September 30, 2018 – New cleaning tips -  I am currently trying

Sinks:

         When I was a teenager, I read Cosmopolitan magazine.  I remember a romance article where the heroine hand washed her cashmere sweater in order to get her filthy bathroom sink clean.  The narrative of that sad woman upset with her love life deciding to wash her filthy sink before washing her cashmere sweater made a lasting impression on me. She actually shared more about her dirty bathroom sink than about her falling apart love life.

         Since those teenage days, I equate a dirty bathroom sink with a sad love life.  I’ve even commented mentally to myself in a jesting way when my bathroom sink looks grimy – time to hand wash a few sweaters and scrutinize my love life. [Yes, I do hand wash sweaters still.]

         I am retired and I am in my bathroom more often than when I was working. [Reason of course, I was in my work place bathroom during the hours 8 to 5].  Now, I am gardening and have to come and scrub up from the dirt and mud on my hands.  My bathroom sink is catching such heavy traffic these last few years of retirement.

         One morning I scrubbed the bathroom sink after I brushed my teeth and admired the gleaming faucets and sparkling bowel.  Three hours later, after I’d made a couple of bathroom trips, [You know, too much morning coffee], and I was washing the mud off my hands I noticed the sink faucet was covered in water spots and soapy hand residue splashes.  I wasn’t happy.  I’d just cleaned the darn sink that morning. Clean can’t last three hours?

         I thought I must be doing something wrong.  I obviously don’t know how to wash my hands if just washing my hands turns my bathroom sink into a pig sty in a matter of hours.  As I am washing my hands, I am staring at these hard water spots mixed with soap.  I rinse my hands, and turn off the faucet.  There it is – therein lies the problem.  My hands are wet and drip, drip, dripped all over the faucet I am turning off.

         I thought, what if I don’t turn the water off with wet hands, but instead grab a hand towel and wipe my hands first and then turn off the faucet.  I create no new drops that way.

         Maybe I’d fallen onto an idea to keep the bathroom sink clean.  I grabbed a stack of face cloths, stacked them near the sink.  I scrubbed the sink down until it glistened back at me.

         The rest of the day when I washed my hands, I left the water running, grabbed a face cloth, wiped my hands and then used the face cloth to turn off the water.  No hard water droplets left on the chrome faucet.  It wasn’t the action of the washing of my hands, it was the turning off the tap with wet hands that was creating all this water spot and spatter mess.

         I continued this for the next few days and noticed I don’t have to scrub down my sink very often.  The wet face cloths are tossed in the laundry basket and I grab a fresh one each time. 

         Yes – I am on to something.  It has been two months now and I am still grabbing a freshly laundered face cloth to dry my hands before I turn off the faucet. I turn the faucet off with the face cloth, then toss it in the laundry.  Cheaper than paper towels – I solved that little problem. My bathroom sink now looks presentable all the time.

         Then, I assessed the kitchen sink.  I splash that sink as well.  I took a dishtowel and rolled it up like a sausage and tucked it behind the faucet along the back of the sink.  I notice less mess to clean up and every few days I whisk it away and put in a fresh dish towel.  Yes, bathroom and kitchen sinks now looking better.

Shower stall:

         After my hamstring pull got better, I could get down on all fours and caught up on scrubbing my glass shower stall doors and fiberglass enclosure again. It had gotten short shrift when I had a bum leg.  [I actually think cleaning is exercise – even though doctors say it is not.]

I got it sparkling clean with using full strength Castile soap on one of those magic erasers making small circular motions all up and down and around.  Then I rinsed it clean and wiped it dry. 

On the glass shower doors, after I got the hard water spots off, I took baby oil and wiped them down and buffed them.  I found that technique in one of those “clean everything” books.  It works wonderful – give it a try.

My shower stall is not one smooth landscape and I’ve tried using a squeegee in the past and never seem to get enough of the water off and am left with hard water spots as the squeegee doesn’t get into the lips and edges.

Just a few days later after my robust shower cleaning, I noticed when the late afternoon sun came glinting in that bathroom – the shower looked awful.  Those darn hard water spots back again. The shower doors looked fine, it was the shower walls that looked like I hadn’t cleaned them in weeks – when I’d just cleaned them a day or two before.

Oh sure, I’ve tried that after shower spray and I don’t see how it keeps anything clean – it sort of sticks to the hard water spots and then you still have to scrub.  I consider that spray just like spraying hair spray on your head and the residue falling on your bathroom floor.  You have to scrub it up.  That is the reason I don’t use hairspray – I don’t want to scrub it off the floor. [Also, I don’t like the way it feels on my hair anyway.]

I had a pale yellow tiled bathroom in Kansas once and I used a bath towel to wipe it down after each use, but all that did was increase my laundry.

A few days later, I was well enough to give my car a serious scrub down and spray wax treatment.  In doing so, I use an Absorba chamois.  It is a synthetic chamois, and I wipe the water off the car by section, wring it out and continue.  It dries the car, gives is a nice shine, and then I proceed to the spray wax treatment.

Why am I not using a chamois to dry my shower after each use?  That won’t fill my laundry with excess bath towels.

I’ve been doing that now for about a month and guess what – I don’t have to scrub the heck out of my shower stalls to get those hard water stains off. 

It took me a little bit of time to get the technique down.  I now have it broken up into sections on how much I wipe down before the chamois is wet and starts to leave water spots.  I then wring it out and continue.  I leave the chamois on the inside of the shower door to dry. 

Yes, it takes a little time, but I have it down to 78 seconds. I count a loud.  I work from the top to the bottom, I do the floor next to last and then finally do the doors.

I think I finally got a handle on a few more housekeeping issues.  Give them a try, see if they work for you, too.