Brooding On

Pinterest Cleaning Day!

On my weekly cleaning schedule, Wednesday is Bathroom Day.  As you know, if you read the blog regularly, I don't love cleaning.  I DO, however, love an experiment, so I decided to make today's cleaning more bearable by trying out a couple of cleaning tips I'd pinned on Pinterest.

First off, I planned to try this pin to tackle the soap scum in the shower.  All I needed was vinegar (which we use all the time for all kinds of things, so we always have it on hand in giant jugs like the one pictured below) and blue Dawn (which I do not keep on hand.  Luckily, the 9 oz. bottle is on sale this week for 99 cents at Walgreens).  I put 1/2 c. vinegar in the microwave for 1 1/2 minutes.  Then, I poured 1/2 c. Dawn into a spray bottle.  Once the vinegar was warmed, I added it to the spray bottle and gently mixed the two by turning the bottle.
I doused the shower pretty good and was surprised to see how thick the mixture is.  I just let it sit for 2 hours (while I tried my other cleaning experiment).  At the end of the two hours, I used one of my Grandma Smith's scrubbies that she knits (but any kind of scratchy pad or sponge would do) and went to town on the shower.  I really was amazed at how well the mixture had dealt with the soap scum.  Now, we didn't have just a ton of build-up, but I suspect it would work it's way through even pretty tough scum. 

I'll definitely continue to use this mixture on occasion (looks like I need to get back to the store before the end of the week for some more Dawn while it's on sale).  Of course, because of the Dawn, this mixture is not entirely green, like the vinegar-based cleaner I usually use.  Although, since it's typically used to clean dishes (which we eat off of), it's presumable less hazardous than, say, a cleaner with bleach, Soft Scrub, or Comet.

The other pin I tried was the grout cleaner in this pin.  While I was less than wowed with the results, it was a green option, and it was good to get down on my hands and knees with a toothbrush and really work on some spots that I normally miss with the mop.