Spanking Clean

You know how you have that one household chore you just hate? And put off? And put off some more? Until you spend an hour on your hands and knees wrecking your rotator cuff scrubbing and cursing at the soap scum in the tub and the weird pinkness that is encroaching and the just overall disgustingness of this mess that you yourself (with help from the rest of the fam) have made?

Well, as you can see, my cleaning Achilles' heel is the bathtub/shower. I just hate it. And I am embarrassed to say how long it's been since I really tackled this task and drilled down to what could honestly be called clean. It's been done cursorily, but it hasn't been done "for reals" in far too long.

This past weekend, I fought the lion. And won--without the use of harsh chemicals. (And there are people online who want you to use stuff like oven cleaner. Um, hello, do I really want to be showering in a big vat of LYE?)

Instead, it was just me, some baking soda, some white vinegar, a scrub brush, and a whole lot of elbow grease. (Plus a great tip: use plain white paper towels soaked in straight-up vinegar and stick them too the walls of the tub/shower for 5 minutes, which will soften up the nasty so you can get it with your brush.) All in all, it took two long sessions before I had it the way I want it, and then I trooped the whole family in to cheer.

But the thing is that the lion always returns. So I searched for green recipes for daily shower cleaners and I'm going to give that a whirl--M has agreed to spray down the shower when he's done, since he's usually the 2nd out in the morning...and it's his use of bar soap that probably causes most of the scum anyhow, but I digress...

Here's the recipe I "created" based on what I found online and what we had in the house:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup rubbing alcohol
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• about a teaspoon Bi-O-Kleen Cleaner and Degreaser, for the smell and the grease-cutting factor

There's some interesting chemistry involved in soap scum, but all I really care about is that I never again spend two Webs podcasts' worth of my life drilling it out of my tub.