Bathroom Cleaning

If you're unhappy with the way your bathroom looks after cleaning it, I bet there are a few tricks you haven't tried yet.

Most of the time, I am a fervent cheerleader for cleaning top to bottom. When it comes to cleaning a room as dreaded as the bathroom, it's more important, in my opinion, to start with something easy.

TikTok confirmed my suspicion that I’m missing a crucial toilet-cleaning step – and maybe you are, too.

No spray paint allowed.

We turned to the experts to get their best tips and tricks to make cleaning the bathroom as efficient as possible.

A daily shower spray could certainly be part of your routine, if you want to be an overachiever. But it's not the most important thing.

We all want our hard work (especially on the grosser chores!) to be worth it, right?

It can handle tough jobs all on its own, but combined with other ingredients from your pantry, it can be even more powerful.

If you’re not using this humble solution to its full potential already, here’s what you need to know.

His name was Horace and he was a mansplainer extraordinaire, but damn he knew how to clean a tub.

How a $2 household staple helped me tackle hard water stains that nothing else would eradicate.

Inspired by the folks who described their own homemade cleansers in our green cleaner comment thread yesterday, we remembered this list of simple and safe homemade metal cleaners in Real Simple Cleaning, and pulled it off the shelf this morning to take a look. Perfect for keeping your kitchen or bath faucets shining bright without chemicals!1. Ketchup brightens copper. According to Real Simple Cleaning, the acetic acid in ketchup dissolves the oxide tarnish that makes copper look cloudy.2.

It'll maintain the seal your plumbing needs to do its job, plus it helps prevent stagnant water from sitting in your faucet or showerhead and breeding bacteria.

If you learn how to clean the toilet properly—and how to keep it that way—you'll be able to enjoy that fresh commode feeling around the clock.

The perfect formula here is a DIY cleaner specifically meant for mirrors (don’t worry; we’ve got a great one) paired with a flat-weave microfiber cloth.

This simple solution cracks open the world of bath mat choices, and could turn one of your existing slipping and sliding mats into one that stays safely put.

Your showers will never be the same again.

No one wants to step right back into their old dirt.

Here are three tracks based on doable time limits—designed to give you a bathroom that's clean, cleaner, or cleanest.

If I were a better person, I’d be cleaning my grout right now, but instead I’m gathering tips and tricks to help you clean your grout. Pay it forward!

A weekend shower tile refresh that's both transformative and cheap.

Mold is just waiting to grow in the bathroom if you don't take preventive measures.

Who better to give expert bathroom cleaning advice than someone who's literally seen it all?

Check out these tried-and-true products that’ll make sure your bathroom is mold-free—for good.

Here are a few bathroom cleaning mistakes that, when corrected, will leave you with a speckless and functional washroom with far less work.

Lemons and vinegar are the great dynamic duo of green cleaning, but there’s nothing quite like the smell of fresh grapefruit. It’s fresh and sweet, and can give your bathroom that extra boost of freshness that is usually only obtained with heavily scented candles and other cleaning products that aren’t so earth-friendly. I recently moved into a home that had sat empty for a year and while it was in great condition, the old cast iron tub looked pretty rough.

A clogged or slow-draining bathroom sink is a common problem in most homes. It shouldn’t happen too often, but when it does, be sure to use this natural formula to remove all the gunk–believe me, you don’t want a list of what that “gunk” actually is–and get that drain in tip top shape. 1/2 cup Baking soda 1/2 cup Vinegar Lemon juice (optional) Measuring cups Step 1. Remove the drain cover.

Rub wax paper on your shower’s curtain rod to make rings run smoothly (and quietly) over the metal. The same concept works with metal hangers and closet rod. A single sheet of wax paper is usually enough, but if your curtain is especially screechy, it might take two. The paper will get gritty as it picks up the fine metallic dust.

Bleach stains…sounds contradictory, doesn’t it? Well, a few days ago, in an effort to unclog our drain, we followed the advice of one of our friends and poured bleach down the drain. And man, we learned our lesson: Don’t. Do. That. EVER! Even after we rinsed the tub, the next morning we found nasty bleach stains around the tub. After two hours of scrubbing to no avail, we went online to hunt for some kind of remedy… After some research, we tested out a few solutions: 1.

AT DC, I moved into an apartment with old bathtub stains that really gross me out. The former resident’s bathmat left dark stains on the bottom of the tub. I love taking baths but wouldn’t be able to relax with those icky stains. I’ve tried various bathroom cleaners and none have gotten rid of the stains. Any ideas? I really miss my bath time!

Did you know your bathroom sponges, loofahs and poufs can be a serious breeding ground for some nasty bacteria and germs? It seems silly since we soap them up and rinse them clean, but we recently learned they should be tossed out far before you see any wear and tear. We were shocked at how short their lifespan really is!

Rebecca just showed us how to refresh our bathrooms, but let’s zero in on the shower for a minute. I’ll venture a guess that it’s the area that gets cleaned the least in all the bathroom. Here are five easy ways to have a sparkling shower all year long. Cover your shower faucet with bag of vinegar and secure with a rubber band. Leave it there overnight and you’ll have a clean shower head without all the scrubbing.

Alright, I keep telling myself, this is your one chance. You may never again have a bathroom with a brand-new bathtub and shower surround. Of the 10 bath/shower combos I’ve lived with in my life, none have been remotely new nor perfect…but soon all that will change. I’ve got one chance to do this right!

When was the last time you wiped down your curling iron or cleaned out the back of your hair dryer? If you can’t remember—or you didn’t even know that was a thing you had to do in the first place—then it’s definitely time for a deep clean before your next styling sesh. Notice how the vent on the back of your blow dryer tends to fill up with lint over time? The good news is cleaning it out is simple. The bad news?

In literature, in outfits and in life, it’s the details that truly matter. A bathroom that’s been decluttered, scrubbed and sanitized can still look a little bit off if you’re not minding your lines. For a sparkling clean bathroom—top to bottom and wall to wall—you’ll want to make sure your grout is really clean, too. The good news?

Walking out of a stinky bathroom has got to be on everyone’s top 5 list of cringe-worthy moments. Lighting matches or using spray aerosol are common remedies to mask the smell. Matches are great, but you can’t use them in airplane bathrooms. And aerosol? Don’t get me started – that stuff is poison. A new-ish product growing in popularity (which might seem like an April Fools joke) is Poo-Pouuri Before-You-Go toilet spray.

Turns out that your favorite go-to canola oil spray for non-stick cooking, like Pam Cooking Spray, also has some pretty stellar uses outside of the kitchen, too. Don’t believe us? Read ahead for a handful of surprisingly savvy ways to use cooking spray in your bathroom—yes, your bathroom—no skillet or cookie pans necessary. Who knew cooking spray could tackle soap scum buildup in your bathtub, shower, and sink?

Soap scum and water marks are ubiquitous in most showers and baths. So often we treat them as an inevitable nuisance that is hidden from most eyes and that we address when we deep clean the bathroom, have guests coming, or just can’t take it anymore. And then we look for quick fixes and hacks like the baggie method to tackle the clinging grime (nothing wrong with that!).

Welcome to Apartment Therapy’s Chore-Free Summer. Every weekday until July 20, we’re arming you with time-saving shortcuts and hacks that’ll help you work smarter, not harder, when it comes to homekeeping this summer. Because cleaning doesn’t have to be a chore. Cleaning the bathroom is an oft-reviled chore, and for very good reason. You’re forced to get intimate with your filth—and the filth of the people you live with.

Toilet plungers are not something we tend to discuss. But, for sure, we want them to work and we sure hope there’s one accessible if we—horror!—happen to need one in someone else’s bathroom. (By the way, this post has some great tips for how to unclog a toilet, should you find yourself without a plunger). Whether it’s through consideration for your guests or to equip your own home with the top tools for the job, we found the one toilet plunger to replace all others.

Cleaning the toilet happens to be not only among the most odorous of chores, but also one that simply must get done to maintain any modicum of cleanliness in your house. But no matter how regularly you clean it and how much of a stickler you are for doing it the “right” way, you may not end up with a toilet that looks or—ahem—smells as fresh as you’d like.

Toilet-cleaning ranks as one of the most dreaded of all household chores, and no wonder; it’s a dirty, dirty job. Personally, I don’t mind it that much because I’d much rather know it’s clean and shiny than put off doing it. Plus the more often you do it, the less yucky the whole ordeal is. There’s one part that always flummoxed me, though, until I had a silly epiphany that solved the problem.

This year, we’re on a mission to help you tackle spring cleaning on your time. Each weekday until April 13, we’ll guide you through a plan to clean and organize different areas of your home, but you’ll have the flexibility to choose exactly what to work on and how long you have to dedicate to the job. Nobody really likes cleaning, do they? I’m a home editor and I don’t even like cleaning. I enjoy having a clean home, of course.

You think New York City real estate is bad? You should see my bathroom counter. The door to the bathroom opens up right into the only natural place to put the vanity, which means there’s only one shallow, narrow space for the vanity to go — and one shallow, narrow space to work with when I’m getting ready in the morning. I used to drop my makeup bag and hair straightener right into the sink, but that got old fast every time I needed to rinse extra cheek tint off my hand.

Snaking the drain is one of those nasty jobs that we put off, and just deal with a clogged or slow draining sink or tub because we don’t want to bother with calling the landlord, or figuring out how to do it ourselves. Like so many things, after we actually do it, we realize it’s just not a big deal and wish we’d done it sooner. It’s also satisfying —and gross.

With the combination of dampness, soap scum, and grout and grooves, the place where we get ourselves clean isn’t always the cleanest place itself. However, having a few of the right tools in place makes it easy to create a do-it-now cleaning habit so you can keep the bathroom fresh perpetually. Use Fabric Shower Curtain Liners: Soap scum is any bathroom-cleaner’s nemesis. Getting it out of plastic shower curtains is impossible and, frankly, not worth the time even trying.

An immaculate bathroom is hard to find. Considering how much time you spend in your bathroom everyday, keeping it clean and fresh can have a real impact on how you feel. Unfortunately, even after you spend hours cleaning, bathrooms have a tendency to get grimy fast.

Warning. This is an awkward post. It’s deep winter and many of us are trapped indoors without the flow of fresh air from open windows. I, personally, have become quite conscious lately of daily smelly moments both at home with guests and at work (the elevator is the worst) where I’ve been trapped by someone passing gas or simply wished the bathroom at home would air out quicker. I myself will plead guilty on occasion.