Cleaning: tub/shower stall

Self-tutoring about household cleaning: the tutor mentions tub cleaners.

Cleaning a bathroom tub/shower stall that’s been used for a while can be more of a challenge than, for instance, cleaning a toilet. Yesterday I was cleaning my res room before handing back the keys, so I had to clean the tub, shower, and toilet. The toilet was no problem: no heavy duty cleaner was needed. The tub and shower stall, on the other hand, required a product called a “bathroom cleaner,” plus some elbow grease.

I’m generally very cautious around strong chemicals, so don’t like to use them unless I need to. The bathroom cleaner contains sodium hypochlorite (the active ingredient in bleach), plus sodium hydroxide, plus “surfactant.” All of those require serious caution – eye and skin protection, for a start. I put on eye protection and gloves, turned on the bathroom fan, twisted the sprayer to ON (it should always be OFF when not being used), and began spraying the target areas of the shower stall. I had a cleaning sponge, with a scrubbing side and a soft side.

It says on the product to spray the target area, then wait for it to penetrate. I would wait maybe 30sec to a minute after spraying, then start to scrub.

The rough side of the sponge I used for scrubbing, while the soft side, for wiping off the debris. I had a little margarine container with some water in it for rinsing. I would also use the tub itself as a reservoir for rinsing.

I found the job requires several passes over the surface: the first one removes a lot of dirt very quickly, and so on. The sponge needs to be rinsed often; the colour of the rinse water tells everything.

A couple of little spots I had to scrub quite hard, but generally, hard scrubbing wasn’t required.

The job took me about an hour. I could have done it more quickly, but I believe a slow, cautious approach is sometimes better – especially when chemicals are involved.

For rinsing the cleaned surface, a spray bottle full of water is useful.