Kärcher SC 3 Steam Cleaner | Review

Over the years I’ve found that the things on my ‘must have’ list, have dramatically changed. Whereas once, I was all about clothes and items for myself (all very materialistic). I’ve now found that my priorities have shifted towards lovely new things for the home and more importantly, things to help keep our home clean!

It feels like it’s a constant juggling act at the moment to keep on top of the cleaning, especially with three kids who ensure it never stays tidy for very long.

I’m always at odds with trying to keep the kitchen floor clean and the bathrooms quite literally are my nemesis! So in the absence of an actual cleaner who can come in and deep clean the house for me every once and a while, I knew that it was time to find a tool that would do the job effectively and make my life easier.

This is where the Kärcher SC 3 Steam Cleaner comes in. I’d already heard lots about their cleaners anyway, so I was keen to try one out for myself and potentially make light work out of some seriously tedious and often tiring jobs.

It’s a really lightweight piece of kit and straight out of the box, it’s easy to set up. It comes with basic instructions with pictures, but apart from knowing what to fill up with water, it’s all pretty simple to suss out how to use.

Once you’ve filled up the water reservoir, you switch it on and give it less than a minute to warm up. Then you simply choose your attachment, click it on and off you go using the trigger button underneath for the steam to generate. It comes with a floor nozzle, hand nozzle and round brush and a couple of cloth attachments.

It cleans with just water, so you’re not using any chemicals, just the power of steam!

To keep on top of things in the kitchen, I vacuum usually a couple of times a day and wipe down the surfaces after each use. It’s over time that I notice that other things aren’t as clean as they should be, like the splashback behind the hob, the extractor hood and the chrome exterior on the oven.

I used to spend ages wiping the splashback to get the grease off and then would spend even longer trying to get it smear free once I’d wiped it clean. This is where the steam cleaner really works its magic. It takes no time to clean and it leaves it shiny and smudge free! Whilst I’m there, I also give the ceramic hob the once over as well as the oven doors.

The kitchen floor has always been relatively easy to keep clean with a quick mop but I’ve always spend far too long tending to areas that have food or liquid dried on. With the steam it means you can blitz through the dried on bits and my favourite part is that it glides into corners and you know that the steam is reaching all of those hard to reach spots.

One of the main reasons that I’ve wanted to own a steam cleaner, is mostly for bathroom cleaning.

The tiles in our bathrooms are not glossy at all and I’ve always found them really hard to clean. Mainly because its usually hard to see where you’ve physically mopped. In the past I used a mop with solution and also floor wipes and even though they were cleaning the floor, it never really was that visible. I was also always down on my hands and knees wiping into the corners and it never felt enough of a deep clean for me.  Steam cleaning them has been a complete game changer for me and for once the floors are left wet so you can see them and I can get the mop head into every corner and crevice.

The kids also use one of the bathrooms. The boys aren’t well known for their aims and coupled with a potty training toddler, it’s not always the cleanest environment to walk into. I was always struggling to clean properly around the toilet and to me it never felt fully clean and sometimes smells would linger. I now give it a good once over with the steam mop (you know just in case there is some dried on wee that I can’t see – but can certainly smell), then I clean it with my usual bathroom cleaners and disinfectant. Once it’s done, the cloth head goes straight in the wash on a hot wash, ready for the next time I clean their bathroom.

We live in a hardwater area and limescale build is a bit of a problem. So it’s been handy to be able to give the taps a really good clean and by doing this at least once a week, it’s keeping the build up at bay.

This weekend I even put the steamer to use on our patio doors and although I don’t have the window cleaning attachment, I found that the floor attachment worked pretty well. It was amazing at cutting through all of the grime and cobwebs that had built up on them over the winter. It also made it much easier to then wipe them down and buff them until all shiny.

I’ve also heard of people using it to get out creases from fabrics, so I will definitely be trying this soon on some curtains that will be far too tricky to iron.

Steam has so many uses and I can’t believe its taken me this long to finally start using one around our home. It’s also extremely satisfying to use when you see such fantastic results with little effort.

It’s easy to store away and it’s super quick to pull out and start using. I’m now happy in the knowledge that I’m cleaning much more effectively than I was before as well as helping me keep on top areas that can typically be harder to clean. I’m not sure how I managed without it before, but I love this little machine that works wonders in so many ways.

Nb. I was sent the Kärcher SC 3 Steam Cleaner for the purpose of this review, but all views and opinions remain entirely my own.