Introduction
Your bathroom can quickly become a filthy place full of germs due to many factors including humidity and sanitation. Fortunately, you can search for “home cleaning services near me” and hire professionals to clean it for you. On the other hand, when you clean the bathroom yourself, it’s best to avoid toxic and harsh chemicals and instead opt for greener alternatives. Let’s check out a few easy green bathroom cleaning tips.
Tips & Tricks
- Sink and shower drains – The key to keeping your sink and shower drains clean is to practice preventative maintenance. Each week, inspect the drain cover in your tub and remove hair and other debris from the sink with a cotton swab. Follow that up by flushing down half a cup of baking soda and one cup of vinegar into the drains. Wait for half an hour and flush the drain with hot water.
You can also buy a plastic or rubber hair strainer to keep your drain permanently unclogged without any effort. On the other hand, if your shower or sink drain has developed scales due to hard or mineral water, you can get rid of them with vinegar. Soak paper towels in vinegar and place them over the scaled areas. Let them sit there for an hour or two and wipe it down with a damp sponge.
- Grout – Grout between bathroom tiles is very difficult to clean. However, baking soda does it all. Make a paste by mixing baking soda and water and apply it to the grout around your shower, tub, and between tiles to remove filth and mildew stains. Use a toothbrush to scrub that paste into the grout and once the stain is removed, rinse it with hot water.
You can practice preventive measures for the grout as well. Get a large spray bottle and fill it up with a cup of warm water, four tablespoons of liquid dish soap, and 16 ounces of baking soda. This mixture acts as an all-purpose cleaner that is also effective on grout. Keep it in the bathroom and use it on grouts once a week so that stains can be prevented.
- Tubs and shower walls – If you have a shower or tub made out of fiberglass, use a combination of dishwashing liquid and baking soda and wipe the fiberglass surface with a sponge. You can use the same paste made from dishwashing liquid and baking soda for rust and hard water stains from ceramic tiles in your bathroom. However, you’ll need a nylon scrubber to remove the stain.
If you have soap scum on the walls and shower doors, spray vinegar to loosen that build-up. Allow the vinegar to work its magic. Once it dries off on the doors and walls, wipe away the soap scum with a sponge.
On the other hand, if you have sinks and tubs made out of porcelain, you need a different approach. Spot the stains on your sink and tub and pour lemon juice over them. Follow it up with a sprinkle of alum powder that’s available in most grocery stores and scrub the stain with a densely packed soft-bristled brush. If the stain doesn’t come off, let the lemon juice and alum powder sit there overnight. You can scrub and rinse off the stain the next morning.
Your shower or tub floor usually has a few non-skid strips. Those elevated bumps can trap a lot of filth and get dirty very quickly. To clean them up, dampen them with hot water and spray baking soda over them. Let the soda sit there for half an hour and follow up with the good old scrubs and rinse.
For further deep cleaning of those strips or appliques, you can pour vinegar over them to loosen the glue and pull them off the shower or tub floor. After that, you can throw them inside the washing machine and let it do the cleaning. However, you’ll also need to reapply industrial glue to reattach those strips after they dry out.
- Shower curtains – Remove the shower curtains and sprinkle them with baking soda generously. After that, scrub off mildew and mold stains from them and rinse with hot water. You can also entirely remove the shower curtains and throw them into the washing machine along with baking soda and vinegar as the only detergent. Put the washer on the cold cycle and add a dry towel as well, to activate and facilitate the release of grime from the curtains.
- Toilets – Each week, pour half a cup of vinegar into the toilets and let it rest for half an hour. Next, add baking soda into the toilet bowl and sprinkle it generously to coat the bowl. Get a bowl brush and scrub the baking soda properly on the entire bowl. After that, flush the toilet to get a clean and sparkling white bowl.
You can also mix baking soda and vinegar and pour them into the bowl. Swish that mixture inside the bowl with a toilet brush and let it sit for around 30 minutes before flushing. If there are stubborn hard water and rust stains in the bowl, use steel wool and the same mixture of baking soda and vinegar to scrub them off.
- Air fresheners – Finally, after cleaning the toilet, it’s time to make it smell good. However, those aerosol cans are a no go with their harsh chemicals and alcohol content. Instead, you can make your own natural air freshener with a bowl of baking soda. Keep it in the bathroom and it would absorb all the bad odors inside the bathroom instead of masking them. You can also add cedar chips into the bowl to keep pests away.
Conclusion
The above-mentioned green bathroom cleaning tips are easy to follow and discourage the use of strong and harsh chemicals that are toxic to humans and harm the environment. Even if you decide to search for “home cleaning services near me” and hire professionals for cleaning your home, ask them to use environmentally safe and non-toxic cleaning solutions.
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