Have you recently installed a hardwood floor? Bear in mind that in order to keep the shine and new look on your hardwood floor, you'll have to clean it regularly and properly. You've probably heard some of the pros say that the best way to clean hardwood floors is to use chemical cleaning solutions.

They're right, of course, but these cleaning solutions are rather expensive; they'll eventually eat a hole through your pocket. In addition, they're also tricky to use. If you use too much, you can damage your hardwood floor; if you use too little, your hardwood floor will look pretty old soon.

Since these professional solutions for hardware floors are basically hard to use, a lot of people turn to folk remedies, such as using vinegar to clean hardwood floors. It is possible to clean hardwood floors with vinegar. In fact, using vinegar to clean hardwood floors is an effective and efficient way of cleaning hardwood floors -- but only for the short run. After all, vinegar is cheap and it does work.

However, cleaning hardwood floors with vinegar can be damaging to hardwood floors in the long term. Vinegar is basically acidic; acidic substances tend to slowly chew through surfaces. Thus, when you use vinegar to clean hardwood floors on a regular basis, the vinegar will eventually damage the finish, giving the floors an uneven look. Vinegar won't drastically damage your hardwood floor's finish if you use it to clean your floor once or twice a year. However, it will cause your floor's quality to degrade if you repeatedly use vinegar for cleaning for two or more months.

There's another reason it is not recommended to use vinegar to clean hardwood floors. Vinegar will take out the shine of hardwood floors. Vinegar thus lowers the the quality of hardwood floors, so if you really want to keep your hardwood floor looking shiny for a long time, the last thing you want to do is use vinegar to clean it.

In general, you should avoid using vinegar to clean hardwood floors frequently. That said, there are times when vinegar becomes a quick, inexpensive solution to cleaning problems. If you should ever run out of professional cleaning solutions or they are not readily available at stores, you can perhaps substitute vinegar just once or twice.

In case you have to use vinegar for cleaning your hardwood floor, don't use too much of it. And remember, you should only use vinegar as a hardwood cleaning solution whenever necessary and as infrequent as you possibly can. You may not want to spend all that money on expensive hardwood cleaning solutions, but carefully weight the consequences of using vinegar on your hardwood floor. You may save money, but your hardwood floor sure isn't going to be shiny for long. In addition, make sure that the finish on your floor is strong so that it can withstand the effects of vinegar if you use it for cleaning.