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Cleaning Your Bathroom: Part II - Bath & Shower

When cleaning a room that's as potentially messy as the bathroom, the most important thing to remember is that it's very easy to overdo it. Trying to rush through the project or do everything at once is a sure way to not only exhaust you, but possibly injure yourself with careless action. Not only that, but often you might overlook something important, like cleaning behind the toilet or the shower door or curtain. When so many people make use of one room, it's important to keep it as clean as possible, and pacing yourself is the easiest way to make sure it gets done completely.

Although some people have smaller bathrooms with standing showers, a lot of people have combination bathtub/showers. A standing shower is easier to clean than a bathtub for obvious reasons: you don't have as much of an area to clean, you don't need to tend to the bathtub faucet, and you don't have the added bother of soap scum accumulated from baths or a ring around the tub. But for those who do have a bath, don't think it will mean the difference between spending the entire day in the bathroom with a scrub brush and spending the day in the den relaxing with a good book. It's just another leg of the race to keep a clean living environment.

A good way to begin this project is by cleaning the walls. Don't be intimidated by the number of tiles or how dirty they may seem. Your best bet is to spray the walls with a mildew removing solution and let it sit for fifteen minutes or so. Let it do the work for you, else you might be stuck scrubbing till you drop. After the solution has set, just wipe it away with your sponge and most of the mildew should come away with it. I recommend rinsing the walls after this, either with a clean sponge or the shower itself. If any mildew remains, you can use the solution again or tackle it with the sponge.

If there are any rings around the bathtub from bottles or cans being left to sit for too long, a good suggestion to get them out is lemon juice. Let the juice sit over the stain for a minute or so and scrub vigorously with your sponge. If you have a rough sponge, be careful not to scratch the porcelain. For any other stains, try applying your cleanser to the tub. It isn't recommended that you use a toilet cleaner on the bathtub, so your best bet is to either have an all-purpose cleaner or a few that specialize in the tasks at hand. Because all-purpose cleaners tend to be a little rough on certain delicate surfaces, make sure you choose the one that suits your job.

Soap scum can be a bother to remove, but there are many potent cleaners for this and other problems such as hard water stains and discoloration between the tiles. As I mentioned, it's best to use a cleaner that is best suited for your project. If you aren't able to use one of these specific products, water softener will help to lift soap scum. Most glass cleaners will lift off any additional scum on your shower doors, and don't forget to clean the door track if you have a sliding shower door. This can be done with a track brush, or if you don't have one on hand an old tooth brush or your sponge should work just fine.

If you have a shower curtain, this can be cleaned quite easily. There are some who use cloth curtains, which can usually be cleaned by putting them in the laundry - but please, for the sake of your clothing, be sure to make it a separate load. For a plastic curtain, you don't even need to remove it to clean it, but some people prefer to take it off while cleaning the tub and shower anyway so they don't have it in the way. Use your mildew remover spray on the inside of the curtain and wipe it away with your sponge. You'll also want to treat the outside of the curtain with a cleanser, but a mixture of detergent and water should serve the outside fine, since there's a much smaller chance of soap scum showing up on the outside. Of course, after the curtain is clean, you'll want to hang it out to dry if you'd removed it from the shower rod, so just hang it back up and let it dry when you're finished - which you will be, in no time at all, by following these simple steps. That wasn't so bad, was it?

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