I’ve been using Melaleuca’s Clean & Gleam floor care system literally since it was introduced years ago. In fact, I got mine before they quickly sold out due to much higher than expected demand. In all this time I’ve never reviewed it here. I’ll give it high praise but with some caveats that will help you to be more pleased with the system and avoid potential pitfalls.
If you are a new user or potential new user, you automatically avoid an original pitfall because I can testify you are not missing anything by not having the original mop design. Obviously Melaleuca is not a mop making company and whoever they hired the first time didn’t do them any favors. I’m sure that must have been a valuable lesson! The new design is a far superior representation of what they wanted to accomplish the first time.
Besides the mop design now serving its intended integration into the overall system, the heart of that system is the floor cleaning solution, something Melaleuca is particularly good at creating. It of course meets the safe, effective, and affordable requirements that every Melaleuca product must possess so I’ll continue my review with that already covered.
I can be very brief on the Clean & Gleam Floor Cleaner concentrate. Simply mix the 12x concentrate with water in the mop’s mixing/spray bottle, snap that bottle in place, and clean using the green mop pad. It’s highly effective and very pleasant smelling. Its cleaning power comes from natural citrus oils which also provide its naturally pleasing aroma. Frequent rinsing of the green pad during mopping is recommended and will also reveal how surprisingly much grime you’ll see being rinsed out only days after a previous cleaning. That’s both appalling and gratifying, appalling that so much grime happens so fast, but the gratifying part is seeing it go down the drain knowing it’s been effectively and safely removed from your floors.
When you’re finished and feeling great about the accomplishment, I highly recommend removing the spray bottle to store the mop. It is not entirely leak free and it’s gravity fed. You may or may not notice that during use but you will if you store it in the mop free to drip.
For the Clean & Gleam Floor Polish, my personal recommendation is to use it ONLY on natural wood floors to maintain a beautiful shine. Common top finishes such as urethane are prone to dulling and diminishing over time and Clean & Gleam is a great product to keep wood looking really nice.
For other (manufactured) floor types, modern finishes tend to be very resilient and Clean & Gleam is actually counterproductive in my estimation. Your floors should look great with just the finish applied by the manufacturer. Regular cleaning is all that’s needed.
Here’s a rare occasion where I need to advocate for the harsh chemicals not recommended unless you find yourself in a situation like needing to remove a floor shine buildup. There’s no other choice because these chemicals are required. You’ll need a harsh retail product or a witch’s brew of highly toxic ingredients no one should have to be exposed to, and, it’s best to take all precautions needed to reduce the toxic load. The good news is you should only need to do it once. And, by the way, Clean & Gleam Floor Polish is no exception. Over time, it will build up and trap unremovable grime within the polish. This situation can be avoided with my recommendation to just keep the factory finish clean.
Prior to becoming a Melaleuca customer, and later for Melaleuca to introduce the Clean & Gleam products, I had the retail brand floor finishes. After stripping the floors to use Clean & Gleam I discovered the grunge problem again showed up over time. Back to stripping! However, even though the flooring was very “old” the factory shine underneath was just as good or better than all the shine products used (the stripping mix did not ruin the tough factory shine). You can utilize my experience to avoid that situation and have great looking floors with less effort.