My first attempt at making my own household cleaners was a smashing success...and I have pictures to prove it.
A little background: We just moved into a brand new house but we are already having trouble with iron stains in our bathroom fixtures. While my dear husband is working on a solution to our hard water problem, the job of keeping the fixtures from staining has fallen to me.
Last week I used some kind of commercial grade toilet bowl cleaner - it didn't work. I ended up buying some Iron Out, which worked but made my nostrils and throat burn like crazy.
Yesterday I decided to break out the vinegar and baking soda and see what they could do. I started with this:
A little background: We just moved into a brand new house but we are already having trouble with iron stains in our bathroom fixtures. While my dear husband is working on a solution to our hard water problem, the job of keeping the fixtures from staining has fallen to me.
Last week I used some kind of commercial grade toilet bowl cleaner - it didn't work. I ended up buying some Iron Out, which worked but made my nostrils and throat burn like crazy.
Yesterday I decided to break out the vinegar and baking soda and see what they could do. I started with this:
(I promise, I JUST cleaned this toilet 3 days ago and it already looks like this)
And I ended up with this:
Here's the step-by-step instructions:
1. Plunge toilet. (TIP: It does absolutely no good to pour cleaner of any kind into a bowl full of water. It just dilutes the solution which is totally counter productive.) I have this toilet brush which does a great job.
2. After the water level is down, sprinkle baking soda in the stool and vigorously scrub the surface with a rough kitchen sponge.
3. Spray vinegar over the entire surface of the bowl.
4. Pour some vinegar on your baking soda caked sponge and scrub some more. This should coat your bowl in a nice white fizz.
5. Let it sit for 1 hour. (I don't actually think you need to leave it this long - I intended to check it after 30 minutes, but got distracted.)
6. Scrub off stains. I had to use some elbow grease, but they came off pretty easily.
I have to admit, I was pretty impressed with the results. Chalk one up for natural cleaners!
That's impressive! I would keep the supplies under the sink and do it every day to prevent it from getting too bad and it's natural so it's safe to do so! Three days uh? That's really hard water!
ReplyDeleteBreeze
Nice work! Wow, you are really brave. I don't think I would ever have the guts to post a pre-cleaning photo of any of our toilets...
ReplyDeleteWow! good job!
ReplyDeleteThis is good stuff, it worked great! I came across your blog while searching for natural cleaners. One thing I noticed is that you actually don't have to let it sit long at all for it to do its job. After using the baking soda and vinegar, I still had some stains deep in the bowl, similar to your iron stains above. So I poured in some more vinegar along with some lemon juice (nicer smell). I left it not 10 minutes and all stains were dissolved. No scrubbing required. Awesome!
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