I know that I keep writing about how we don’t have any money to spare, but there was one purchase that I just couldn’t resist making recently.

On Saturday my husband and I went out and got a Shark Steam Blaster. It was on sale at 50% off it’s regular price at Canadian Tire and I’ve wanted a steam cleaner for ages!

I realized how much I needed something to make cleaning the house easier over the holidays. We have a tiny upstairs bathroom – the tub is along one wall and the sink and toilet are on the opposite wall with only about a foot and a half walking space between the tub and sink/toilet combo … so you can imagine how hard it is to clean the tub! Especially when your back has decided to get worse! You can’t even crouch properly between the sink and tub to do some good scrubbing, instead you have to stand awkwardly bent over to give it a good scrub.

So I figured a steam cleaner would make the job easier, plus I could clean the grout and the stainless steel taps much better than with chemicals and all the hard time consuming scrubbing.

I tried the steamer out yesterday in the kitchen. For some reason the last people that lived in our house not only put tiles behind the sink as a counter splash, but the whole kitchen – all four walls have tiles from the base of the wall up to about 2/3’s of the wall height. You can probably imagine how dirty that grout gets!

Unfortunately the steamer didn’t do the miraculous cleaning job that I’d hoped it would. The grout is going to take a lot of scrubbing with the scrubbing attachment on the steamer … or I might have to use some cleaning chemicals on the grout first, rinse it off and then go to town with the steamer. Either way … I’d hoped that it would instantly clean the grout between the tiles in the kitchen and well … it does look better but it’s not sparkling clean.

where the steamer did live up to it’s name was around our sink and on the outside of our stove and fridge. You know how dirt and grime builds up around the edges of the sink where it meets the counter? Well the steamer just blasted that gunk out of there. It also did a nice job on our semi new Danze faucet that we had to replace sometime last year when Chris broke the old faucet.

I’m hoping that if I use the steam blaster on the tile grout a few times that it will gradually get cleaner and cleaner.

Do any of you have an all purpose steam cleaner? If you do – how do you like it and what brand do you have? Does it work well or do you have hit and miss results like I did on my first use?

One thing that I do like about the steamer is that it has lots of attachments. We can use it to steam mop the floors (and walls), squeegee the windows and other glass clean, clean grout and other dirty grimy areas and I’m sure I’ll find some other uses for the steam cleaner.