Day 22. Deep Clean Toilets and Wash Shower Curtains

Day 22 of “A 30 Day Guide to Spring Cleaning“.

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If your family is anything like mine, your bathroom likely gets dirty very quickly! I have a 5 year old son that I’m pretty sure thinks it’s funny to pee on everything but the actual water in the toilet. Also, our yard has very fine sand/clay that gets on everything and everyone, so our showers can get pretty dingy. This means that our shower curtains get pretty dingy too!

I get it… cleaning toilets and washing your shower curtains may seem like two totally separate tasks, and that’s true. But at the same time, they are both items out of your bathroom, and one or the other didn’t seem to be enough to separate. PLUS you can technically clean both of these items using the same cleaner… have I caught your attention?

I personally don’t think we have hard water, but our toilet would say differently. For some reason our downstairs toilet gets a lot of buildup in it that is super hard to get rid of, and it continues to build up even with regular cleanings. If you have this problem, let me tell you, the water in your tank is ABSOLUTELY contributing to this buildup. If you don’t clean your tank, you are adding to this continued buildup inside your toilet.

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What to clean:

• Toilets
  • Bowl
  • Outsides
  • Surrounding area/floor
  • Tank
• Shower curtains

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Supplies needed:

Today’s supplies are really dependent on how hard your water is/buildup in your toilet.

• Toilet bowl cleaner
• Toilet brush
• Screw driver (flat head)
• Crescent Wrench
• Washer/Dryer
• Pre-treat/stain remover (see recommended items below)
• Recommended:
  • Vinegar, Baking Soda, Dish Soap, OUT White Bright Laundry Whitener ‘paid link’, Scouring Stick, Lysol Cling Gel Toilet Cleaner, Junk Rag, Clorox Wipes
• Alternative:
  • Your preferred laundry pre-treatment (if needed), multipurpose cleaner, toilet tank cleaner, your preferred toilet bowl cleaner

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Cleaning Toilet Outsides

It’s important to clean the outsides of your toilet and surrounding area every time you clean your toilet. There are so many drips and drops of things that can get on the outside of your toilet, and splatter that can happen, especially with boys.

I prefer to use Clorox wipes to clean the outsides of my toilet and surrounding areas, as these are disposable and can go right in the garbage. Make sure to get in all the cracks and crevices, and you can use a Q-tip to get into the harder to reach areas.

To really deep clean your toilet, it is best to just remove your toilet seat so you can clean underneath the mounting mechanism, and clean the toilet seat separately.

To remove your toilet seat:

1. Use a flat head screw driver to lift up the covers for the bolts that hold the toilet seat on.
2. Once the snap covers are lifted, you will have access to the bolts. You can use the same flat head screwdriver to remove the bolts. You will want to use a crescent wrench on the under side to hold the nut in place while you loosen the bolt.
3. Remove the bolts, and lift the toilet seat off the toilet.

Wipe underneath the toilet seat mounting bracket, and clean the toilet seat while it is removed to allow better access to all the small nooks and crannies of the toilet seat itself.

Use the Clorox wipes to get underneath the edge of the toilet to the floor. Make sure you clean all these areas thoroughly.

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Cleaning Toilet Bowl

Cleaning your toilet bowl could be a very simple task, but if your toilet has a lot of buildup, you may want to put a little more time into this. You can see my image above, my downstairs toilet has a lot of buildup that won’t easily wash away. I clean our toilets regularly, but this buildup keeps increasing. When you have hard scaled buildup like this, a scouring stick is typically the best way to remove it.

If you do not have this buildup, you can simply use a toilet bowl cleaner and brush to thoroughly clean the toilet bowl.

Cleaning scaled buildup from toilet bowls:

1. Use a scouring stick on a handle, or find a handle to place this on. In my creativeness, I have actually taken the handle end of my Swiffer off, and attached the scouring stick to this for ease of cleaning. You can just use the scouring stick and your hand as well, but this would require reaching into the toilet bowl.
2. Use the scouring stick to scrub at the areas with scaled buildup.
3. Flush often during the cleaning process so you can have clear water to see any remaining buildup.
4. Don’t be afraid to use some elbow grease to get the job done!

The result was not absolutely perfect, but it was much better than it was, and I haven’t found anything else that will actually take this off.

There are some great products out there to try to reduce this buildup from happening, we just haven’t gotten these set up in our new house yet. One product I would specifically recommend is a continuous toilet cleaner that attaches to the water system inside your toilet tank. The water lines attach through the cleaner, and tablets are placed inside to mix with the water to continuously clean your toilet with each flush. Tablets usually last about 3 months.

Kaboom Scrub Free Cleaning System ‘paid link’

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Cleaning Toilet Tank

One item that many people don’t consider cleaning is the toilet tank. The buildup that can take place in your toilet tank could be the main contributor to the buildup in your toilet, and I can guarantee that this is contributing to my buildup problem in my toilet bowl. I am providing some instructions below for a “scrub free” toilet tank cleaning method. Keep in mind, you will likely still need to wipe the inside of your tank, but it will be much cleaner for a quick wipe when it comes time.

Keep in mind, there are many toilet tank cleaning products out there that you can use, but this is by far the best method I have tried.

Cleaning your toilet tank:

1. Flush your toilet a few times to be sure no residual toilet cleaner is left (NEVER MIX CHEMICALS, it can be very dangerous).
2. Remove your toilet tank lid.
3. Shut your water valve to your toilet off.
4. Flush your toilet as many times as it takes to empty your tank as much as possible.
5. Use a bucket to fill your tank with the hottest tap water possible (don’t overfill, keep the water under the overflow pipe).
6. Use about 1 cup (or slightly more) of OUT White Bright Laundry Whitener ‘paid link’ and add this to your toilet tank.
7. Stir the contents of the tank to mix any sediment from the cleaner into the water in the tank.
8. Let this sit for 1 hour.
9. Flush your toilet multiple times until the tank is emptied as much as possible.
10. Fill your bucket with hot tap water and pour this into the tank while holding the flush handle down to allow the sediment to wash out of the tank to be flushed down the toilet.
11. Use a wet rag to quickly wipe the sides of the tank if there is any purple residue left.

Sometimes it can be very difficult to get all the sediment out of the bottom, you can flush this using step 10 as many times as needed. For me, after multiple flushes, some sediment still remained. If I used a wet/dry shop vac I could get the rest out, but I was happy with the results.

You may want to clean your toilet bowl one more time after completing this cleaning, but again, be sure no residual cleaner is left from the toilet tank cleaning!!

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Cleaning Shower Curtains

A lot of times people may not think about cleaning their shower curtains. I actually wash mine quite frequently, not only the curtains, but the liners too! I just washed mine about 3 weeks ago, but I wanted to be sure to bring this up in case you hadn’t thought of washing yours.

Shower curtains, especially the liners (if using plastic liners it’s probably best to just replace them) can get dingy and water/soap residue built up on them. We use fabric shower curtain liners because I cannot stand the crinkling and creasing of plastic shower curtain liners, so our fabric liners get soap residue built up at the bottom.

The great news is… you can likely wash any of these shower curtains or liners! Be sure to check your tags to make sure there aren’t any instructions advising not to wash these items.

If you have soap residue, or hard water build up in your shower curtain or liner (or just regular yellowing from use), I would suggest pre-treating these before washing for the best results. I have provided two methods of pre-treatment below.

Out of washer pre-treat (recommended method):

1. Take down your shower curtains and liners.
2. Fill your tub (or a plastic bin) with hot water, deep enough to just cover the shower curtains and liners.
3. Add 1 cup baking soda sprinkled over top of the shower curtains.
4. Add 1 tsp dish soap (I highly recommend Dawn for this)
5. Add 2 cups vinegar on top of baking soda and dish soap.
6. Hand mix these items into the water, while slightly agitating the shower curtains and liners in the process.
7. Allow this to sit for at least 15 minutes, but an hour is best.
8. Wring out and place in the washer, and wash with regular detergent.

Inside washer pre-treat:

1. For top loaders you can follow the steps above allowing your machine to fill with hot water and get the same results by leaving your lid open to allow the washer to fill without starting (OMIT THE DISH SOAP)
2. For front loaders: take down your shower curtains and liners.
3. Place them in your washer and add 1/2 cup baking soda.
4. Add your detergent to the specified place, and then add vinegar to the bleach and fabric softener compartments.
5. Set your washer on pre-treat, or soak cycle if available, or just pause the washer after it has filled to allow these to sit for about 15 minutes.
6. Allow the washer to finish out it’s regular washing cycle after soaking.

The acid-base reaction of the baking soda and vinegar, although diluted by water, provides a great stain treatment method for yellowing and buildup.

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If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments and I would be happy to get back with you.

Check out Day 21. Check Fire and Safety Items here.

Check out Day 23. Wash Throw Pillows and Blankets here.

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