When it comes to cleaning, of all the rooms in the house, the bathroom is the one that most fills one with a pervasive sense of dread. It's such a daunting task - soap scum, mildew, hair, toothpaste stains... Even thinking about it makes one tense around the shoulders. However, it need not be such a chore. Instead of the occasional all-day horror, it is much easier to keep a bathroom clean than to clean it from the ground up.
If you currently need to spend some serious time in your bathroom to get it up to polite society standards, that is beyond the scope of this article. However, if you are looking for advice on keeping it in a clean and welcoming state, read on. Most of the effort necessary to keep your bathroom clean involves adding mere seconds on to your bathroom activities - wipe down sink and the surrounding area with bathroom tissue if there is water around the sink after using it, rinse the sink thoroughly after brushing your teeth to ensure no toothpaste is clinging to sides, to prevent toothpaste stains, etc.
If you have an exhaust fan, make use of it. This may seem like common sense, but it is not unheard of for people to forgo the fan in favor of opening a window. Although the latter option may be more immediately effective, it lets in dust, dirt, and all other manner of unwanted things, and will likely increase the humidity of the bathroom overall. Turning the fan on before your shower and leaving it on for twenty to thirty minutes after will help reduce mildew and mold accumulation. There are countless shower sprays available today that require no rinsing. Just shower, spray, and walk away. While it's not a substitute for a thorough scrubbing, misting the interior of your shower with an after shower spray will help keep your shower fresher between cleanings, and extend the amount of time between required cleanings. You can accomplish quite a bit with just a few seconds of effort.
Perhaps most dreaded is the toilet. Nobody wants a dirty toilet, but no one wants to clean one. Automatic bowl cleaners are indispensable for keeping the toilet bowl fresh. This will help keep your bathroom smelling nicer, but, like the shower spray, will extend the gap between necessary cleanings. When you do clean out the toilet bowl, if you are really jittery about scrubbing, there are a multitude of 'disposable' solutions - many name brand cleaners have cleaning wands with disposable scrubbing heads. After cleaning, the heads can be detached and let go into the garbage can with the press of a button. No more dealing with the frightening, questionable toilet scrubber.
The majority of this information should be common knowledge - common sense. These are things we all tell ourselves all the time, but we do not take the time to actually follow through. But following through on these simple steps - putting in a few extra seconds worth of effort, here and there - will not only decrease the frequency of those epic bathroom cleaning battles, but significantly reduce the effort required to complete them. It's a small price to pay for a consistently clean bathroom, and the much improved peace of mind that comes from knowing it won't be so bad to clean down the road.
Annie Deakin is a journalist, fashion and furniture expert and editor at mydeco.com who is currently interested in
bathroom,
bunk beds and
kitchen furniture.
