living cruelty free

We love giving some big hugs to the method omop here at method lust! So be sure to check out this article, from Living Cruelty Free. They actually review multiple mops in the article, and GUESS which won earns 5 stars! (It's an easy guess!)

"I feel like this is one of the few things I’m extremely qualified to judge — I have bought not one, not two, but THREE poor excuses for microfiber mopping devices. Though technically one was the swiffer, which really isn’t a microfiber mop thing, it’s more a huge waste of trees and money bad for the environment kind of paper mop/sweepy thing, which I gave up a few years ago because I hated paying for the (expensive) disposable mopping things, of which it usually took four to clean my (tiny) apartment at the time. But I thought the swiffer itself was perfectly fine — just overpriced with all the disposable mop heads, so I gave it away and bought a Bona Kemi mop.

The Bona Kemi microfiber mop was awful. It didn’t maneuver very well, and usually managed to unscrew parts of itself while mopping — it was just a very poorly designed mop. The handle is made of four parts, and they all screw together, so if you apply the slightest pressure counterclockwise, one of them will come unscrewed. If not the part where the handle screws into the base, which is also prone to becoming unscrewed. It’s just a nightmare. I really didn’t care for it (though the Bona Kemi floor cleaning solutions were excellent, and I think the Bona Kemi people were totally ahead of their time — the first microfiber mops I ever saw were Bona Kemi, and the microfiber parts were very high quality. I think I might have a few of them left around and I’m hoping they will work with the O Mop so I can keep using them — they seem pretty similar.)

So, after the Bona Kemi fiasco, I moved on to the Real Simple microfiber mop. This one was definitely better constructionwise than the Bona Kemi mop — the handle was one solid piece of metal! It only had the part where the handle screws into the base that would become unscrewed if pressure was applied in a clockwise direction! So it was less prone to self-destructing, but it was still a little difficult to maneuver — not only could you not apply much counterclockwise pressure, but it also was very inflexible so it wouldn’t go very far under edges of tables, and the base was kind of curved upwards instead of lying flush to the floor, so it has to have constant pressure applied downwards or it would not actually pick anything up. So you can see — these features made it not as maneuverable as it could be. So I ended up promenading around my house pulling a microfiber mop in a pattern of parallel lines to get the floor clean — I always felt like I was mowing a lawn or something. It was just insane. So I ended up not really using it that much. Though I’ve had it for the past two years and used it weekly (ha! more like monthly) because I wanted to get some use out of it before ditching it.

However, a few days ago I was at Target and I could not resist buying the O Mop. It was in the Method section, and I needed to buy more wood floor cleaner (my Bona Kemi wood floor cleaner finally ran out!), and I’ve never been very happy with the Real Simple microfiber mop, so the O Mop magically found its way into my cart.

My first impression of the O Mop was good. I took it home, and put it together, and it seems much more sturdily made than the Real Simple or Bona Kemi mops, and much more aerodynamic and cool-looking. The parts chink together and just looking at them you know they’re not going to fall apart if you accidentally maneuver the mop counterclockwise.

Then . . . I swept my ENTIRE HOUSE in about FIVE minutes with the microfiber attachment (1500 sq feet? something like that). Usually it takes me 20 minutes with the highly annoying Real Simple mop that has the maneuverability of a lawn mower. This Method one though it’s like I stand in the center of the room, swish the mop around me in a giant circle, and the mop uses its own weight to glide over the floor and pick up all the dog hair (you have no idea how much dog hair my dog produces — it’s frightening) and dirt that coat the floor in a few seconds, and the room is clean! I managed to clean the area behind the toilet while standing two feet away from it, with one hand! The Real Simple mop required my standing with one knee on the toilet, and two hands trying to maneuver the wretched base of the Real Simple mop behind the base of the toilet, and then having the base of the mop fall off at some point because you have to twist the mop counterclockwise to get it out from behind there. It was aggravating.

So I’m a complete convert. I really didn’t think the O Mop would be that much better than the Real Simple mop — I figured anything HAD to be slightly better because that thing doesn’t even seem to have a mop surface that is parallel to the ground. But the O Mop is a lot better.

So I HIGHLY recommend this mop. If you’re still using one of those wretched bucket contraptions, seriously, you need to buy one of these. (Microfiber mops are so much less trouble than bucket mops — and they’re much better for wooden floors than bucket mops because those leave huge puddles of water on your (expensive) hardwood floor, and that’s bad for it. You can prolong the life of your floor finish by using a microfiber mop, the floor dries a lot faster, and if you use it dry it makes an excellent broom. Though you should still keep your bucket mop for the really heavy jobs — microfiber isn’t good for soaking/scrubbing caked on filth.)

(Method products are cruelty-free and vegan — but not organic.)

The Method O Mop is available for $30 at the Method Online Store, your local Target, or Orchard Supply and Hardware. It comes in two starter kits — one is for hardwood floors, the other is for nonwood floors. The “wood for good” starter kit contains 1 wet/dry microfiber mop pad that velcroes on to the mop base, 3 compostable sweeping cloths (I think these are pointless — just use the wet/dry microfiber pad and buy a few more — you’ll save a lot of money in the long run), and a 14 oz container of Method wood floor cleaner. The “all floor starter kit” contains 1 wet/dry all floor microfiber mop pad, 3 compostable sweeping cloths and a 14 oz container of Method all floor cleaner."