The Absorbing Tale About the Mop in Your Home
From string mops to microfibre, flatheads and now robot-operated, these floor-cleaning tools have a notable history
By Carola Vyhnak Special to the Star
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
It could have been the perfect pet: a dog that cleans up after itself.
But Keki’s owner was likely motivated by cuteness, not cleanliness, when she turned the long-haired pooch into a floor mop for a Halloween event.
Keki took home top prize at the annual MainStrasse Pawrade in Covington, Ky., with her simple costume design
With her long, dark cords spilling over the sides of a big yellow pail on wheels, the Hungarian puli stole the show during the annual parade a few years ago.
Keki the Hungarian puli’s costume design won top prize in her Kentucky city’s annual pre-Halloween pet parade.103.1 KCDA
Ironically, long-haired dogs can be the “worst offenders” of dirty floors, according to Toronto’s Nick Kaczun, founder and CEO of Lustre Luxury Cleaning & Services.
Pet hair that isn’t removed regularly “starts sticking to floors and baseboards making it really hard to clean,” says the business owner, who took a shine to the profession 16 years ago.
Dog or no dog, a good floor mop can be your best friend, says Kaczun, whose cleaners use one with a microfibre head that’s washed, dried and reused.
The first mop was made some 500 years ago from a handful of rags attached to a wooden pole, pleasing the knees after eons of hand-scrubbing stone and marble floors on all fours. But it wasn’t until 1893 that backs got a break from bending over to wring out the water. That year, African-American inventor Thomas W. Stewart was awarded a patent for a yarn deck mop with a wringing mechanism.
Fifty-seven years later, sponge mops made their debut, thanks to technological improvements following the Second World War. In 1950, European inventor Peter Vosbikian came up with a design for an automatic model that used a lever and metal strip to wring out the absorbent head.
Since then, new designs and materials have made less work of both wet and dry cleaning chores. Among modern-day wet mops are those made of string, known as yacht or deck mops; microfibre twist mops with hands-free ratcheting action for wringing; and flat-head mops with removable pads.
Twenty years ago, Proctor and Gamble introduced an all-in-one system that sprays cleaning liquid through the mop to wipe up with the pad, eliminating buckets, bending and wringing.
One inventor really cleaned up in the early 1990s after creating a self-wringing mop with 300 feet of looped cotton. Joy Mangano, an American divorced mother of three, initially demonstrated her Miracle Mop in parking lots, flea markets and boat shows. But after the ambitious entrepreneur talked her way onto QVC shopping channel, she sold 18,000 mops in half an hour. Mangano went on to sell millions more along with numerous other products including clothes hangers, wine coolers and pillows.
Her success story was told in the 2015 movie “Joy,” starring Jennifer Lawrence as Mangano.
Floor-mopping launched a love story in Guillermo del Toro’s 2018 Oscar-winning romantic fantasy, “The Shape of Water.” Janitor Elisa (Sally Hawkins) secretly forms a bond with an imprisoned experiment subject known as Amphibian Man while mopping up spilled water and blood at a secret government facility in the 1960s.
Had the tale taken place in late 2021, however, human janitors may well have been replaced by robots — such as the Narwal T10. Launched in Canada this past September, the two-in-one “big-brained robot” first vacuums then washes the floor, returning to the base station to wash and dry its mops automatically.
“After seeing my mother work day in and day out to keep the family home clean, I decided to apply my expertise and passion for robotics to create products to free her from her daily chores,” explained Junbin Zhang, Narwal’s founder. Labour-free luxury comes with a price tag of $1,399.
On the other hand, elbow grease doesn’t cost a thing. Cleaning pro Kaczun believes in applying some on a regular basis to make floors last longer and your home safer, healthier and more attractive.
He says “you’d be surprised” how many people don’t vacuum before mopping, which results in dirt, dust and winter salt getting spread around.
Kaczun advises avoiding bleach and rubbing alcohol, and using eco-friendly products suited for the type of flooring. Natural stone, marble, hardwood and laminates call for mild, citrus-free dish soap and water although hardwood and laminates can also be cleaned with water and vinegar. Ceramic and porcelain tiles can handle most cleaning products, he says.
