Equipment

The tools cleaning is done with, and what each one is genuinely good at.

Listed alphabetically.

• Anti-static wand

  For the case where the dust is being held on by charge rather than by dirt, and an ordinary plastic wand makes it worse.

• Barrier matting

  The only piece of cleaning equipment that works when nobody is using it. A flooring maker lists it before any product.

• Bone or wooden stylus

  A pick softer than the thing it is cleaning. The reason a metal one is wrong is that it wins.

• Brush rake

  A comb for a brush. Its value is entirely in coming before the water, on a tool that must not be soaked.

• Carpet beater

  How floors were cleaned before suction, and a working demonstration of the one variable a vacuum still depends on.

• Carpet extractor

  Injects solution and pulls it back out. What it recovers matters more than what it applies, and what it leaves behind is what causes the next problem.

• Cellulose sponge

  The most-handled cleaning tool in a kitchen and the one that holds the most moisture and food. Cleaning it is possible; the evidence stops short of eliminating what is in it.

• Chain cleaning tool

  A clip-on bath of brushes that lets a chain be cleaned in place. Its real advantage is keeping the solvent where the solvent should be.

• Chamois

  A drying tool rather than a cleaning one, and named as such by the standards guidance for finished aluminium alongside a squeegee and a lint-free cloth.

• Cotton swab

  The conservation tool for anything small, fragile or irreplaceable. Its value is control: a measured amount, a defined area, then discarded.

• Dehumidifier

  Not a cleaning tool at all, and the most effective single purchase against mould — because it treats the cause the spray bottle cannot reach.

• Detail brush

  Reaches the places that actually hold the dirt, which are never the places a flat cloth can press against.

• Detail nozzle set

  The small attachments that make a vacuum usable on something delicate instead of merely powerful.

• Dosing and dilution system

  Plumbing that removes the dilution decision from the person holding the bottle — which a regulator treats as a control on exposure, not a convenience.

• Dust mop

  The stone trade specifies one and adds three words that change the product entirely: clean, non-treated and dry.

• Floor pad

  A consumable abrasive with a colour code. Choosing the pad is choosing how much of the floor you are prepared to remove.

• HEPA filter

  A defined standard rather than a marketing word: at least 99.97 per cent of particles 0.3 microns and larger. Below that, the claim means nothing in particular.

• Hot-water extraction machine

  Injects solution into a soft surface and pulls it back out again. The extraction half is what distinguishes it from simply making a carpet wet.

• Jeweller's cloth

  The safe one is the one with nothing in it. Conservation specifies a cloth that works by the stiffness of its weave, not by an abrasive.

• Mangle and wringer

  Two rollers that did chemistry as well as labour: they squeezed the suds back into the tub, and soap was expensive.

• Melamine foam

  Not a sponge and not a cleaner: an extremely fine open abrasive. It removes marks by sanding them, which is why it dulls anything with a finish on it.

• Microfibre cloth

  Split synthetic fibres with a very large surface area, which lift and trap soil mechanically — often with water alone.

  Carries warnings · Microfibre

• Microfibre mop

  A flat head that carries far less water than a string mop, which is the property that makes it the right tool for every floor that must not get wet.

  Microfibre

• Non-scratch pad

  The middle setting between a cloth and a scourer. It is still an abrasive — 'non-scratch' is a claim about a class of surface, not about all of them.

• Nozzle screen

  A piece of cloth over the vacuum nozzle. The cheapest safeguard in cleaning, and it exists to stop the tool eating the object.

• Nylon brush

  Mechanical action delivered into texture that a flat cloth cannot reach. The bristle is softer than most surfaces and harder than several worth protecting.

• Plastic scraper

  The tool the trade names for lifting semi-solids, and the reason it is plastic rather than metal is the same on carpet, glass and a non-stick pan.

• Pressure washer

  Mechanical energy delivered by water alone. It removes what nothing else will and takes the surface with it more often than any other domestic tool.

• Rotary floor machine

  One disc, one speed, and a pad that decides everything. The machine is a way of applying a chosen abrasive evenly, not a cleaner in itself.

• Scrubber dryer

  Lays down solution, scrubs it and vacuums it back up in one pass. The third of those three is the one that matters.

• Spray bottle

  How much liquid reaches a surface, and where. The carpet trade specifies a mist sprayer for one reason: to stop the surface being overwetted.

• Squeegee

  A rubber blade that removes water before it can evaporate. It is the difference between a clean window and a window with the map of its own drying on it.

• Steam cleaner

  Heat and moisture applied together, with no chemical at all. Both are the point, and both are what several manufacturers prohibit it for.

• Steel wool

  A metal abrasive that scratches most household surfaces and leaves iron particles behind on the rest — which then rust and look like a stain the surface has produced.

  Carries warnings

• ULPA filter

  A step beyond HEPA, specified by particle size rather than by marketing. Worth it only for specialised work.

• Upholstery attachment

  The vacuum head two separate manufacturers name by function rather than by brand. Suction without agitation, which is the only safe combination on a napped surface.

• UV inspection lamp

  Finds what the eye cannot, and then tells you something misleading afterwards. Both halves are worth knowing.

• Vacuum cleaner

  The tool that removes what no liquid can, and the one whose attachment choice does more damage than any cleaning product on soft furnishings.

  Household plastics · Parts cleaned differently

• Wet-and-dry vacuum

  The right machine for standing water and the wrong one for fine dust. A federal conservation leaflet ranks it explicitly below dry HEPA filtration.

• White cotton cloth

  Specified by colour in every trade stain procedure, and the reason is diagnostic rather than aesthetic.

What matters about a tool is what it does mechanically and what it damages. The sources are consistent that the tool decides the outcome at least as often as the product does — two care documents from unrelated industries independently prohibit the same vacuum attachment, and the glass trade blames scratching on grit under the tool rather than on the cleaner.