Scrubless Solutions

My bathroom was filthy. I moved to a new set of digs about two months ago and it was like the bathroom had never been cleaned. The grout between the floor tiles was almost black and the grout on the shower walls was equally stained. There was mold and mildew on the caulking, and God knows what else that I couldn’t see.

I tried a few techniques in cleaning the place. Being a lazy man, I thought I could get away without exerting much effort. First I sprayed Lysol Tube and Tile Cleaner with Bleach, but that wasn’t effective without some serious scrub work. The same was true of Clorox Bleach Pen. In less-stained places the pen seemed to whiten the areas, but as soon as I went over the seriously stained spots, it was useless. Soft Scrub with Bleach probably worked the best out of all the cleaners I used, and after an hour and a half of scrubbing with a hard bristled brush, rinsing and repeating, the grout on the floor had returned to off-white and the shower tile grout reached the same, if not a cleaner, look. The thick layer of soap scum was also gone by the time I finished. Some of the mildew remained, especially in the silicon caulking along the tub, but if you ask me the cleaning was a success. While it is great that the bathroom now sparkles, keeping it that way could become exhausting.

My life doesn’t dictate spending a few hours a month scrubbing the tiles in my bathroom, so I have been looking into keeping the room clean with as little effort as possible. Scrubless cleaners may be the answer.

Before we get into cleaning products, let’s examine some of the problems you may face in your bathroom. Soap scum is a big one. Though not as unattractive looking as mildew and mold, a soap scum buildup can be really displeasing to the eye, especially on glass doors. The reason soap scum appears is due to a reaction between the minerals in the water and the soap, creating a residue, which though is thin, builds up after each interaction.

Mildew is a living organism that needs water and food to survive. The water source is obvious, but the food part may not be. As you clean fats and oils from your body, they mix with the soap and get deposited on the tiles and grout. This mixture allows for mildew to grow.

Now that you have the basic idea of what you are fighting against, here are some low-effort options for getting rid of them. Scrubbing Bubbles has a product for every chore. To clean the bathroom they’ve got an aerosol spray. They’ve got trigger sprays for soap scum and mildew remover. The directions are to spray, wait, then wipe clean. Pretty easy, right? To make things even easier they have a product called Shower Shine, a daily after-shower spray. This little concoction prevents mildew and soap scum from building up while it keeps the shower sparklingly clean. But their newest gadget is probably the most interesting. Just push a button and walk away. The Automatic Shower Cleaner hangs from your showerhead. When you finish your shower, you push a button on the battery operated cleaning device. It beeps for 15 seconds, giving you ample time to get out of the way and close the shower door or curtain. When ready, it automatically sprays its cleaning solution a distance of eight feet. The sprayer spins, so all the walls get covered with cleaner. You don’t have to do anything.

If you’re one of those folks who love infomercials, you’ll probably remember products like Kaboom and OxiClean. As annoying as those hosts may be, the products really do seem to work. For Kaboom, just spray, wait three minutes and rinse. OxiClean also works and is marketed as being better for the environment. It cleans through a basic chemical reaction that releases oxygen bubbles to help remove stains. It doesn’t contain chlorine or bleach and therefore is safer to use.

While these items seem to get the job done in a fairly clean bathroom, the truth is, nothing really does the trick like a hard day of scrubbing. Once you have gotten your bathroom thoroughly cleaned, you can use these products to help keep the tile shining. If you’re really looking for a no effort way to clean the bathroom, the only surefire way is to hire someone else to do the work for you.

– Christian McLean