Garden hose. Sweep the dirty water into the sump pit.

Rent a steamer or hire a company to do it. My mother in law has a comercial grade steamer and we have used it to clean everything including slate walk in showers. It is amazing how well it works. She used it on her tile floors that are in her house that was built in 1942. The tile floors had been waxed by the original owner for many years. The steamer pulled out all the built up wax and grime from 60+ years and they now look great.

We are remodeling our kitchen are are trying to decide between slate or hardwood for the floor. We have hardwood throughout the rest of the house and currenlty the kitchen is a bad 80's pure white porcelain tile that shows every bit of dirt, it drives me nuts. Our previous house had a maple floor so I've lived with a wood floor in a kitchen before and it was fine. I like the idea of slate introducing some color and movement into the kitchen since the cabinets are also going to be wood, but I don't want to trade one frustrating tile for another. I'm pretty sure a multi-colored slate would hide spots well, but I'm envisioning the nooks and crannies of slate making it more difficult to sweep and wash. Right now I use my swiffer sweeper vac all over the house and love it, but since a slate floor would be bumpy, I doubt this would work. And the thought of dragging out my mop pail and mop to wash the floor doesn't sound like fun. I feel like hardwood would fit in better with our 1917 house as I'm sure the original floor was wood, and it's easier on the budget too. I just worry about spending more for slate tile and then being dissatisfied in the end or frustrated with the cleaning. Your thoughts?

Thanks - the tile was pretty inexpensive (except for the deco pieces - $10 each) - the green one had already been discontinued when I bought it in 2007. I already called Marazzi a year ago looking for it. They only made it for Home Depot, didn't have any more of the decos. Though maybe they have some field tile left. I need about 150sf of it (10 cases) - I have 1 case left, and some that need to have thinset cleaned off them but if I do that maybe I can get by with less (maybe 20sf in basement? So 9 cases? Probably not worth it). It's called Antica Spagna. The white tile is also by Marazzi, it's Pietra in Alabaster color - I have 150sf of that left (bought last summer when we were replacing some, bought extra to do future breakfast bumpout). but I'd need about 200sf more (about 13 cases) - again, have some (maybe 25 sf?) downstairs we could clean up. That was probably also only made for Home Depot. I'd love to do travertine, but don't know if my structure will support it - Bill? Maybe do travertine-look porcelain throughout? I don't want to deal with this - am worried that demo will damage my BC floor in the DR (dust, etc. - will definitely have to get mew T-mold, not a problem) that I just had replaced in Sept (original 2007 floor defective - Home Depot reimbursed for materials, not labor), possibly kitchen cabinets, and now that we've moved in I have absolutely no place to store everything I have to take out of coat closets and pantry floor, all the appliances, we waited til all the ceilings were retaped and repainted to get new furniture, the sheetrock dust was horrible, concrete (grout/thinset)dust will be worse. I just hate this house! Our dream house has turned into a nightmare and a money pit between the DR floor, the ceilings, and now the tile! At least the carpet and the upstairs tile that was DIY are OK. As you can see, I'm still working on trim (won't put it up in tiled areas until this is resolved).