There are plenty of individuals in the world who believe that cleaning a toilet only requires a swish around the bowl with a toilet brush and a wipe down of the seat and outer porcelain with a wet cloth. These individuals are wrong, and as a result probably don’t have very clean bathrooms!
Brevity aside; bathroom surfaces tend to get dirty very quickly due to the residue floating around (hair, makeup residue, hair products and a million other things). Not only is all of that stuff on your toilet’s surface; it’s also mixing with the residue from what goes in the toilet. With that in mind, we can safely agree that keeping your toilet clean is a little more involved than the cursory steps mentioned above.
To keep your porcelain throne fresh, un-smelly and hygienic, our first suggestion is use a commercially available toilet bowl cleaning product. These products are largely bleach based, and will do most of the leg work for you. Clorox makes a slow-dissolving tablet that you just drop in the tank on the back of your toilet. According to their marketing, these tablets are supposed to last up to two months, with the caveat that the product is most effective in toilets that are flushed daily. With each flush of the toilet, the tablet dissolves slightly, letting the active cleaning ingredients travel with the water, refreshing the toilet bowl and taking 99.9% of bacteria, they assure us.
This method is fairly effective and would only require you to give the the inner bowl a good scrub with a toilet brush and spray-on cleaning solution every two or three weeks. This is a great solution for condo owners or busy home owners who don’t have a whole lot of cleaning time. A great recommended spray-on cleaner is Scrubbing Bubbles’ Multi Surface Bathroom Cleaner. Keep in mind that this spray can be used for pretty much every tile or porcelain surface in your bathroom. If a more natural solution would suit you better (it does suit Maidstr better as we focus on green products), check out our article on Easy Natural Bathrooms!
For cleaning the exterior of your toilet, one of the spray-on cleaning agents we just mentioned is all you’ll need. Simply coat the entire unit with the spray. Allow 30 to 45 seconds for the agent to settle, then proceed to wipe down with your choice of cloth. While any cleaning cloth will suffice, we recommend a microfiber cloth, as they’re easy to clean after using, and don’t need to be replaced as often. When wiping, make sure you switch to drier sections of the cloth as you wipe, to avoid transferring old residue from cloth to the porcelain.
Wrapping up; don’t make cleaning your toilet difficult on yourself! A long lasting toilet cleaner and a thorough scrub every two to three weeks should be all you need, but as always if you find yourself in a bind and need that mess taken care of, Maidstr is your professional, on-demand home and condo cleaning service for the Toronto and Guelph areas!