A Naturally Clean and Fresh Bathroom
I love a clean bathroom, and it is actually one of my favorite rooms to clean. Others may say “Ewww!” It’s true, cleaning the hair off of the floor and scrubbing the ring in a tub may not exactly be glamorous tasks. But I get so excited with the finished product that the gunky process doesn’t bother me for the most part.
What does bother me are nasty, stinky, bad-for-you cleaning products that hang in the air like a bad perfume. But fear not! Getting a clean and fresh bathroom doesn’t require those harmful chemicals! With just a few inexpensive items and a little bit of effort, you can easily enjoy a naturally clean and fresh bathroom.
What I Use to Clean the Bathroom
I use a handful of ingredients to get our bathroom fresh and clean. I do almost all of our cleaning with the same ingredients because they are inexpensive, effective, and harmless.
The Stars:
- Baking soda (affiliate link) for gentle scrubbing, degunking, and deodorizing
- Vinegar for degunking, disinfecting, and degreasing
- Hydrogen peroxide for disinfecting and whitening when used with baking soda
- Essential oils (affiliate link) like tea tree, eucalyptus, lemon, or peppermint for a touch of natural scent and disinfecting
Easy Steps to Get the Bathroom Naturally Clean
The Process
- Mirrors, fixtures, and surfaces get wiped down with a half-vinegar/half-water solution that I keep in a spray bottle. I also usually add 1 t. of essential oil to the solution. I usually have to declutter the sink-tops, too. It’s amazing what my children seem to think belongs there.
- Sink bowls and tubs get scoured out with baking soda and the vinegar spray. I put about one tablespoon of baking soda in each sink bowl, and about 1/4 c of baking soda sprinkled around in the tub. I spray enough vinegar solution into each to make a paste with the baking soda and scrub away. I also spray extra in the tub to make sure the notorious ring gets dissolved. The vinegar really goes to work on that gunk! So long as I haven’t let the tub go for too long, this doesn’t take too much scrubbing from me.
- Shower walls generally just need scrubbed with the vinegar solution, but occasionally seem to have some soap build-up in certain spots. When that happens, I use a little baking soda to scrub away. I rinse the tub and walls with some water after they are scrubbed.
- The toilet bowl receives about 1/4-1/2 cup of baking soda dumped in (I really don’t measure, of course), a few drops of tea tree oil, and a splash of peroxide (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 cup again). Sometimes I use vinegar in place of the peroxide, but I think the finished bathroom smells fresher with peroxide. Either will work, though. After scrubbing with the toilet brush, I leave it set until someone needs to use the restroom.
- The floor is wiped down with… take a guess… bleach! Just kidding. I spray it with the vinegar bottle and wipe it down, moving myself out of the room. I also wipe down our baseboards when I do this because they are white and new and seeing them dirty would make me sad. For now.
- The inside shower curtain is washable, so I try to watch it for build-up of soap or rust. We have very rusty water, and even with a sediment filter and whole-house water filtration system, I still notice a little rust. I’ve tried soaking the bottom of the curtain in baking soda and vinegar before washing in hot water, and that seems to help. I’d love to hear other suggestions for this one! *Update: The fabric shower curtain liner is clean! It’s easy. Read how in this post.*
- Our toothbrushes are soaked upside-down in a small cup filled with peroxide. It disinfects and brightens them and is simple to do when I have the supplies out already.
I know, all of our toothbrushes are in one container of peroxide. I probably get more comments on this picture than anything else! That’s okay. The peroxide disinfects the toothbrushes, so to me, this is like throwing all of our family’s spoons into one sink of water to wash. They are each rinsed after soaking, too. However, if you are more concerned, you can put each toothbrush in it’s own cup of peroxide.
That’s about it! We all have our differently cleaning processes and preferences, and I’d love to hear any additional tips and tricks for keeping a bathroom naturally clean.