Floor Sweeping Methods

Spurred on by Harvey of Bad Example, I shall attempt to write an

intriguing essay on floor-sweeping techniques.

Now long ago, in fact as long as time has existed, people were known to sweep their floors. You may even have seen the occasional show or movie set in the previous decades in America where you even saw people sweeping dirt floors with their brooms.

The first brooms, of course, were simply made of a number of coarse materials, such as straw, bound together. There have been improvements on that design, but the same basic design can still be found today, mass-produced and sold in big chain stores.

In 1878, Melville Bissell invented a "carpet sweeper" to attempt to get rid of the dust in their crockery shop. It worked well on dust, but it didn't do much to really clean the carpets, and required the worker to be on their hands and knees. It was also expensive and difficult to assemble.

The first vacuum cleaners were actually invented for use with steam engines on the railroad. The steam from the locomotive was used to generate suction through a hose that was used to clean the dust out of the railroad cars.

Nearly every household today has at least one vacuum cleaner of some sort -- yet they also still have brooms for sweeping the floors. Why? Because it's much easier to get out a broom and a dustpan for a quick cleanup than to lug out a heavy vacuum cleaner and plug it in.

So what method of using these archaic inventions (the broom) works the best? The biggest problem with using brooms comes from the intended use of them -- to clean up dust. In many cases, dust is actually very light, so when pushed across the floor, it tends to rise and float in the air for a period of time from a few moments to a minute.

In addition, corners seem to present a rather difficult challenge in floor-sweeping. Large amounts of dust and other materials seem to collect in the corners, and only certain types of specially-designed brooms, or a special floor-sweeping technique seems to work at removing the dust from those hard-to-reach locations.

Searching the various internet search engines gives very few useful results on actually HOW to sweep the floor. Apparently, it's such a basic task that anyone can do it -- but have you ever watched a 4-year old try and sweep the floor?

When sweeping, it helps to have a broom that's a good length -- it should be no taller than your shoulders. The best way is to lightly grasp the end of the broom -- the end without the straw, Patrick -- in one hand and hold the middle part of the broomstick with your other hand.

You need to guide the broom with the hand at the top end, while powering the broom in a sweeping motion with the other hand. At the end of each stroke, be sure to keep the end of the broom near the floor, or you will throw dust into the air, making a possible re-sweeping necessary.

Start at one end of the room, in the corner, and sweep towards the other end. Be sure to turn the broomstick so a pointed corner of the straw will reach deep into the corners of the floor. If you have a large or wide area to sweep, sweep in lines, pushing the dirt and dust along the floor.

Once you have swept all the dust to one end, turn 90 degrees and sweep the dust into one large pile -- once again being very careful to control the dust and dirt to ensure you do not push it too hard and push the dust into an area that has already been swept. Your goal here is to make a small pile of dust -- small enough that it's width is less than that of the dust pan.

Use the broom to sweep the dust into the dustpan -- but be sure that the dustpan is at an angle above that of the ground -- two people may be required for this step. Once you have swept one pile into the dust pan, back the dust pan up slightly and sweep again, as some dust is small enough to slip below the edge of the dust pan. Continue and repeat until you cannot see any more dust under the dustpan.

Be very careful, also, when emptying the dust pan -- it is full of dust (hence the name), and careless dumping will spew that dust back into the air, necessitating the need for sweeping once again.

There are other ways and methods, but most other ways all require some sort of liquid or electrical power -- and I just don't have all that fancy stuff in a cave...

Posted by: Ogre at 06:01 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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