8 Ways to Take Your Bathroom to the Next Level
Have you ever visited a nice hotel or gone to an open house and wondered how on earth they get the bathrooms to really shine? Or maybe you have had a professional cleaning service come and deep clean your home, but when you’ve tried to emulate their exquisite work in the bathroom, you’ve come up short.
We get it. As the time for spring cleaning approaches and passes, it can be easy to overlook the bathroom. Most of the time, cleaning the bathroom means wiping things down, mopping the floor, and cleaning the toilet. But there are steps you can take to make it look like your bathroom hasn’t been used in years. Here are our eight favorite ways to make your bathroom shine!
Tub and Shower
The first place to start to go beyond the basic mop and wipe down of the bathroom is your tub and/or shower. It’s pretty obvious, but a lot of tough stains and germs can gather in these places and quickly become gross and unmanageable even with constant diligence.
We suggest purchasing a value pack of rags, sometimes as cheap as $2 for 10, which you can reuse each week or month on your bathroom. Simply spray your tub and shower with a good cleaner, give it 2-3 minutes (or more!) to settle, then scrub away with your rags. Using rags instead of paper towels or even sponges can cut down on your future costs as well as helping the environment by removing paper waste.
The Toilet
We use our toilets every day, usually more than once, so it’s not unreasonable that they get dirty, and sometimes just using your toilet brush on the bowl once a week just doesn’t cut it. For stains inside the bowl, you can use white vinegar. Simply pour it into the bowl, then let it sit for a few minutes before scrubbing away (you’ll be using a lot of vinegar in this whole bathroom mission, so be prepared).
Using your rags on the exterior, another way to bring your bathroom from “clean” to “spotless” is by scrubbing the exterior of the toilet from top to bottom. Again, you can use your handy new rags and a mixture of vinegar and dish soap for this, or even just vinegar if you don’t want to purchase a scrubbing soap.
Tiled Floors and Surfaces
We already talked about mopping, and in this case, you’ll want to take it a step farther. When you’re at the store buying your value packs of rags, pick up a quality grout cleaner, then prepare to get down on your hands and knees to really scrub the spots in between your tiles. You’ll be surprised at just how filthy these spots can become, even if you mop frequently.
This is because they are lower than the surrounding surfaces, and when you leave the shower, or mop, water gets trapped in between tiles. You can also use grout cleaner inside the shower if you have tiles on the floors or walls of your shower.
Soap Scum
Soap scum is one of the grossest and most visible parts of a dirty bathroom. Fortunately, it’s easy to clean using the same tricks we’ve already mentioned. Simply combine some more vinegar and dish soap, covering the scummy areas.
After letting it sit (another pattern!), scrub it off with a rag. If that doesn’t work, you can use steel wool on tougher stains, but be careful - steel wool can scratch your ceramic tubs. Rub gently, steel wool is powerful.
Shower-head and Faucets
The places where water comes out are havens for stains, scum, and bacteria. Anywhere in your home where moisture gets stuck often will lead to dirty spots. It’s a good idea every once in awhile to remove the handles from your shower-heads and faucets, usually with a simple screwdriver, and scrub them down or even put them in the dishwasher.
For the actual faucets, you can take a plastic bag full of vinegar and wrap it around the fixture, leaving it for ten minutes or so while you continue to clean other spots. Once you remove the bag, stains often come off immediately. If they don’t, you can try lemon juice to get tougher stains, or a magic eraser. Another thing to make sure of is that you’re cleaning your shower curtain at least once every season.
Bathroom Glass
Glass in the bathroom, especially if you have a sliding glass door instead of a shower curtain, typically attracts a lot of grime. If yours is simply covered in dried dots from splashing water, you probably only need some window cleaner and another rag.
However, many times, soap scum gets trapped near the bottom of the glass. With water constantly hitting the upper half, it drips down and just adds onto the mess. Once again, use your trusty white vinegar mixture with rags or steel wool to scrub the scum right off.
Removing Stains
For really tough stains – stains that even our vinegar mixture can’t remove – there are a number of other methods to try. Steel wool can handle some of these types of stains, but in many cases, your best bet is to use one of several other options and let them soak on the dirty marks as long as you can.
For metallic surfaces like chrome, lemon juice works well, and you can also use bleach to soak your ceramic tubs. We know you know, but don’t forget, bleach is a powerful chemical, so use caution when using it. You can also pick up or order some trusty Bar-Keeper’s friend for stains like this.
Stay Alert
The last thing isn’t one specific thing. Instead, we suggest you simply begin your deep cleaning by looking around the whole room and trying to find the most outrageous spots that get overlooked. We’re talking about baseboards, the underside of tubs, and even the walls, which can be gently scrubbed with wet rags.
As with any part of your house, the bathroom gets dirty, especially since it’s used so often and in so many different, sensitive ways. Because of those ways, it’s even more important than other parts of the house to continue to clean it and deep clean it at least once a year – if not more. However, if you’d rather get the pros to do it, we’re here to help. Contact Custom Maid today to see how we can meet your cleaning needs!