LESLIE: Susan in South Carolina has got a cleaning question. What can we do for you?
SUSAN: Well I have porcelain tile – beige porcelain tile – with kind of a light gray grout and I just can’t keep the porcelain clean and can’t get the grout clean.
TOM: Do you just live in a dirty house, Susan?
SUSAN: Yeah. (chuckles)
TOM: You got kids?
SUSAN: No.
TOM: Oh.
SUSAN: I have two dogs, which doesn’t help.
TOM: Dogs? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, kids are pretty dirty but dogs are worse.
SUSAN: Yes, they are. (chuckles)
LESLIE: Now, when you’ve gotten the grout to a clean point which makes you happy, have you ever taken the step to seal it?
SUSAN: No.
LESLIE: That could save you a tremendous amount of cleaning effort post-sealing. So what I would say is get it as clean as possible and then go ahead and get a grout sealer and you can get – they make these interesting little applicators that are sort of small, squeezy bottles with like a rolly foam tip or even one that almost looks like a nail polish brush. That helps you really just get it on the grout.
SUSAN: OK. So I have been just using bleach mainly; you know, on the porcelain and the grout and that’s – is that the quickest fix for that?
TOM: Yeah, bleach is fine. There are also grout cleaners and grout strippers. If it gets really dirty you can use a grout stripper which is a bit of a more industrial sort of strength product or a grout cleaner which is somewhat of a lighter product; both of those, available at home centers and hardware stores, will do a good job at this as well.
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