If you live in a busy household, I feel your pain. Don’t get me wrong, family life can be great. The house is constantly alive with the sounds of children playing and dogs barking, but keeping everything clean can be a real chore. You have to deal with muddy paw prints, spills that seem to stick to your floor like glue and who knows what else, so mopping is something you have to do often.

That’s why I’ve decided to review the Bissell 1940 PowerFresh Steam Mop.

This steam mop (in my humble opinion) will change the way you look at cleaning your floors forever. OK, so you can’t get away from the fact you will always have to vacuum your hard floors to get rid of surface dust and dirt, but when it comes to washing them, Bissell has thought of just about everything with this steam mop.

Eco-Friendly

If you’re new to the world of using steam to clean you may not know this, but it’s rare you will need to add a detergent to the water when you use a steam mop. It’s no different with this model. It gets hot enough so that when you run the mop across your floors it will remove close to 100% of unseen bacteria like e-coli and salmonella, and it does all of this without the need for industrial chemicals. This means it’s easy on the pocket and won’t leave behind potentially harmful residues that don’t help the environment.

Super Effective on Hard to Remove Stains

Now that I’ve established how this steam mop will help you get super clean floors without using chemicals, it’s time to deal with how effective it is on removing those sticky messes that your kids (or the dog) can leave behind.

You get a washable microfiber pad with this steam cleaner, and the manufacturer has also included an easy to use “flip-down” scrubber for those really stubborn stains. In fact, Bissell states that this mop will remove stains twice as quickly as other leading brands.

The scrubbing brush is perfect for deep cleaning crevices in your floors (we all know about grout!). The head of the mop also swivels, making it easier to get up close and personal with baseboards or other hard to reach areas.

Other Features

No, it doesn’t stop there. Bissell has also included the following features.

  • You can set the steam level to low, medium or high depending on how messy the kids have been lately, and this can be done with a simple press of a button.
  • I happen to love this feature. When your steam mop arrives, you will find a pack of Spring Breeze discs included with it. These can be placed in a little pocket on the underside of the pad. Not only do you get sanitized floors, but your home will smell fresh too.
  • Some people think steam cleaners can take their time to get going, however this one will be ready for action in as little as 30 seconds. But, do bear in mind that on the first use this might take a bit longer because the water has to filter through the system.

    • Unlike many other steam mops, this one has a replaceable filter which is there to protect the pump and heater from impurities found in tap water. This eliminates the need to use distilled water, and you’ll know when it’s time to replace the filter because the beads will change from a green to blue color. If this happens more often than you would like, it means you have particularly hard water so using distilled might be a better option.

    In Conclusion

    This steam mop will not cost the earth, and will cut down the amount of time you have to spend cleaning your hard floors. Incidentally it works very well on ceramic tiles, vinyl, laminate, stone and marble.
    Do be careful though if you have sealed hardwood floors. This model can be used on them but the amount of time the mop stays in one place should be reduced.