I switched over to Moerman “no detailing” squeegees. I use 2 microfibers for sills / frames and a scrim if I have to detail at all. Gets me through a 4000sf home easy.
Use less.
Might sound odd, but there are ways to minimize how many you use, for instance instead of wiping up the water with a towel use you t-bar to mop up most of it then wipe the residue.
I’ll second the sponge, as John suggested. It’s a lot easier to soak up the water and wring it out back onto the mop, rather than using so many towels.
I use mesh laundry bags for my dirty towels, but I leave that at the truck. Who needs something else to drag around?
You need to change up your technique a little bit, IMO. Try the sponge.
Requires Towles. The bigger the more you’ll need. All good techniques above , but how big will depend on how many towels ya need.
I use my strip washer , but I still like using a cotton Towel after. Which can go a long way if you’re using the strip to get the bulk.
To each his own. My old boss always tried to get me to use a sponge. Hated Itt!! would use a 6” Swueegee on storefront ledges
An my strip washer inside.
I’ve got an Unger belt with the extra loops that go around the belt, and a 2 pocket holster. I tuck like 8 Huck towels in the loops, and rotate them out. Once one is soaked, I’ll just tuck it into the pocket and grab another from my belt. Still requires a trip to the truck now and then, but much less often.
The full size of the scrim was too big for me, very unmanageable. About once a year or so, I buy 3 at a time, then I take them to a local tailor/seamstress and she cuts them in half for me. Then she hems the edges of the sides that were cut. I get 6 towels for the three, then I fold them into quarters and when one part gets to wet, I just open it and refold it to a dry section. I only go through about two a week that I dirty, because they hold water so well that in the summer I can just leave them in the truck overnight and the heat dries them out and they are ready to go the next day.
About a year ago, I started using sprayway on about 70% of the houses I clean on the interior. I use the thick microfiber towel, not the regular ones you find everywhere…these run about $5-6 a piece, and I have about a dozen of them. They are edgeless, and they are amazing. I use two inside most of the time. I spray the glass, use one towel to clean with, removing smudges and dirt, etc, then I use the second one to buff the glass dry. On larger houses I may go through 3-4 sometimes, as the cleaning/wet one becomes too wet and stops picking up dirt, and the towel I buff with will become wet as well from buffing and start to leave swirl marks. When it does this, just switch to a new dry towel. It has saved me SOOO much time on interiors, especially on repeat customers I do 1 to 2 times a year. Don’t get me wrong, we all know what kitchen sink windows and bathroom windows look like and how dirty they always are, so I will always squeegee those. the rest of the house gets polished/buffed and it reduces so much time. No squeegeeing, no water drips. I can usually clean a 6 over 6 vinyl/metal clad tilt window in about 2 minutes, and about a minute for a 1 over 1, and that includes wiping down the sill and the top rail where the latch is.
here’s a link to the towels I am referring to: Amazon.com
I agree with many of the tips above. I use a cut in half scrim too and only need one - maybe two - halves for a full day of work. Microfiber rags are great for sills, but some suck. I highly recommend the Unger ones on wcr. Better than ettore’s and infinitely better than the generic ones.
Another tip is to control better how much water goes on the glass in the first place. I can’t recommend highly enough using a squirt bottle. It allows you to keep your mop at the optimal wetness at all times, which you can easily fine tune for any temperature/humidity. You can often clean the window with very little water left over on bottom depending on the conditions. Truly indispensable imo.
My company uses natural sponges as we are old school, we use cotton medical rags for edge cleanup, TSP in a 5 gallon bucket, and 40+ years of cleaning windows.
Put your dirty towels in the dirty towel bucket. Pull clean towels from the clean bucket. It can’t get much simpler. Dirty laundry comes along with the dirty job.