How to Use Toilet Cleaners and Alternatives

There are many different commercially available toilet cleaners. These products all do a good job at cleaning your toilet. They do require using the old nasty scrub brush and it’s always a good idea to wear rubber gloves when using strong cleaners. If the stains in your toilet are very bad, I recommend using a plunger to lower the water level. Simply plunge the toilet a number of times until there are just a few inches of water left. Spray the stains with your toilet cleaner; let it sit for a few minutes to let it work on the stain with its full strength. Then scrub until the toilet is spotless. You can use hydrogen peroxide to clean your toilet. It’s safe for septic systems and easier on the environment!

In-tank toilet drop-ins are very popular because they limit how often you have to clean. They also help with reducing smells. These drop-ins usually contain bleach or other strong chemical cleaners. Make sure when you are cleaning your toilet that you do not mix chemicals. Using ammonia to clean a toilet with a bleach drop-in is a very dangerous idea!

I have always had a problem with drop-in cleaners. I find that as they dissolve they tend to break apart and can stop the seal from forming around the stopper causing the toilet to keep running. I have come up with a great solution for this. I place the drop-ins into the feet from old panty-hose. You can also use cheesecloth which is available at most cooking stores if you don’t have access to old panty-hose. Tie off the top of the panty-hose and hang them from the side of the toilet tank with a couple of paper clips bent backwards. By putting two drop-ins into the panty-hose and by adjusting the height of the drop-ins to suspend the tablets halfway out of the water, you don’t have to add new drop-in tablets as often.

Avoid Toilet Cleaners with a Little Maintenance!

• Going to be away for awhile? Pour 1/4 cup of bleach into the bowel before you leave to come home to a sanitized and cleaned bowel.
• To keep rings from forming, pour a half-gallon of white vinegar in the bowel every four weeks. Close the lid and let it soak overnight before flushing.
• To avoid a slow drain and to minimize odors, pour one cup baking soda down your toilet weekly. With just a few simple steps, you can all but remove the need for breaking out the nasty scrub brush and rubber gloves!

Related Posts:

• Toilet Cleaning Tips
• How to Correctly Plunge a Toilet 
• Bathroom Storage Ideas

Bathroom Storage Ideas

Do you need more bathroom storage? I always do. Luckily, I found a few tips to help maximize the limited space that I have. When I moved into my current residence, I found out that the small bathroom closet was only a few inches deep. The medicine cabinet behind the mirror was the same. It was obvious that they were afterthoughts to the construction of the room and had to be fit into the width of the wall that they were set into. Now, as we all know, toilet paper is always cheaper in the 16 pack, for about a buck more you can go from 250 Q-tips to 1,000, and multi-packs of toothpaste and contact lens solution are always the best deal. Given the fact that not one bottle of contact lens solution will fit in my medicine cabinet; I had to look for other bathroom storage ideas.

To create more bathroom storage, I looked into utilizing my wasted space.

I found an over-the-toilet shelving unit at our local home store. It has adjustable legs and shelves allowing it to fit over any toilet. It is 12 inches deep and the shelves easily accommodate towels and tons of toilet paper. By adding a few aesthetic touches, you can draw the eyes of your guests away from the fact that the shelves are covered with toilet paper. It also stores my bars of soap and excess Q-tips.

Another bathroom storage tip was to purchase a small corner vanity. Because it has three shelves with doors on them, it is the perfect place to hide the bathroom necessities that we all have. We put a small plant on top and it makes a great accent piece in the wasted space that was just a small corner.

The final tip to improve your bathroom storage is to select one shelf in an adjacent room for the larger items. We keep our guest towels, the remainder of our bulk bathroom needs, and extra shampoo on the very top shelf of the bedroom’s closet that is nearest the bathroom. This serves as the primary storage for both of our bathrooms.

Now our medicine cabinet actually just contains medicine, razors, and the like. By finding better ways to utilize our wasted space in our bathroom, our bathroom storage problem is a thing of the past!

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• Closet Cleaning Tips 
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Homemade Clorox Wipe Cleaing Tool

As with most of us, I am always interested in finding new ways to make tasks that I don't enjoy quicker and easier. I was recently watching a TV ad for a car window cleaner that was pretty much a scrubbing pad on a stick. It didn't really impress me, until I was cleaning my bathroom. I like to use Clorox disinfecting cleaning wipes around the toilet and sink. They are quick and easy for the fast cleanups. They do a great job on the tile floor as well, but I hate having to put my face in the toilet to wipe up behind it, especially in the guest bathroom!

My mind went back to the car window cleaner. If only I could attach the disinfecting wipes to a scrubber pad with a short handle, it would make my life so easy. I went looking for anything that I could use and found the perfect handle. Our old dish scrubber with the plastic handle! The scrubbing pad was almost completely gone, but the handle was perfect. I drilled a small hole through the handle and I wrap the disinfecting wipe over the end and push a small nail through the holes securing it to the remains of the scrubbing pad end. The handle is curved and gets into all of the tight spaces around my toilet! Seeing as how we were just going to throw the dish scrubber away, I was very happy with how it turned out. I am now thinking about attaching two alligator clips to the handle to make changing pads easier.

Please let us know about any unique cleaning contraptions that you have come up with. Not all of us love to clean, but we all love getting done faster!

Homemade General All-Purpose Cleaner

It is quite simple to create an All-Purpose homemade cleaner. Just mix 1 part water and 1 part distilled white vinegar into a spray bottle. This cleaner works great on counter tops, glass, mirrors and toilets. The acidic properties of vinegar make it a mild disinfectant, great for cleaning after cooking. Because this cleaner is acidic, NEVER use it on Granite.

Sanitize and Disinfect With Steam

In my post The Great Big Green Lie I wrote about how green cleaners do not disinfect. My favorite way to disinfect and sanitize my home is with steam. I have been using a Scunci Steam Cleaner for years to do just that. Steam is a wonderful sanitizer and is friendly to the environment. One of the best locations to use a steam cleaner is the toilet. The steam really gets into all those cracks and crevices around where the seat hinges meet the bowl. I haven't found anything that can clean that area better. We use it every week to sanitize our kitchen sink, as many things like to grow there. Steam will also cut grease very well. Open up the top cover to your stove and watch that black stuff just melt away. Remember to use distilled water in your steam cleaner to make sure it lasts a long time.

Borax, The Wonder Cleaner For Over a Hundred Years

Borax, also known as sodium borate and sodium tetraborate, is one of the great cleaners that has been passed down for generations. It was discovered in 1872 and didn't take long until it's powers as a cleaner were unleashed. It works as an oxidizer, and when dissolved in water will create an alkaline antiseptic solution that is a disinfectant, detergent, deodorizer and water softener. It also has lots of commercial uses in the manufacture of many products.

Borax is a naturally occurring mineral, but is toxic. You should always wear gloves when working with it as it absorbed through the skin and takes a long time to work its way out of your system. Keep it away from children, and no matter what you read on the Internet, never bath your pet in it. I have listed it here during eco-cleaning week because it is a natural salt, but it still is dangerous and must be handled carefully.

Borax is good at cleaning tubs, carpet stains, sinks, and mildew. It works great as a laundry booster and is an ingredient of many brands. For laundry it works especially well on curry, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, vomit, and red wine stains. It also works as a deodorizer for carpets and cloths. I use it most often to remove the rings in my toilets.

Awesome Trick for Cleaning Your Toilet Easier

This is one of those things that I think will make everyone's lives a little easier and cleaner! Before cleaning your toilet bowl, plunge the bowl a few times with your plunger to reduce the water level in the bowl. This gives your cleaning product direct access to any stains, reduces the dilution of the cleaning agent, and reduces the amount of splashing during cleaning. Happy toilet cleaning!

How To Plunge Your Toilet Correctly

My wife always had trouble plunging the toilet. She was doing it incorrectly, making the job much harder than it needed to be. She was trying to force the clogged items down by pushing really hard on the plunger handle. She didn't realize that she was compacting the clog. Once I showed her the proper way, she has had no trouble at all.

The best way to plunge a toilet is to slowing push the plunger down until it makes a good seal over the hole at the bottom of the toilet, then pull the plunger handle quickly towards yourself. This will pull the clog back towards you, allowing the clog to loosen. Once the clog is loose enough it will free the clog and the toilet will flow cleanly.

Most clogs are caused by flushing items that shouldn't be flushed. Paper towels are once of the worst offenders. They are specially designed not to break apart in water like toilet paper, so they tend to wad up into a ball clogging the toilet.

Just remember, PULL not PUSH.

Toilet Bowel Tips and Tricks

Going to be away for awhile? Pour 1/4 cup of bleach into the bowel before you leave to come home to a sanitized and cleaned bowel. Never use bleach or any other strong cleanser in your toilet if you use automatic chemical releasers, unless you do a little research first. Bleach will react with many of them! To keep rings from forming, pour a half-gallon of white vinegar in the bowel every four weeks or so. Close the lid and let it soak overnight before flushing. To avoid a slow drain and to minimize odors, pour one cup baking soda down your toilet weekly. With just a few simple steps, you can all but remove the need for breaking out the nasty scrub brush and rubber gloves!