Archive for the 'Bathroom' Category

June 19, 2007 | Bathroom, Laundry, Bleach alternatives, Vinegar, Cleaning tips, Cleaning products

A full 50% of the searches that lead people here have to do with bleach. I have a feeling there are people out there who are bothered by bleach (for health or ecological reasons) but don’t know how to clean without it. So, here are some suggestions. The main purposes for bleach are to whiten and disinfect. So here it is:

• To whiten stained spots on clothing: put some lemon juice on the spot, rub in a bit of salt, and leave it in the sun for an hour or two. It lifts the stain.
• To clean spills from health contaminants (raw meat or eggs in the kitchen, urine in the bathroom): Straight vinegar is a great disinfectant. I advise keeping a sponge with vinegar near your cutting boards for frequent use.
• To whiten laminate counter tops: Bon Ami - it’s a powder found at the grocery store in a canister - usually right next to Bar Keeper’s friend (which also works relatively well. But we prefer Bon Ami - it uses less elbow grease, and less elbow grease means more cleaning stamina!). We’ve removed coffee stains, raspberry, blueberry, and strawberry stains, and marks from the bottom of pots and pans.
• To disinfect:
  • Borax: buy it in the supermarket where they sell detergents - in my grocery store it’s next to the powdered dishwasher detergents. Borax is a powder and is safe to mix with virtually anything. Combine it with some vinegar, lemon juice, or just plain water to clean virtually anything. It’s completely harmless and safe to use. Gloves and ventilation not required (as opposed to bleach).
  • Vinegar: it disinfects, kills mold, bacteria, and germs. (As an aside: bleach does not kill mold - it just whitens it so you don’t see it. But bleach will leave living mold spores that will continue to grow.) Vinegar’s potency is released when combined with salt, so for a nice strong disinfectant add some salt to your vinegar, dilute with water if you’d like, and spray away. I just used it to clean the toilet seat in the bathroom where my little girl is potty-training. It works remarkably well.

Any more alternative uses you need for bleach? Let me know and I’ll fill you in!

June 7, 2007 | Reviews, Broom Hugged, Bathroom, Cleaning tips

Wanna know the best way to clean your shower? Don’t let it get dirty! How do you do that? Squeegee it every day! Really, it doesn’t take long. Just a few flicks of the wrist and you’re done. It’ll keep mold and mildew from growing, it’ll keep the soap scum and lime deposits from building up… There’s not much it won’t do! (Except your shower head… you’ll still have to use other means to clean that.)

This is an especially helpful tip if your house is on the market. Save yourself hours of scrubbing the tile and shower doors by taking a couple minutes after each shower to squeegee. It’ll keep that shower bright and shiny - and buyer-friendly! Get a cute squeegee like this one, and it even looks kind of decorative!

May 8, 2007 | Bathroom, Cleaning tips, Cleaning products

Guests coming tonight, and as I run around the house in cleaning mania, I realize that I forgot to buy more toilet bowl cleaner. Well, forgot is a relative term. It wasn’t high on my list of priorities. Did you know that toilet bowl cleaner is just a gimmick? Yeah, it ‘clings’ to the porcelain. And it has that nice curved neck in the bottle. And it’s blue so you can see the coverage and thickness.

But none of that really matters. You can use all-purpose cleaner and it’ll work just as well. As long as you have some sort of disinfectant (which something as simple as vinegar is), your toilet bowl can sparkle minus that $4.50 bottle of toilet bowl cleaner. And you definitely don’t need those disposable wands. A nice little bowl brush complete with a tidy brush-keeper is all you need for an easy clean toilet.

The kicker though - you probably have more germs around the exterior of the toilet than you do inside the bowl. It’s the floor and the base of the bowl that you really need to focus on - especially if there are men, boys, or toddlers using the throne. Grab a sponge, get your favorite all-purpose cleaner, put on some gloves, and wipe the entire exterior of your toilet, and around it. Don’t forget the wall or any furniture or sinks that are in striking range - I’m afraid that water has a tendency to splash!

May 3, 2007 | Bathroom, Cleaning tips, Cleaning products

That pesky shower door! It seems like nothing will clean it sometimes. I read somewhere that you can put some Murphy’s oil on it when it’s clean and it’ll stay clean longer - don’t do it! It doesn’t work AND Murphy’s oil is Horrible to clean off! So here’s a better solution.

The filmy stuff on the shower door is soap scum. And soap scum doesn’t get along well with lemon juice or salt. So, pour some lemon juice on the scouring side of a damp sponge, and then sprinkle generously with salt. Scrub your shower door with that, adding more salt as necessary. You’ll be able to feel as the soap scum disappears - it likes to ‘cling’ to the sponge, so when the sponge glides smoothly over the door, you’re done! Now, there could be some leftover mildew or mold spores after that process - even if you don’t see them, so finish off with an all-purpose cleaner. Vinegar diluted with water works just fine. Voila!

Cut back on soap scum on the door by switching to liquid soaps as opposed to bar soap - the bar soap has talc added to it, and that’s what creates most of your soap scum. Until you’re ready to switch though, keep it under control with lemon juice and salt. A little scrub-scrub periodically will keep it from building up.

April 19, 2007 | Bathroom, Cleaning tips

What’s your worst cleanup task? For me, one of the worst (and most frequent with 2 toddlers at home) is pasta. Mac & cheese, specifically. C’mon, with two little kids, it’s a staple in my house. And the 3-yr old is fine - she tries hard to get it all in her mouth, but there is the occasional spill. It’s the 1-yr old that makes me crazy. If I’ve just mopped my floors, I pretty much have a guarantee that Little Man will dump the entire contents of his plate onto the floor. I think he can sense that the floor is cleaner than usual, and wants to contribute to ’solving’ the problem. How sweet of him. Somehow, the time since the floor has been mopped is indirectly proportional to the amount of food he throws.

So, when it’s mac & cheese or spaghetti, it’s pretty frustrating. Not only is the food wasted, but when I try to clean it up it gets smushed to the tile. Now, I’m afraid to admit the following, but I do so in an effort to help someone out there who’s struggling with this issue. Pasta is easier to clean up the next day. After it dries. That’s right, I’m proposing that you let food sit on your floor overnight. It hardens and just pops off! Easy as pie! Of course, this only works if it’s been spilled in a low-traffic area. If it’s high traffic the opposite happens. Little feet mush the pasta into the tile, their socks, and then track it onto the carpet, couch, and every other surface their feet grace. Much bigger problem.

Now, I hope no one’s been offended with my proposal to let it sit and harden. But when your every day consists of picking up after 2 toddlers, you just have to let some things go. Am I right?

April 12, 2007 | Bathroom, Vinegar, Cleaning tips, Cleaning products

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? Clean your drains before they get totally clogged. I’ve noticed that my drains don’t clog much now that I have super short hair. But if you don’t want to cut your hair to save your drain (really, that isn’t a very good reason to cut your hair, is it?), clean them out periodically and you won’t get a major clog. Really, it’s easy!

Pour about ½ cup of baking soda down your drain, follow with about double that amount of vinegar, and then seal with your drain plug. Follow 15 minutes later with boiling water. Kids love to help with this household maintenance task and the ingredients are totally safe (except, need I say?, the boiling water), so engage help!