I really love a clean house, and especially clean floors.  But clean floors don’t come easy in a household with 2 active boys and 1 messy husband.  But my biggest barrier to clean floors is disguised as a sweet, cute, cuddly pet:

While he is cute and cuddly, he’s also a smelly, shedding, tracking in all kind of mud and dirt beast.  The shedding is a huge problem.  I keep asking my husband, if we had to have a dog why didn’t we at least get a white dog.  Every spring and summer, my floors are covered in black dog hair, which accumulates in the corners and under the cabinets.  Which is just gross.

The only bad thing about doing reviews of cleaning products is that I have to post pictures of my unclean house.  But it’s for a good cause, so here goes.  These first pictures are of my kitchen floor.  I’d like to say that I let the dog hair and dirt accumulate for a couple of days for the purpose of this review, but the truth is, I clean my floors every day and it still looks like this.

Just in case it wasn’t clear what those black blobs are on my floor, this last close up should clear up any confusion. Dog Hair! I swept and mopped yesterday, so this is what I deal with after one day.  And it’s winter, so this is nothing compared to how I suffer through warmer weather.

But wait, there’s more than just dog hair.

He also tracks in dirt and mud, and since we’ve had a few days of ice which turns into nasty muddy slush, my floor has been covered with muck.  If I could keep the dog inside all the time I would, but that’s not an option.

I have tried all kinds of products for the floors, mainly because I want something quick and easy.  I hate to get out the broom, get out the mop, fill the mop bucket, sweep, mop then try to keep everyone off the floor while it dries.  That takes too long, especially since it needs to be done at least once  a day.  So I was pleasantly surprised to open up the Swiffer 2 in 1 and find that it assembled very quickly.   The Swiffer 2 in 1 is for sweeping and mopping, so it just takes up one hook in my garage, where I keep my various cleaning supplies.  Yes, that is important, I want something small that doesn’t take up much space, because I don’t have much space.

And it passed the true test of convenience, my son was able to assemble it in seconds.  This is also important, because my goal is to delegate the floor cleaning to my kids.  We all want to give our kids something to cherish, right? That’s my gift to them.

I was skeptical about the sweeper part, I just didn’t see how those sweeper cloths would pick up the stuff on my floor.  I was surprised here too, because it did pick up the dog hair and the dirt and trap it on the cloth.  When I use my regular broom, I have to go over the floor several times, because it seems to scatter the dog hair around more than anything.  The Swiffer cloths picked it up the first time.

I quickly swapped the dry sweeping cloth with a wet mopping cloth.  Again, it was very quick and easy.  Then I went to work on the mud.  I expected to have to spend some time scrubbing, because that’s what I have to do when I use my standard wet mop.  But the wet mopping cloths have a textured scrubbing strip, so I made one swipe over the floor with the cloth then flipped over to the scrubbing strip to go over the worst mud stain.  It got it right out, no scrubbing necessary.

I did my whole kitchen floor in just a matter of minutes.  Another thing I like about the Swiffer 2 in 1 is that there’s no concentrated chemical smell that you get with other cleaners.  Just a clean, fresh scent.

Clean floor!  No dog hair! No mud! Can you tell how happy a clean floor makes me? It’s the simple things in life.  The Swiffer 2 in 2 was quicker, easier, and more convenient that my normal broom and mop routine.  And it worked, my floor is clean and the dog hair is gone. Why go part of the way with your traditional methods, when Swiffer takes you all the way clean!  Visit http://www.swiffer.com for more information and to save $2 on any one Swiffer® Sweeper Starter Kit!

For more Swiffer reviews visit Blogher.