can make an excellent floor cleaner.  What may consider a relatively useless byproduct can, in fact, help to keep linoleum and wood floors looking great.  All you need is an abundance of sawdust and a couple of other ingredients and your floors will be clean and shiny using a method that is completely environmentally friendly.

1. Obtain some sawdust.  Many sawmills and lumberyards will be more than happy to let you have as much as you want, simply to get it out of the way.  Take along some large containers, as you will need a fair amount of the product to manage the cleaning.


2. Mix the sawdust with a small amount of baking soda.  The soda helps to provide an odor removing quality, which may be very helpful if you are attempting to deal with vomit or some other liquid that has a somewhat unpleasant scent.


3. Apply the sawdust and baking soda mixture liberally to the area of the floor you wish to clean.  Make sure the sawdust completely covers the area.  Coverage of up to an inch in thickness will normally be sufficient to manage most floor cleaning jobs.


4. Allow the sawdust to remain in place for at least 15 to 20 minutes.  This allows the particles to absorb the excess liquid, making the cleanup a lot easier.  As a bonus, sawdust tends to attract dust, which means a good bit of every day surface dirt that collects on floors will also be captured by the product.


5. Scoop up the sawdust using a dustpan and a broom and use the sawdust as mulch in your garden, if the liquid removed from the floor is a natural compound and not some type of spilled chemicals.  Otherwise, discard in the trash.  You can then use the broom to sweep the remainder of the floor, leaving a clean surface that will feel good to bare feet.