Happy Hausfrau: Soap Scum KILLA

A while back, I posted about the power of grapefruit and salt as a fabulous bathroom cleaner.  It works like a charm, but it does require some elbow grease…something I’m woefully short on these days (8 months, 2 weeks preggo as of writing this post).  So I was in the market for something that worked a little easier, but was still relatively eco-friendly, and easy on the budget.

Enter the blog LIFE, CRAFTS, & WHATEVER.  This blogger (Jen) did a post on the miracle of hot white vinegar and Dawn, and I thought I’d give it a shot.  Even though my soap-scum build-up wasn’t too bad, I was eager to try it, because (a) the only kind of good soap scum is NO soap scum, and (b) it looked pretty easy.

Here’s what I gathered to make the cleaner:

9 oz Dawn, White Vinegar, Mixing bowl w/ spout, measuring cup, empty spray bottle. Ignore the tequila in the back. That's what's left of last years Margarita Christmas Party.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s what one of our shower doors looked like before the vinegar/Dawn treatment.

The soap-scum is kinda hard to see - getting a good shot of it was tough!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After following Jen’s instructions for making the solution, I set to work spraying.  Easy-peasy.  But I don’t have any pics, because I didn’t trust myself with the camera/phone and spray bottle all at once.  I’m super-clumsy these days.  Trying to manage the kicking watermelon that is my belly is enough of a challenge as it is – I need at least one hand to steady myself.  🙂

Once I was done spraying, I put my feet up for about an hour.  Checked email.  Promoted some friends’ blogs on Twitter.  Played Tinkerbell dolls with my daughter.  Freaked out over the excerpt from her WIP that my friend Angela posted on her blog.

Then I went set to work, wiping the doors and tile and tubs down.  Here’s what the after looks like:

Again, getting a decent shot was tough...but the glass was much, much cleaner!!

Overall, I thought the Dawn/Vinegar solution did a FABULOUS job on the glass soap scum.  I think it would have done an equally good job on the actual tubs had I sprayed it on and left it overnight…but since we had company coming over, I didn’t want to bother with it.

Two things I didn’t dig about it:

*The smell.  It wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, but it certainly wasn’t grapefruit-lovely.

*I used the solution on my tile, as well, and the Dawn stained the white grout.  I’m really hoping that since Dawn is relatively gentle that this will go away after one or two showers…otherwise I’ll be at it with a toothbrush.  At which point I’ll be muttering to myself, “Shoulda just used the grapefruit…”

Overall, if you have a soap-scum problem on your shower glass, I’d definitely recommend trying it.  The worse the problem, the longer you should plan to leave the solution on.

Happy cleaning!

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