Urg… This is a sour patch with me too! I just bleach the shower with a spray bottle. This is my numb 1 neglected spot in my house lol… can’t wait to hear other cleaning tips from other ladies.

Oh I hate the shower too!! I use a spray bleach as well. We have a tub and surround so there is caulking where tub meets surround and I cannot stand that to look gross! So I ususally spray that with the bleach really good. I then clean rest of bathroom and come back to wipe corners down (Chlorex bleach spray is what I use. Best stuff ever but there is the odor so open window if you use it and Joe had to do it when I was pregnant.). Then I usually use whatever bathtub cleaner was on sale and clean walls and rest of tub. Have to do two steps b/c of mixture of chemicals. I usually open windows and keep Grace out of bathroom while I clean. I am not great about getting bathroom cleaned all the time but my goal is once a week and when I do it is quite obsessive! That is one room I want clean. This entry made me smile b/c Grace was sick last week and then Joe got sick so I pretty much sterlized our entire bathroom to get rid of germs. It was fit for a hospital for a couple days!

Spray down with vinegar. Sprinkle baking soda on floor of shower. Scrub the walls and floors with a cleaning rag wet. Spray down with showerhead to rinse. Use TLC to get rid of bad grimys.

I dislike cleaning with chemicals, too. We remodeled my bathroom almost two years ago. The shower area has tile walls and glass doors. My grandma’s advice to me: wipe it down after every shower. I do that and rarely have to clean. It seems like a bit of a chore but it’s way better than having to clean it with chemicals or use elbow grease!

My mom passed on some advice to me she got in this area not long ago, so I’ll tell it to you! It mostly has to do with daily maintenance to make the weekly (or less often ) cleaning more bearable.
First, using real soap (as opposed to body wash) leaves a much more stubborn residue on the shower walls, so you can really cut down on the effort by using non soap-based products. Also, the same person said simple baby shampoo cuts the grime well, and that rubbing the walls with it while you’re in the shower is a good in-between cleaner.
I’ve also heard squeegeeing works wonders. As far as deep cleaning, I’ve always been a Comet girl but tried baking soda last time and it seemed to work fine with no damage to my throat and lungs. It just dissolves pretty quickly so you feel like you have to use a lot. I’ll be checking back here for more advice for my own shower!

I LOVE baking soda…keep boxes all over the house. It’s good for laundry, surface cleaning, sprinkling on carpets before vacuuming – I even keep a bottle of cheap shampoo with a bit of baking soda mixed in for a once-a-week hair treatment. So I just use a clean rag and baking soda when the tub needs a good clean and wipe it down after each shower.
Jenna takes cleaning product in with her when she takes a shower. Kills two birds with one stone, I guess. (She also brushes her teeth in the shower, and I’d be willing to bet, knowing her, it all happens at once…!)

…Also, essential oil of lavender is a natural disinfectant – you can mix a couple drops into a spray bottle of water if you want a nice-smelling cleaning product, instead of a chemically one. It works on all surfaces, pretty much. I’ve never used it in my shower, but I think now that we’re on the topic, I’m going to try it!

I like to use Lysol or Comet bathroom cleaner and a Magic Eraser sponge. The Magic Eraser is so good at cleaning off soap scum it would probably work with just water, but I like to know the tub is disinfected. I know of someone who, once the shower was clean, used Turtle Wax on the shower walls, etc., to keep water spots from sticking. Also, I work right to left and top to bottom. My bathroom strategy: spray the tub, go back to the mirrors (Windex), sinks, counters, then toilet (all with paper towels and disinfectant), then use the Magic Eraser on the tub.

I like the idea of baking soda, and use it in other parts of the house for cleaning, but when it comes to our nasty shower, I use something stronger. Comet or Scrubbing Bubbles and a nice stiff scrub brush combined with some elbow grease works best for me, even though it is back breaking!

Ok dear, here goes…

Remember when you were first pregnant and you could barely walk, talk, eat, drink,breathe, much less clean the bathroom?

Who was left on his own to fend his own bathroom cleanliness, to make sure plants weren’t growing in our shower? T’was I. Ladies, I have discovered the secret to bathroom perfection. But, I assure you it was by a mixture of mere ignorance and lack of common item/household specific cleaning materials.

E.g, since I have never cleaned the shower before I got married (don’t ask), I expected to open the cupboard and find “shower cleaner” to spray and clean. After a semi-long and frantic search for any cleaning spray that had either “bathroom” or “shower” on the can or bottle as my dear wife was ill and barely conscious on the couch, I came up with nothing.

What did I result to? Now that you are on the edge of your seat,

I…………FOUND………….NONE………OTHER……..THAN……….OVEN CLEANER! Now, I want to clarify, this was not just “average oven cleaner”. This was a lemony fresh scent that developed a very thick lather upon spraying on particular isolated items, whether in the shower,tub, toilet or sink. It works equally wonderful on each of these items and does not take that much. This stuff is -meant for- thick grease and grime stains from baking or broiling at high temperatures in an oven. How much more efficiently and excellently will this work on common human grease and grime from a shower?

MUCH MORE Efficiently and Excellently…

Don’t believe me? Give it a try yourself. If you are not worried about the inevitable and idealistic opinions of others, or don’t mind being a tad unorthodox when it comes to using “item specific” cleaning materials and you don’t have lemony-fresh scented oven cleaner in your house, go buy some! I believe I got mine from the dollar store for the low, low price of well, I believe $1. You cannot beat that folks. Anyway, enough of my infomercial rant.

See you when I get home dear, to a wonderfully and lemony freshly scented bathroom and shower…hopefully.

Grace and Peace

i am a neat freak every where except for the bathroom…for some reason i am a complete slacker at cleaning the shower/sink etc.

xo
monica

I did a post on this same topic a while back and got some helpful suggestions – http://blissandthebattlefield.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/getting-the-shower-clean/

Now we have tile walls in our shower and I’ve found that Mrs. Meyers clean scrub with the rougher side of a sponge works great, both on tile and tub. Truth be told, I only clean the tile about once a month, and this manages to get all the grime off. I use a diluted bleach solution with a toothbrush on the grout, but only every other month or so.

I’ve also used Bon Ami in the past and have liked that too, and it’s cheaper.

I’d like to find a cheaper and even more natural solution, so when I use up my Mrs. Meyers I will definitely be trying the baking soda.

I use scrubbing bubbles foaming spray. Wet walls, spray shower, and tub, then rinse clean! That’s it!! For extra hard soap scum, I use a Magic Eraser too.

AJ, you are hysterical!!

I’m a huge slacker on cleaning the shower, mainly because it’s old and stained, and I can never get it to look perfectly clean – so I start not to care. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? I think if I wanted to do a really good job, I’d take my can of comet and go to town on it – that stuff is fabulous!