Swiffer Sweep & Trap Review

My home is mostly covered in hardwood flooring, with a sections of carpet upstairs. Every time I clean, I sweep the floor, vacuum, and then mop. Just vacuuming alone doesn’t do the trick, since my vacuum isn’t all that great; it’s also easier to get in all the nooks and crannies with a broom. Since we don’t have a “Mud room” or hallway, dirt gets tracked in easily since both the front and back door open directly into the living areas. Combine that with living on wetlands, and you can imagine how difficult it can be to keep dirt out even with taking our shoes off when we enter. All told, this adds up to a lot of floor cleaning every week.

So when I received a Swiffer Sweep & Trap in the mail, I was very intrigued by the concept of a device that works a little like a broom and vacuum in one for household touch-ups on hard floors. This is a brand new product that debuts in Walmart stores today, January 13th.

This is similar to the traditional Swiffer Sweeper in that it has a pad on the bottom, but added to that is a set of rotating blades that pull large pieces of debris up and into a removable compartment. I thought this was a genius addition, since I have a Swiffer Sweeper but don’t use it too much since I usually seem to have “Chunky” things to sweep up. The Sweep & Trap does not have to be plugged in or use batteries, which is great.

Included with my kit were two “Demo Messes”. I think it’s cute that they thought they had to provide a mess for me – trust me, I have no shortage of things I can find around here to clean up. 😉

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B, after dumping out the last batch:

This was accumulated over a period of just under two weeks, just so you know. 😉 Since I picked up such a large quantity of stuff and my floors are looking so nice, I am loathe to dump potporrui and screws all over the floor – I think you can see what a good job it did by looking at those two gross pictures above. 😉

My ultimate test of the Swiffer Sweep & Trap was using it in lieu of both my broom AND my vacuum. To clean the floors, I just ran this over them and then finished with the Swiffer BISSELL SteamBoost, which I coincidentally won in a Twitter party recently. I think it did quite an admirable job of replacing a broom and vacuum over the whole house – it can’t get into the same small spaces that my broom can or pick up the same quantity of material, so it doesn’t clean with the same level of thoroughness that I usually employ on the floors, however it still got my house “Company-ready”.

Would I throw out my vacuum and broom and just use the Swiffer Sweep & Trap? No. Would I use this multiple times a week in-between cleaning with the vacuum and broom? YES! Would I use this alone to clean when I was in a hurry and pressed for time? Absolutely! Is it perfect for spot cleaning? Most definitely. I LOVE that I can run it quickly over the floor and don’t have to touch the “Dirty” broom pan for quick little touch-ups on the floor.

If you’re using this for the whole house, be advised that you’ll need to use a little elbow grease/patience to pick up the entire floor. This probably works the best for smaller jobs, but if you’re like me and don’t mind a little wrist workout, it can be used for the entirety of your floors. It would be nice if it had a fuller range of motion – the blades only move forwards, not backwards.

Another word to the wise, when this gets overly full it will start spitting dirt on your floor – I was purposely trying to fill it to capacity so that I could illustrate what it could pick up in the photos. Be sure to hold it over a trash bin or bag when you empty it.

I really love the Swiffer Sweep & Trap and will be using it every week now that I have it. Hooray for household helpers!