I purchased the Bissell Crosswave Floor and Area Rug Cleaner (Amazon Affiliate link) last Christmas, and today I’m going to give you an honest review. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Full disclosure, there is no bad or ugly. But read on and I’ll give you some honest thoughts about using and maintaining this vacuum / mop.
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Bissell Crosswave: The Good
Time-Saving
I’ve got kids and pets. And if you’ve got kids and pets, you know that you’ll be vacuuming and mopping a lot. Like, A LOT. When you find products that multi-task? Oh my, it is like you’ve hit the jackpot. The Bissell Crosswave is a multi-tasking dream! I no longer vacuum my hard floored areas then mop. I do it all in one! Brilliance.
Convenience
I have the O-Cedar Spin Mop (Amazon Affiliate link), and that is the best mop, hands-down. But I HATE all that comes with mopping. The lugging of the heavy bucket up and down the stairs, the dipping mop and where do you hang it to dry? I am mid-laundry room remodel and haven’t had a utility sink for quite a while. The filling of the mop bucket at the kitchen sink drives me MAD. Gross. My goodness, I don’t know, I just find it all so annoying.
The Bissell Crosswave is light-weight. Easy to carry anywhere in your home. There’s no dripping mop when you’re done. The clean water reservoir can be filled anywhere. The unit even comes with it’s own storing station, complete with a drying area for the brush head! It is so much easier to clean your floors because it’s so convenient to use and store.
Multi-surface
I have several different floor types in my home. Don’t judge, we bought a 1974 fixer-upper. We’ve got LPV, porcelain tile, linoleum, ceramic tile, stick on tile, and carpet. It can be hard to clean all these different types of flooring, but not with the Bissell Crosswave! Go seamlessly from surface to surface.
Now, I don’t do a full carpet shampooing with this mop/vac. But I can easily clean spots left by our lovely cats. We’ve got one cat that constantly throws up food, anywhere and everywhere! Sometimes I don’t find it for a while. (ew!) But with the Bissell Crosswave, it is so easy to get these spots out of the carpet. Just make sure you’re on the Rug setting and give it a few swipes, and that stain is gone!
DIY solution
I used up the freebie solution they throw in with purchase, and it was fine. But I do prefer to make my own, more natural cleaning solution. I tried a few things, but mostly I found they soaped up too much and left a residue on the floor. So now all I do is fill water to the water line, add vinegar to the top line, then drop in about 10-12 drops of Young Living lavender oil. I also like to use lemon oil (Amazon Affiliate links). Any would work; you’re literally just cancelling out the vinegar smell (which does go away).
Easy to clean
They have made this vacuum so easy to clean, just pull apart all the parts. Take the filter out of the top of the dirty water reservoir, clean it with running water then let it sit out in the sun for a while. Rinse out the rest of the reservoir then let dry. Take off the top of the roller area and give it a good rinse. Take out the roller (easily lift up on the purple tab) and rinse it off. Then, and this is my favorite part, run your sink sprayer down the hole (make sure your vacuum is over the sink area when you do this!) and watch all that dirt go away.
Leave your roller on the drying tray and put your Bissell on the tray to dry. Easy-peasy.
Bissell Crosswave: The Bad (not really)
Ok, ‘bad’ isn’t really accurate. More like, the annoying.
Size of the Dirty Water Reservoir
The dirty water reservoir always gets full before my cleaning water runs out, and I find that kind of annoying. I would love it if they could be more in sync so I could empty the dirty water and fill the cleaning water at the same time. This happens no matter which mode I’m in; hard floor or rug. My house if on the bigger side, and I always need to empty the dirty water, then clean some more, then fill the cleaning solution, then clean some more. It is a small annoyance, but it’s there.
Small Footprint
At first I thought the cleaning area, or ‘mop-head’ part is small. However, after having used it for so long I don’t really notice this anymore. It just takes a bit of getting used to how to use it. On most floor types you can easily see the wet swipe of where you’ve already cleaned so it does just take a little getting used to.
Price Tag
This is the biggest downfall. I’m pretty frugal. The price of the unit is a lot. But, I do find that it goes on sale. If you’re interested in the Bissell Crosswave, but don’t want to pay full price, my advice is to keep watch on Black Friday deals, Prime Day deals, and just keep watching. You will eventually find this baby on sale!
Overall Honest Review
My Bissell Crosswave Floor Cleaner review is this: it’s worth the hype. Now, it’s not perfect and it is a hefty price tag. But if you add up the cost of your vacuum and mop (plus mop heads) and factor in the time-saving convenience, in my opinion the price tag is worth it. Like I said, I did find mine on sale, and if you’re frugal like me it may be worth waiting for a sale, but my honest review is to go buy this floor cleaner! You won’t be sorry.
If you’re interested, I’ll do a tips and tricks post of all the ways I’ve found to make using the Bissell Crosswave even easier! Let me know in the comments.