What is the best bathroom cleaner for just getting things clean and removing soap scum? I would like to just have to buy 1 all purpose cleaner rather than a few. Our bathroom fixtures are old, the grout is hard to keep clean...we'll eventually update everything but not for awhile. Please don't tell me vinegar and water, that's what I use now and it's not cutting it. Thanks!
The housecleaner who helps me out swears by the Comet liquid (white bottle with green top).
We have a glass shower and it is a house rule, you squeegee and wipe down after a shower. That reduces most of the soap scum, takes just a minute and no big jobs for later.
This may sound "duh" but the best bathroom cleaner is "often". With almost anything.
Which sounds like a A LOT of work, except that daily & weekly cleaning makes it take 30 seconds a day, and 5 minutes a week.
Yay!!!
(Instead of the "I HATE this" 20/30/60/2hr scrubbing adventure.)
To get to a baseline you MAY have to regrout. Once the surface is porous, you're screwed.
But baseline clean from Ugh!!! Involves some seriously caustic stuff.
CLR (calcium lime rust) for those bad boys
Comet Paste (comet + water) for grout stains
LONG sitting (hours, typically)
LOTS of scrubbing, rinsing, off gassing.
BUT once you've got the baseline... Just spray daily, and run a bartowel with your favorite cleaner weekly. Keeps the sparkle new for YEARS.
BIG HINT: If you have a curtain liner... Run it in the machine with a cup of bleach and a little soap once a week. Obviously, no dryer.
BIG HINT: If you have boys... Make them wipe down the toilet and floor around the toilet DAILY (like before their bath at night). Husbands won't, but you'll be raising a generation of husbands who (gasp!) clean up their pee.
It takes less than a minute to do this every day.
I call it the "ticket to stand". If ya wanna stand, you wipe it down every day. Again... With whatever your favorite cleaner is.
Lime away changed my life!! Ok, maybe not, but its AMAZING in the bathroom! Soap scum, rust stains, old dirt on the edge of the tub... GONE! and i was so surprised at how little you scrub! Commercials always show a woman spraying stuff on and just wiping it right off. Ive nwver aeen that til lime away. Good luck!
You need to mix equal parts of blue dawn dish detergent with the white vinegar. It works very well and works even better if you heat up the vinegar in the microwave then add the dawn. You just spray it on your shower and leave it for an hour then rinse away. I was amazed at how well it worked!
I've had good luck with Kaboom on soap scum. It really does the job, plus it smells nice.
I use Lyme Away for everything. It's the best I've seen for getting soap scum off - including those supposed soap scum cleaners. It gets everything off. We have hard water, so it's great for the calcium buildup too. Certainly not environmentally friendly, but it works, for better or worse. Occasionally, I'll use a bleach based cleaner for sinks and stuff just b/c cleaning with bleach makes me feel like it's really disinfected.
Bleach, comet and 409 are my favorites. I mostly clean with vinegar and use the others between to really get it. Vinegar gets the soap scum and hard water we have. But with the old grout and showers its strong bleach in a spray bottle and i spritz the entire shower and let it sit then rinse it off after cleaning the rest of the house.
I am also a HUGE fan of the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.
Another said Kaboom it did not do a darn thing for us. It was a waste of money.
It depends on the hardness or softness of your water for the soap scum. That's why one poster will have success with a product that another poster finds useless. Could you ask neighborhood friends? Or perhaps call your water resource line? If not, I hope someone who shares your water source answers your question.
And ditto for all those who are saying squeegies are the way to keep things clean. I not only squeegie the walls of my shower, I squeegy the base, till most moisture is down the drain!
Melaleuca didn't do a thing for us, so we switched to BioKleen products. Amazing!!! Try the Bac-Out Bathroom cleaner. It's amazing! You can buy it at Whole Foods, lots of health food stores or online. I sometimes buy from www.vitacost.com or www.drugstore.com
Good luck!
My friend who cleans homes for a living swears by the liquid Comet Bathroom Cleaner and either a Dobe sponge or a Mr. Magic Eraser.
Also to eliminate some of the soap scum, you may want to switch from regular bars of soap to body wash.
Like Riley said, often is best. Once you get it clean, keep it clean. I keep a cheap microfiber cloth in the bathroom and every morning wipe the shower and the sink down with it. I run the toilet brush around the toilet bowl every day or two. Take two minutes and wash the floor if it looks like it needs it. Shower curtain liner goes in the washing machine with bleach and my cleaning rags once a month or so. When you take the hand towles to the laundry, wipe the counter with them first.
I use Comet with Bleach. Septic tank and in town both. No issues either place.
Just agreeing with Amy, I was also going to say dawn dish soap & vinegar.
Whatever 3 mixtures you can find. I find one alone does not cut it so I use
1. for smell
2. for antibacteria
3. for cleaning
