My mopping tips...

I've heard about mopping the floor with hot water but I never tried it. On a tropical island, a water heater is not a necessity. Being cheapskate (my, I overuse this word) we don't have any water heater, be it gas (which is among the cheapest option) solar (the free energy, we're near the equator) of electric.

So heating water is done with a kettle and a cooktop. Waiting for the water to boil. I'm not good in waiting. I don't know, I was never a waiter.

I have to mop the floor. Instead of mopping the usual way, with cool water and floor detergent, I decided to try a new approach. Hot water and essential oil. Essential oil is to experiment it's effect on those pesky mozzies.

Here's what I did.

A pail of hot water with

• a splash of eucalyptus oil
• a few drops of tea tree oil
• a few drop of lemongrass oil

And another pail of cool water to rinse my mop after each wipe.

Mop as usual.

Et voila! A clean, green, mozzie repelling floor. Yes, I can brag that my floor has an additional feature, a mosquito repellent. Does you floor repel mosquitoes?

No ant trails too. It's rainy here, so ants would swarm our house to escape from the wet ground.

I wouldn't recommend using essential oil if you have crawling toddlers in your household. They might lick the floor. One need to be careful. It's not much but it's still depends on you if you opt to use or omit those essential oil.

Using hot water makes cleaning easier. And it dries faster too! If only mop this way earlier.