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New testing on mop and bucket sets designed to keep clean and dirty water separate reinforced appreciation for our longstanding picks, the O-Cedar Microfiber Cloth Mop and O-Cedar Quick Wring Bucket. Toilet Brush Set
For muddy footprints, dirty winter slush, spilled cups of soda, and every other liquid mess imaginable, we trust the O-Cedar Microfiber Cloth Mop and the O-Cedar Quick Wring Bucket to clean floors thoroughly, fast, and with the least amount of fuss.
Exceptionally absorbent on spills, able to scrub stuck-on dirt, compact, nimble, and economical, it’s all you can ask of a mop.
Light and compact, with a clever wringer that can be removed for general tasks, this bucket is basic and well-balanced.
Not quite the performer that our pick is, the Libman has one key advantage: you don’t need a bucket to use it.
Exceptionally absorbent on spills, able to scrub stuck-on dirt, compact, nimble, and economical, it’s all you can ask of a mop.
The O-Cedar Microfiber Cloth Mop is sturdy, light, nimble, and a superb performer—the best in our tests at absorbing spills and scrubbing stains and stuck-on debris. Its long handle is simply built, slim, and stiff. With a lighter overall weight than its competitors, mopping with it is less strain on your back. It’s easier to store than other mops thanks to a collapsible handle with a unique hook. Its synthetic head dries in less than 24 hours, it doesn’t develop a smell, and in a pinch, works as a dust-mop too. With an inexpensive, replaceable head that’s machine-washable and -dryable up to 100 times, it’s seriously thrifty—as little as 7¢ per cleanup.
Light and compact, with a clever wringer that can be removed for general tasks, this bucket is basic and well-balanced.
The O-Cedar Quick Wring Bucket is everything you could wish for in a mop bucket. Its 2½-gallon capacity can hold enough water for any job, but it weighs less than 20 pounds when full, and is easy to lift out of a sink and move from room to room. Its compact, rectangular shape doesn’t waste closet or cabinet space, it’s easy to pour, and its stable design is less likely to slide or spill than others we tried. Its built-in wringer works beautifully and is also easily removable, converting it to a general-purpose bucket.
Not quite the performer that our pick is, the Libman has one key advantage: you don’t need a bucket to use it.
The Libman Wonder Mop is a classic for a reason: It works. Not quite as well as our top pick, but better than most other competitors. It has one key advantage: Its built-in wringer doesn’t require a separate bucket, and you can wet, rinse, and wring it in the kitchen sink.
We interviewed Ron Wright, who has spent the past 25 years as CEO of WrightCo Environmental Services, a consulting and custodial-training firm. An expert on sanitation and sterilization best practices, he offered deep insight on mop styles, proper mopping techniques, and methods of minimizing cross-contamination when cleaning kitchens and bathrooms. We also spoke with Mark Warner, senior training specialist at the Custodial Management Institute. CMI is a leading industry association that offers training to workers and in-depth seminars on regulations and best practices to plant managers. Like Wright, Warner offered deep insight on (and a winning enthusiasm for) proper mopping and sanitizing.
We narrowed our research on the hundreds of mops available based on price, overall design, user reviews, style within the wet mop category, material (of both head and handle), and manufacturer reputation.
We sought true wet mops designed to soak up messes and scrub stains.
Price was an early consideration: Most mop-and-bucket combos are between $35 and $60, so we capped our search at the higher end. Below that price range, you get into no-name cheapo models with dubious credentials, and we didn’t think the small savings—$5 or $10 on average—were worth the potential downsides, especially for tools designed to spread the already-low upfront costs over years of service.
Warner and Wright both agreed that microfiber was the way to go.
We sought true wet mops designed to soak up messes and scrub stains in kitchens and bathrooms. That criteria eliminated spray mops, as well as specialized models designed to spread sealants or polishes.
It also eliminated most flat mops. Despite how they’re marketed, flat mops generally can’t be wrung out—which you need to do whether you’re sopping up a spill or doing a whole-floor cleaning (i.e., wet mopping), and they’re usually used dry (on dust) or damp (to pick up incidental stains and dried spills). We made an exception for Swiffer’s wet-pad version: Even though the wet pad is a thin fabric sheet—versus most flat mops’ thick mat of microfiber tendrils—the company is so dominant in the cleaning market that we felt we had to test it.
Within the wet-mop category, you find a wide range of styles and materials:
None of these designs stood out in our reporting as obviously superior, so we tried each.
Wet mops also come in a range of materials, in both the handles and the mopheads. Our experts advised against wood handles—they can swell, split, splinter, and harbor bacteria—so we restricted our search to metal, plastic, and fiberglass handles.
Mopheads can be made of cotton, nylon, rayon, mixed fibers, or microfiber. In the surprisingly wide world of mopping, each has a role.1 But after we laid out our specific aim—to recommend a really excellent, unfussy, economical wet mop, designed to clean kitchen and bathroom spills and tracked-in muck in a typical home—Warner and Wright both agreed that microfiber was the way to go.
Microfiber is made of polyester and/or polyamide, both of which are synthetic materials, and these extremely fine-diameter fibers tend to have high absorbency, durability, washability, and non-biodegradability. That combination makes microfiber an excellent mop material. It captures dirt and dust and draws water out of even tiny crevices (e.g., grout lines); it soaks up a lot of liquid and stands up to hard scrubbing; and it’s machine-washable, and therefore economical in the long term (and it hardly breaks the bank to begin with). Plus, it won’t rot and stink, something that can happen with mops made from cotton.
We picked 12 finalists, and settled on ten to test—all top-rated, and all 100 percent microfiber—in four styles: five spin, two cloth, and one each string, sponge, and flat, from Swiffer, Casabella, OXO Good Grips, O-Cedar, Joy Mangano, Mopnado, and Libman.
One last thing: Most of our test mops came with a dedicated bucket, or had a companion bucket sold separately. The materials and function—is plastic, holds water—were simple and similar, so we evaluated them based on other details of design, like volume, weight, comfort and stability when carrying and pouring, size/storability, and additional utility for non-mopping jobs.
We devised a series of tests, from the most basic (ease of assembly, comfort in the hand) to the everyday (cleaning minor spills and sticky stains) to the extreme (soaking up putrid New York City gutter water by the cupful). We used the mops dry (as they would be if you grabbed them out of the broom closet to soak up a spill) and wet (as if you were doing a deep kitchen or bathroom cleaning). And we made sure to have a range of people test them—men and women, big and small, homeowners with ample storage space and apartment dwellers without a lot of room. For some of our subjective testing, we spoke to paid testers with varying levels of mobility and dexterity.
As a first step, we simply put the mops together—they almost all came in pieces—and noted the ease or difficulty of doing so. We then spent an hour just handling the mops to produce a baseline judgment of their ergonomics and their design strengths and weaknesses. At this point we were basically taking notes—not dismissing anything, but marking down initial points of praise or concern. Heavy? A negative. Nimble? A plus.
While mopping, we used each model as directed by the manufacturers (when guidance was given) or as our experts advised. For the sponge and spin mops, that meant wiping back and forth in overlapping strokes; for the cloth and string mops, it meant wiping straight along the baseboards, and then mopping the floors in a tight figure-eight pattern—for more on our mopping methods, see how to mop like a pro.
Our test space was a kitchen and living room with engineered hardwood flooring (a sealed hardwood layer on top of a composite base). We started with the mops dry, simply considering how they felt when held and swept around. Then we filled the buckets with plain water, wetted and wrung out the mops according to the manufacturers’ instructions, and re-wiped the floors to see how the mops’ characteristics changed with the added weight and friction. (Microfiber works by mechanically scrubbing up stains and physically absorbing them, and generally does not require detergent. Our test mops are 100 percent microfiber, so all our tests were done with plain water.)
We took a quart-sized container out to the curb, scooped up salty, icy, gritty, oily New York City slush, brought it inside, and dumped it on the kitchen floor.
At the same time I judged the buckets on similarly utilitarian physical criteria: size and weight (both empty and filled), balance, complexity, and general usefulness—essentially, whether or not their design meant they could function as everyday buckets for non-mopping jobs. For the spin mops in particular, which to work properly require the mophead to fit completely into a bucket-mounted centrifuge, we paid special attention to whether any strands hung outside, and whether the centrifuge sprayed any water onto the floor or kept it all in the bucket’s confines.
We hung up the mops to dry for 36 hours, then checked them for dryness. All but one was completely dry, so this didn’t prove a big differentiator; the outlier was still very damp (but at least it had no smell).
We then tested the mops on more demanding performance. After all the initial mopping, our floors were dirt-free, but a recent blizzard had created perfect conditions to mess them up again. We first tracked filthy meltwater into the test space and tested the mops’ ability to soak up these spot-spills with the mopheads dry. Then we took a quart-sized container out to the curb, scooped up salty, icy, gritty, oily New York City slush, brought it inside, and dumped it on the kitchen floor, a measured liquid cup at a time, to simulate a dropped glass or ladle. We tested all the mops’ ability to absorb the dirty snowmelt and capture the grit, oil, and ice particles. We repeated this test first when they were dry, then when soaked in plain water and wrung out.
Next, we pitted them against two sugary spills—a quarter-cup of Coca-Cola (which we allowed to dry for 30 minutes to a gummy consistency), and the same amount of pomegranate juice—on our engineered-hardwood floors. We scrubbed the soda with the mops damp with cold slush-water (to see how well they worked when already laden with dirt and water, as they would be during a long mopping job). On the juice, we used the mops soaked and wrung out using clean hot water (as on quick jobs).
For later testing of the O-Cedar EasyWring RinseClean Spin Mop System and the Casabella Clean Water Spin Mop, we cleaned mud and smashed-up colored chalk off of a concrete floor to see if continuously dipping the mops in clean water after wringing them out made a big difference in how much residue is left on a mop head. But we found both of these systems so ineffective and confusing to use that we dismissed them fairly fast.
Exceptionally absorbent on spills, able to scrub stuck-on dirt, compact, nimble, and economical, it’s all you can ask of a mop.
The O-Cedar Microfiber Cloth Mop is sturdy, light, nimble, easy to assemble, and a superb performer. It did a better job of soaking up a large spill than any other mop in our test—and did so when dry or damp. It excelled on basic cleanup and on sticky spills, on both wood and tile floors. And it performed reasonably well as a dust mop. Its long handle and cloth-mop design mean you stand upright when working, reducing back strain, and its collapsible handle—with a unique hook—is easier than other mops to store. Unlike many of its competitors, the O-Cedar is simple in design, with no moving parts to operate or break. Finally, the head is both replaceable and machine-washable and -dryable (up to 100 times, according to O-Cedar), which breaks down to about 7¢ a cleanup—so beyond being a standout performer, it’s seriously thrifty.
It’s great for large messes. No mop in our test did as well as the O-Cedar at cleaning up a large, messy spill. With the mophead dry, it completely soaked up a cup of water, slush, grit, and grime with a few figure-eight twists of the microfiber strips. With the mophead damp (soaked and wrung), the process took a little longer, but it still absorbed the whole spill quickly and without any special effort. And it did as well on a quarter-cup spill of Coke. The O-Cedar’s performance surpassed other string/cloth-mops (Joy Mangano, Libman), which took somewhat longer and left a bit of grit behind; the spin-mops (Mopnado, Casabella, and O-Cedar Quickwring), which smeared the liquid around before soaking it up, and never captured all the grit; and the sponge and flat mops (OXO and Swiffer), which spread the whole mess like paint, and never fully absorbed any of it.
Our testers universally preferred cloth mops like the O-Cedar to spin, sponge, and flat mops.
Assembly is easy. To set up the O-Cedar Microfiber Cloth Mop, you simply unlock the telescoping handle with a counterclockwise twist, extend the upper handle to your preference for length (it maxes out at 58 inches, long enough to be comfortable for someone over 6 feet tall), and lock it again with a clockwise twist. The design is sturdy—even under significant pressure, the handle didn’t shift or collapse during our tests—but it weighs just two pounds after being wrung out, so it’s nimble, too. That’s much lighter than the similar Joy Mangano, a lumbering 3¾ pounds when wrung out. For storage, the O-Cedar’s handle collapses down to just 34 inches—a handy space-saving option that many other mops lack. Last, the hook at the top of the handle lets you hang it for drying and/or storage—and no other mop in our test has one.
It’s comfortable to clean with. Our testers universally preferred cloth mops like the O-Cedar to spin, sponge, and flat mops: with long handles (in the 5-foot range), they’re designed to be used while standing upright, using the hips and torso to turn the mophead in a small figure-eight pattern. Among the cloth mops, we preferred the O-Cedar’s thin but grippy handle to the Joy Mangano’s slick, fat one and the Libman’s slick (also thin) one. The other styles have shorter handles (generally a little over 4 feet) that force you to lean over and push the mop in long back-and-forth strokes, causing strain on the back and arms.
The simplicity of the O-Cedar’s design is another positive. Other manufacturers, with their overly complex mops would do well to emulate the minimalist approach: With no moving parts and just two strong, screwed-together joints, the O-Cedar is virtually fail-proof.
Long loops mean no tangles. The O-Cedar’s mophead consists of microfiber fabric strips that are—a key detail—looped. Instead of being attached to the handle at just one end, like cheap cotton mops, the strips are attached at both ends. That’s a feature of many commercial mops, and it’s valuable because it keeps the strips from tangling when mopping and washing. The Joy Mangano, another string/cloth mop, is also looped; the Libman, the third of this style in our test, isn’t—and indeed, we ran into a few tangling issues with it.
You can toss it in a washing machine. After being machine-washed and –dried twice—cold water, detergent, low heat, no fabric softener (which ruins microfiber)—the O-Cedar mophead showed no signs of deterioration beyond a bit of fading. Whether it will last the claimed 100 wash-dry cycles is another matter, but the start was promising.
Almost all the negative Amazon reviews of the O-Cedar focus on problems with the telescoping handle; overall it gets 4 stars (out of five) across more than 2,300 reviews. Some users were unable to get the handle to extend, and others could not get it to collapse back down. We had no problems with either, but it is definitely true that the handle sections can lock very tightly. It doesn’t take much force to lock them firmly in place—just “finger tight” was sufficient throughout our mopping sessions. Really cranking down is unnecessary, and makes it very difficult to unlock the sections.
Light and compact, with a clever wringer that can be removed for general tasks, this bucket is basic and well-balanced.
The O-Cedar Quick Wring Bucket, designed to work with our mop pick but sold separately, is our hands-down recommendation. Unlike any other bucket we tested, its built-in wringer is removable, converting it from a dedicated mop bucket to a terrific general-purpose one—so it’s really two tools in one. When paired with the O-Cedar mop pick, the wringer is simple to use and has no moving parts to break, unlike others we tested. It also has a handy notch for holding the mop upright when not in use. It’s stable, comfortable to carry when empty or full, compact for storage, and easy to pour thanks to a finger grip on the bucket’s bottom.
We love the smart design. The O-Cedar’s wringer is a marvelous piece of engineering. Containing no moving parts, it’s instead a flexible one-piece plastic basket, pierced and folded like origami. When you press the mop into it, the bottom flexes downward and the sides move inward, squeezing out the water. It performs beautifully, and compared with the spin-wringers in our test, it’s far simpler and inherently more durable—no unlocking and relocking and no multiple moving parts like pedals, axles, and bearings. This is also more stable—it stays still when wringing; others wanted to skid across the floor.
It’s lightweight and holds more water than others we tested. At 2½ gallons, the O-Cedar Quick Wring bucket offers an ideal combination of sufficient volume and manageable weight when filled (roughly 21 pounds). It can hold enough water for even a major cleanup, but it also lets you use less water when tackling small jobs—its narrow, vertical form means water gets deeper, not wider, as you fill the bucket, so even a quarter-fill is enough to saturate a mop or cloth. And refilling it with clean water frequently—the most important factor in thorough mopping and other cleaning tasks—is quick due to the small size.
The bucket itself weighs just 22 ounces, less than 1½ pounds—the lightest in our test—so you’re never lugging around a lot of extra weight. Its rectangular shape “respects space limitations,” in Wirecutter kitchen writer Lesley Stockton’s words: It’ll fit under any sink and doesn’t waste space the way round buckets do. (It measures just 14 inches in the longest dimension, smallest in our test; the biggest was 20 inches.) Finally, a small pocket thoughtfully molded into its base acts as a grip, making it easier to tip the bucket when pouring out wastewater.
We just wish it had basic molded-in gallon measurements—to make it easier to mix volumetric cleaning solutions. That would be the icing on the cake.
Not quite the performer that our pick is, the Libman has one key advantage: you don’t need a bucket to use it.
The Libman Wonder Mop’s green handle and built-in wringer have been a familiar kitchen presence for decades. Like the O-Cedar’s, its metal handle is strong, light, and nimble, though it’s not quite as long (52 inches vs. 58 inches). In testing, we found it worked generally well: The mop readily absorbs spills and scrubs stains, and the built-in twist-wringer does its job. It just didn’t work as well as the O-Cedar at any of these tasks, its closest kin in design. One key difference: The Libman’s microfiber strips aren’t looped; they’re just ribbons of fabric attached at one end. That made for some tangles. However, because the wringer is built-in, you don’t need a bucket to use the Libman—you can wet it, rinse it, and wring it under a sink or tub faucet. That makes it advantageous for seriously small living spaces.
Ron Wright teaches his workers a specific technique for using cloth mops like our picks. First, you run the mop along all the baseboards and into the corners of the room you’re cleaning. Then, having created a clean area all around the perimeter, you work back and forth on the rest of the floor. While standing upright, turn the mophead in overlapping figure-eight patterns, using your hips and shoulders more than your arms—a much less fatiguing motion than the “paint rolling” forward-and-back motion that many people—me included—instinctively use. The figure-eights serve another purpose: By constantly gathering the mess inward, they eliminate streaks and the need to do a second pass.
Turn the mop-head in overlapping figure-eight patterns—a much less fatiguing motion than the “paint rolling” forward-and-back motion many people instinctively use.
Wright’s advice matches what we heard from Mark Warner of Custodial Management Institute, and what Wirecutter writer Lesley Stockton was taught by an “ancient porter” on her first job as a restaurant cook, as well as what Wirecutter’s Michael Sullivan (another restaurant veteran) was taught by his dad—a Navy man with much experience swabbing decks.
Wright and Warner both recommended keeping two mops—or at least two mopheads—one for the bathroom and one for the kitchen, to eliminate the possibility of bringing bathroom pathogens into the cooking area. Many mops, like O-Cedar, offer replacement heads.
Warner noted that much of the country—certainly the Northeast and Midwest—gets four different, seasonal types of dirt that concentrate in entryways: minerals (various salts) in winter, wet soil in spring, dry soil in summer, and organic matter (rotten leaves) in fall. For the most part, water is all the cleaning solution you will need to clean them up.
By contrast, Warner pointed out, kitchens endure both organic soiling (spilled food) and cooking oils year-round. To clean these, augment the water with a bit of ammonia (say a couple of capfuls per gallon or a glug per bucket), and Warner recommends a glug of ammonia plus a couple drops—literal drops—of general-purpose detergent (Warner mentioned Dawn and Mr. Clean). Ammonia cuts grease, and leaves no residue; detergents surround food and dirt particles and make them physically attractive (as in Newtonian physics, not amor) to microfiber, increasing its ability to absorb messes. What you don’t want is a pile of soap suds: it’ll leave soapy residue behind and necessitate a rinse-mopping.
To sanitize a bathroom—where pathogens, not dirt, are the main concern—Warner and the Custodial Management Institute prescribe a 1:100 mix of household bleach and water, which works out to roughly (and aiming high) 3 tablespoons per gallon, or a little less than ½ cup per 2½ gallons (our bucket pick’s maximum fill). That solution will kill 99 percent of germs. To utterly sterilize a bathroom, Warner and the CMI recommend a 1:10 ratio—but warn that it’s strong. “That’s way way people from the CDC bathe when they’re jumping into a Hot Zone,” Warner said. ”Anything stronger than that’s just gonna fry your nose, and you won’t be able to taste dinner for two days.”
Regardless of which ratio you decide on, never, ever mix ammonia and bleach directly—or even use the same mophead, no matter how well-rinsed, in separate solutions that contain one or the other. The combination produces chlorine gas, which is deadly enough that it was used as a chemical weapon in WWI.
Lastly, the single most important thing you should do when mopping is replace the mop-water often. Microfiber can absorb a ton of dirt, but eventually you’ll simply be swishing dirty water around.
The O-Cedar EasyWring Microfiber Mop and Bucket Floor Cleaning System is a popular product, with more than 165,000 Amazon reviews and prominent placement in many big box retailers. The wringer is simple to use: Place the mop in it, pump a pedal on the bucket, and allow the handle to rotate in your hands as excess water flies off and back into the bucket. But the bucket can only be filled halfway because the wringer has to stay above water. And when the bucket is filled to its “max” line, it tilts forward about 20 degrees and can become awkward to carry. The unique, triangular mop-head is a clever concept—theoretically making it easier to mop along baseboards and into corners—but in practice we found it often caught on the floor, jarring our wrists.
The O-Cedar EasyWring RinseClean Spin Mop System and the Casabella Clean Water Spin Mop are each designed to keep dirty and clean water separate, so that you don’t have to wet your mop with the same water that’s collecting dirt from your floor as you work. It’s a neat idea, but in practice, these designs only make mopping more difficult. The dual water receptacles on each model are fairly small in order to keep the devices a manageable size, which means there’s less water for cleaning and you need to refill the buckets more often. The Casabella Clean Water Spin Mop is the easier of the two to use, but the wringer can only remove so much dirt, which meant that when we put our still slightly-dirty mop into the bucket of clean water for the next round of mopping, the minimal amount of water in the “clean” bucket got dirty fast, just like a regular bucket would. The O-Cedar EasyWring RinseClean Spin Mop System complicates matters with an encased tank of clean water that sits atop the bucket. While wringing the mop, dirty water is flung to the bottom, and lifting a small tab on the top tank allows clean water to enter a too-small reservoir for rewetting the mop. We had trouble getting the clean water to flow at more than a trickle, and found the entire set-up unnecessarily confusing. It’s best to just keep refilling a bucket with clean water as you work.
The Casabella Spin Cycle Mop and Bucket is similar to the O-Cedar EasyWring Microfiber Mop and Bucket but with added complexities. It’s also about $30 more expensive. It features unnecessary details like a tiny soap dispenser that’s fussy to refill. (Squirting detergent from the bottle is much easier.) There’s also a silly drain plug and a tiny drawer whose purpose is unclear (replacement mop heads don’t fit in it).
The Joy Mangano Miracle Mop is, like our top pick, a long-handled mop from a well-regarded manufacturer. Beyond that, the comparisons end. It weighs almost 5 pounds wrung out, versus the O-Cedar’s two pounds; its handle is fat and as flexible as a noodle, instead of trim and stiff; its telescoping mechanism is fussy instead of intuitive (you have to lock and unlock the sections with narrow collars that blend visually with the handles). We found its built-in wringer effective but tricky to master (you unlock the wringer, pull the mop strands tight, and twist to wring them out, then reverse the process to start mopping again). And it was the only mop that failed to dry over the course of 36 hours, instead remaining very damp.
The Joy Mangano Miracle Bucket, on the other hand, is quite a nice tool—if you need a seriously big bucket. Holding up to 4 gallons, it’s almost twice as voluminous as our pick. And it has a number of thoughtful details: a molded-in measuring cup to help dispense detergent in precise amounts; molded lines demarking 1, 2, 3, and 4 gallons; and a padded handle with a notch to hold a mop upright when not in use. Virtually nobody needs a bucket this size, but if you do, it’s a good one. (The bucket has no wringer, however, so it can only be used with mops that have wringers built in.)
The OXO Good Grips Microfiber Sponge Mop is somewhat misleadingly named: It’s just a plain sponge mop with a thin layer of microfiber glued to its face. In practice, the microfiber layer was not thick enough to pick up grit (unlike the generous microfiber cloth loops of our pick), and the sponge was slow to absorb spills. It left wet streaks behind when we tried to mop up a 1-cup spill, and required a second pass to clean them up. The wringer mechanism is effective, but with multiple moving parts, we worry about its longevity. There’s no reason to really hate the OXO; there’s also no reason to love it.
Finally, to reiterate: we categorically dismissed flat mops, like the popular Starfiber Starmop, because they’re really designed to be used dry (on dust) or damp (on incidental stains). They can’t be wrung out, so they’re really no good for the deep-cleaning and spill-sopping that wet mops excel at. (The O-Cedar version has been a flat mop pick for years—it’s brilliant on dust/dander when used dry and on incidental stains when dampened with a sprayer.)
Because Swiffer is so popular, we tried hard to find a reason to like it—we thought a Swiffer might trade weaker performance for greater convenience to help people in a hurry. It didn’t.
We thought a Swiffer might trade weaker performance for greater convenience to help people in a hurry. It didn’t.
The Swiffer Sweeper Cleaner Dry and Wet Mop is not a wet mop, despite what Swiffer says. It’s a dust mop that also comes with three disposable presoaked mop pads. The wet pads start out saturated and can’t be wrung out, so they are physically incapable of wiping up spills and in fact leave streaks of cleaning fluid behind. The dry pads have the weight of toilet paper, and can barely absorb a tablespoon of liquid. The incredibly flimsy handle doesn’t let you scrub with any vigor on sticky messes and dried-on food. The scent of the cleaning fluid elicited universal disgust—rotten apples, skunked cider, and green-apple Jolly Rancher. And here’s the thing: the “convenience” of the disposable pads doesn’t save time. It costs time. You have to open a wet-pack, install the pad by shoving its corners into little grippy holes that catch the fingers, attempt mopping the mess, and then undo the process and chuck the pad. Swiffer’s convenience also isn’t cheap.
Last, when we said we eliminated spray mops, we were talking about the iconic Swiffer WetJet primarily. It’s one of several. They are designed to dust and wipe hard floors, can’t be wrung, and lack the thick absorbent material needed to sop up spills and deep-clean floors.
This article was edited by Harry Sawyers and Joshua Lyon.
Tim Heffernan is a senior staff writer focusing on air and water quality and home energy efficiency. A former writer for The Atlantic, Popular Mechanics, and other national magazines, he joined Wirecutter in 2015. He owns three bikes and zero derailleurs.
Ellen Airhart is an associate writer at Wirecutter, where she covers cleaning and emergency preparedness. Please email her with your biggest messes and most anxious thoughts.
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