Ask Mrs. Clean: House Cleaning, Stain Removal and Organizing Tips

[Ricochet]

After I found out that my dog was pregnant, I moved her inside into the kitchen when she was within 1 week of her delivery date. She would go to the door when she needed out, so I didn't have any problems with urine in the kitchen, except in the mornings when no one was awake to let her outside. Now, 5 weeks and 4 puppies later, I cannot keep my kitchen clean. It's finally starting to warm up outside, so the mom and pups have been staying outside all day, but for the past 5 weeks, they have been urinating EVERYWHERE. Ordinarily, I'd mop it up and move on, but the mom sheds heavily, so now I'm stuck in a dilemma. The dog hair is stuck to the sticky urine spots on the linoleum. If I try to mop it up, it just pushes the hair around into big nasty stick clumps, but if I try to sweep up the hair before mopping, it gums up my broom and the hair still becomes sticky clumps! Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get around this cyclical nightmare? Thank you so much in advance!

[mrscleannw]

Hello Ricochet and welcome to our forum,

My first thought is that Mom deserves a nice bath after having four puppies and then a good brushing. She will probably appreciate this. When spring is here our animals start shedding and they should be regularly groomed, not only to keep them comfortable but to help you keep the hair inside the house down to a minimum.

Until this problem is solved, you might want to keep plenty of paper towels on hand and maybe some disposable gloves. The best way to tackle the hair is to clean it up prior to mopping.

Something you may want to try first is a product called KIDS 'N' PETS BRAND® STAIN & ODOR remover. This is a non-toxic, biodegradable, and cruelty free product that works for any water safe surface, and may help to eliminate those smells we can’t smell.

The other thing you can try is to put the gloves on, take some of the paper towels and clean up the dog hair. Then mop the floor with a cleaning solution using baking soda (1 cup) and warm water (1 small mop bucket) as this will help to neutralize and eliminate the odor. Depending on how large your kitchen is and how bad the mess, you may have to dump the dirty cleaning solution and make a new batch.

NOTE: Never use ammonia on pet urine stains. As pet urine contains ammonia and the composition of household ammonia is so much like the smell of urine your pet may mistake the ammonia you’ve cleaned with as their own and continue to urinate in the same spot.

It may be the dogs are urinating so much because the smell is not entirely gone, you may think the smell is gone, but animals sense of smell is much greater than ours.

Because the dogs stay in the kitchen at night and this has become a habit to pee on the floor, you might think about getting a large kennel to put them in at night. They will not pee where they sleep, just make sure they get their nightly potty trip outside before bedtime.

Another option for a designated indoor area is to purchase an indoor/outdoor “play” pen for them. These can be purchased from stores like WalMart and they really don’t cost much.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
• Keep the dogs bathed and brushed to keep the hair down, plus it makes them feel good.
• Try using pee pads and see if this helps the puppies pee in one spot.
• Potty train, potty train, potty train.
• Clean and deodorize the odor as fast as you can, if your dogs detect a prior mess, they may try to mark the area.
• If the dogs stay in the house while you are at work, kennel them or confine them to a smaller area in the kitchen.

Mrs. Clean

[tammy123]

Well, for this what ever you suggested is right and it is very important for everyone to know all these if they are having dogs in their house and at the same it is very important to keep the house clean if their are kids in the house.

I know it gets a bit problematic but, at the same time it is required to be done and there are many cleaning equipments that are good to use and with that there are some other stuffs like, using vinegar and lemon juice which is the best to use for the floors to deodorize them to remove the stains that will somewhere gets hard to remove.

Thanks