Around the House: Your Bathroom can Sparkle Every Day

By Yehudit Garmaise

While the bathrooms are the rooms that are likely the dirtiest in the house, by committing to a few simple daily and weekly tasks, everyone’s bathrooms can sparkle with cleanliness and feel fit for kings and queens.

For your own sanity: no cleaning can be initiated until everyone who uses it in the morning has left for the day.

• Once the coast is clear, the first task in cleaning any room is taking out the garbage. 

•  Then, put all toiletry items back in place: toothbrushes in toothbrush holders, caps on toothpaste tubes, and soaps in soap dishes. 

• Because bathroom surfaces need to be wiped down every day, to make the process easier, leave a spray bottle of good-smelling anti-bacterial spray in a convenient cabinet. Bring in a new, clean small towel every day to spray and wipe down the sink, the toilet seat, and mirrors in the bathroom. 

Mrs. Meyers is a very natural spray cleaner with great smells, such as lavender, peony, and lemon verbena. Another brand to try is Microban 24, which claims to prevent the spread and growth of bacteria for 24 hours on hard non-porous, non-food contact surfaces. A disinfectant wipe can also do the trick.

• Bathrooms should get a quick sweep daily.

• Open the bathroom windows to air it out.

Then, once a week:

• Lift up your toilet seat and spray good-smelling cleaner, such as Lysol Professional Toilet Bowl Cleaner underneath the rim and in the bowl, and let it sit for 10-minutes, before using a toilet brush to clean the sides and the underneath the rim before flushing the toilet. 

• When you don’t have time to scrub: drop a denture tablet into your toilet to clean it, let it fizz, and then flush.

 ·      Another time-saving idea to try:  Just drizzle soap on the tub, add some water, and use a broom designated for the tub-only to brush away the dirt. Rinse until all of the suds are gone.

• Stains, mold, and mildew can be removed with baking soda mixed with water to make a paste or bleach diluted in water.

• Another natural scrubbing idea to test out is to sprinkle coarse kosher salt on half a grapefruit to use as a great scrubber that can also make your bathtub smell clean and citrusy.