It works!

I said earlier that I would experiment with alternative uses for dryer sheets, among them cleaning soap scum from a shower door.  The results are in:  it works beautifully!  It took two dryer sheets to clean our shower door.  It does take a bit of elbow grease, but no more than it would take to scrub it with a bathroom cleaner and sponge.  Also, the technique only works if the door is dry; otherwise, the dryer sheets just get soggy.  Supposedly, dryer sheets also sort of coat the door's surface with something that keeps them clean a bit longer, so my next task is to see whether that one's true as well.

My apologies

If anyone other than immediate family has used our "guest" (front) bathroom within the past month...I owe you a sincere apology.

I had no idea there was a spider living behind the door, subsisting quite comfortably on the fat crop of bugs in his web.  (We're working on getting Mini-me to close the door when she uses the bathroom, so he'd had complete privacy for a while.)

It's news to me that, if you don't wash the storage bag for the bath toys, it will leave a soap scum silhouette on the bathtub wall.  (Duly noted; this is a new monthly chore!)

Who'd have guessed that Cuddles enjoys chewing on toothbrushes, and that there were three half-digested toothbrushes stored under the sink on top of the stack of fresh towels?  (In the future, they will be stored in a secure location.)

In short...this bathroom needed a lot of attention, and it finally got it tonight after the kiddos went to sleep.

Action Plan:
1.  Clean light fixture
2.  Clean mirror
3.  Clean sink
4.  Clean toilet
5.  Clean tub
6.  Wash all bath toys, rugs, and towels
7.  Wipe down baseboards and mop floor

The light fixture was the same kind as the one in the master bath, but smaller, so I made short work of that.  After cleaning and re-installing the bulbs and shining the mirror behind them, the light in the bathroom was almost blinding.  The bathroom is painted bright orange -- the kids love it! -- and it was sort of like working in a giant highlighter.

Cleaning the sink was no special chore, but I did take a moment to marvel at the amount of pink toothpaste two small girls can manage to affix to a bathroom sink.

It was when I started tackling the toilet that I noticed the full extent of the bathroom's need for attention.  The toilet itself wasn't bad; I take pride in cleaning out the bowl and the surface about once a week.  However, the floor around it was in rough shape.  Here's the thing:  the wasted space in the master bath seems to have appeared at the cost of space in the front bath, and it's a tight little room.  There's not really room to mop or sweep, so...I just let it go.  I'll be brutally honest when I say I can't remember the last time I mopped this bathroom.  On the floor and in the corners around the toilet were dust, dog hair, toothpaste drops, dead bugs, tiny rubber bands, toddler hair, sand...the list goes on.  Honestly, I was so appalled at my lack of effort in keeping the floor at least moderately clean that I scrubbed it with renewed vigor on my hands and knees.  I made three passes:  once with ammonia while cleaning the toilet, once with apple cider vinegar, and once with a Lysol wipe for good measure.  By golly, that floor sparkled when I was done with it!

I took a break from the floor to address the bathtub.  It wasn't horrendously dirty, but it's easy to skip cleaning the tub:  if company's coming, I just pull the curtain and save it for later.  That said, the scrubbing bubbles did their job well, and after a quick wipe-down (and removal of all toys for a run through the dishwasher) I felt content with my results.

On that note, though, I have a verdict on the scrubbing bubbles:  they work, and I'll finish using the can, but I doubt I'll buy any more.  After yet another evening enduring a headache caused by the fumes from cleaning, I don't think it's worth it, and I do feel a bit "safer" breathing in vinegar rather than unidentified chemical fumes.

My last task was to wipe out the crevices above and on the door, just as I have in the rest of the house.  It was while I was doing that, though, that I happened to glance down and notice the fingerprints and smudges at the three-foot mark.  Thinking back to yesterday's experience in the laundry room, I guess I've learned yet another lesson:  to get the house really, really clean I need to examine it from the level of a four-year-old.  When I knelt down to clean the smudges, I noticed a pretty consistent ring of them around the hallway, which also happens to be one of very few unpainted areas in the house.  Another item to add to My Love's to-do list?  Or maybe a "vacation" while the kids stay with their grandparents and we spent the weekend painting.  It sounds romantic...

Master Bath: Part B

In addition to having a particularly large bathroom and being exposed to heavy chemical smells, I recognized another reason cleaning this room is taking so long:  since it's in a far-removed part of the house, I can't clean and watch/entertain my kids at the same time.  Yesterday (and today) I spent lots of time cleaning part of something, then checking on the kids, then running back to finish.  I also did the bulk of my cleaning while Baby Boy was sleeping, since I don't like to leave him in a room alone with his well-meaning but rough-loving sisters for more than a moment at a time.

Day 2 Action Plan:

1.  Clean shower

2.  Clean garden tub

3.  Clean door

4.  File loose papers 

5.  Sweep and mop and clean baseboards

Our shower has been a source of frustration for me ever since we moved into this house.  Seriously...when we first looked at it a few years ago, I told My Love that I hated the back yard (which has a steep incline and is therefore nearly unusable as a back yard) and that I hated the stand-up shower.  The price was right, though, so we figured that the two areas I disliked could be amended later.  As it turns out, those fixes are costly and time-consuming, and it's been much easier to simply live with things the way they are.  But I digress.

This shower...it's small.  It's not a luxury stand-up shower, with a seat.  It barely leaves room for me to shave my legs.  It's just the right size for ONE person.  There is no shelf space for shampoos, shaving creams, soaps, gels, and all the other things women store in their shower.  And on top of that, it's very difficult to clean.  You basically have to assume that you WILL get wet while leaning across the water stream to reach the far wall, so I've found that a sound technique is to clean the shower immediately before I plan to get in it.  Today, this meant cleaning it at 6:00 in the morning after returning from my a.m. run.  I doused it with the scrubbing bubble spray and left to have a glass of water.  When I returned ten minutes later, I was able to simply wipe down the majority of the unsightly gunk that had accumulated.  Really, I am consistently amazed by how dirty a shower can get when its entire purpose is to clean someone.  Between the dirt that washes off after My Love mows the lawn (which sticks to the floor), my hair clogging the drain (it's coming out in wads postpartum), soap scum (which is strange in and of itself), and dust along the top edges, our shower always seems dirty.  After I scrub it, I always want to scrub myself!  Today, though, the scrubbing bubbles did the job quickly, except that I had to go over some particularly tough soap scum a second time.  I also heard that you can use a dryer sheet to get soap scum off of shower doors, but I forgot to try it this time until after the cleaning was done.  Next time I'll give it a shot.

Next came the huge garden tub.  It's nice for a bubble bath, but I don't have the time for that very often.  I cleaned this with my scrubbing bubble cleaner too, and I learned a hard lesson:  it has bleach in it.  In order to reach the back side of the tub, I had to sit on the front side...and, apparently, the scrubbing bubbles hadn't been completely removed when I did.  I ended up with a few little white polka dots on my lavender (yep, you read that right) shorts.  (I think I can salvage them; apparently you can paint with bleach and make it look like you meant for that to happen.  I may try it in all my spare time.)  The biggest issue I had with cleaning the tub, though, is that when My Love painted the bathroom a few years ago, he left lots of tiny (pin-head-sized) flecks of paint on the tub.  It always looks dirty now, but I can't figure out a way to get them off.  Then again, I haven't tried mineral spirits...that is sort of out of my league, and we don't have any in the house.

We store our file cabinet in this random corner of our oversized bathroom that's not good for anything else.  It's a closet-sized nook in the bathroom behind the door, and it's got a small window in it.  Basically, that means that it's always either ten degrees hotter or colder than the rest of the room.  Because it's out of the way, it has been a convenient place to store my Sam's Club purchases (36-roll package of toilet paper, anyone?) and the file cabinet.  But...since no one sees the file cabinet, it's been easy to just pile papers on top of it until I feel like filing.  And the last time I felt like it was back before David was born.  So I took a break from the heady fragrance of the bathroom and sorted all my papers to file on the bed, then found them a permanent home.  Again, the visible lack of clutter and sense of order gave me a big boost that allowed me to keep on with my cleaning.

And finally...the floor.  One more set of baseboards gone over with a Lysol wipe; one more application of my fantastic Libman broom and mop, paired with ACV.  (I've got this down to an art.)  After two days of effort, the master bathroom smelled, looked, and felt cleaner than it has in months!

Master Bath: Part A

Our master bathroom is much bigger than is really necessary.  Don't take that as a complaint; it just seems to sort of spread in all directions, meaning both that there is plenty of elbow room when My Love and I are both trying to get ready in the morning AND that it took me two days of work to clean it.

We have a double sink, a stand-up shower and large garden tub, a small area that we use like a closet (with no door), and, of course, the toilet.  Basically, I divided the bathroom in half and cleaned the east-facing wall on day one and the west-facing wall on day two.

Day 1 Action Plan:
1.  Clean light fixture
2.  Clean sinks, mirror, and counter tops
3.  Clean out under sinks and in drawers and wipe down cabinet and drawer fronts
4.  Clean toilet
5.  Wipe down all exposed surfaces (toilet paper holder, towel rack)

I don't think I ever noticed the wide assortment of light fixtures in our house until I started on my cleaning spree.  Really, it's kind of entertaining to examine each one and figure out how to remove each piece of it.  The one in the master bath was particularly engaging.  It was a long, think mirror with eight exposed light bulbs on it.  Each had to be removed, wiped with ACV, and then replaced.  The mirror itself needed cleaning with Windex, but it was difficult to clean around the light sockets.  The process took a while, because I had to wait until the bulbs were cool to start; then, I had to wait until they were dry again to re-install them.  (I had visions of electrocuting myself with a damp lightbulb...yet another occupational hazard that might pop up during housekeeping.)  Also, the edges of the mirror were sharp; My Love had cut his finger once while installing a light bulb a few years ago.  Despite the trouble, I got the instant gratification I needed to feel like it was a job well done.  The bulbs seemed to have black, burnt spots on them; as it turned out, it was just flambeed dust.  Once the dust was removed and the mirror was shined, the bathroom was noticeably brighter.

Cleaning the mirror over our sink is nothing exceptional, except that it's huge. I remember an old Windex commercial; the woman in it said something like, "The more you need to clean, the faster you have to clean." I think she was trying to demonstrate how runny the off-brand was as opposed to the Windex brand, which actually coated the glass surface and didn't run.  Well, I AM using generic Windex, and it DOES run all over the mirror as soon as I spray it on.  The top of the mirror ends up dry, while liquid puddles along the bottom edge.  It eventually gets cleaned, though, and I'm not using any techniques that are different than what my mama taught me, so it's not much to complain about.

Funny story:  My Love and I have been married six years this month.  For a (very creative) wedding gift, some friends of ours gave us a little plastic tote full of cleaning products.  In hindsight, it was inexpensive and useful; I also think it's interesting that I remember exactly who gave it to us, while I have no idea who gave us our toaster or bath towels.  Anyway, in that plastic box was an aerosol can of scrubbing-bubbles-type cleaning product.  I've never used this type of thing before; I've always been a Comet girl, followed by the spray version after it came out, so this scrubbing bubble can has sat in our laundry room (and the laundry room of our previous home) for years.  When I inventoried my cleaning supplies before beginning this endeavor, I found it again, and I figured it really needed to be put to use.  The bathroom sinks and countertop were the first thing I used it on, and I was really impressed.  This stuff is POWERFUL.  I sprayed it on, and literally just had to wipe away the bubbles after a few minutes to reveal a sparkling clean surface.  Spoiler:  I also used it on our shower, and it worked like a charm there as well.  The only drawback I discovered is that it also had a nearly overwhelming smell.  Our bathroom is a closed-in space, and the countertops take up a large part of it.  I found that I had to spray, then leave the room for a few minutes, then come back to wipe down the surfaces, then leave again while the smell dissipated.  I also ended up with a headache, so I had to take another break at the halfway point of Day 1.

I got a great deal of satisfaction out of organizing and purging the drawers and cabinets under the sink.  As I mentioned when I cleaned my closet, I'm a very structured, order-loving person, and it was edifying to see neat rows of makeup, hair products, and eyeglass cases.  I also threw away a lot of things that were expired.  The two biggest culprits for hanging around indefinitely were makeup and sunscreen, both of which, I learned, should technically be replaced every 12 months or so.

About the time I moved to clean the toilet, Mini-me showed up and asked to help.  She really has perfect timing; I gave her a Lysol wipe and let her wipe off the fronts of the drawers and cabinets for me.

The last step in today's process was to clean our toilet.  Cleaning toilets is one of those tasks that doesn't really bother me.  Truth be told, I'd rather clean a toilet than fold laundry any day.  Also, when a toilet starts to look visibly dirty, I feel like it's a decent thermometer to indicate that the rest of the bathroom is likely dirty too, so I clean the toilet more often than the rest of the house.  I'm a pretty faithful user of Clorox cling or Lysol toilet bowl cleaner, whichever happens to be cheaper; they both do the job.

A quick dusting of the toilet paper roller, the toilet paper holder, and the towel rack, and 50% of my bathroom sparkled; it also smelled clean enough to make up for the other half!