Testing: Vinegar and Borax Bathroom Cleaning

Here we go again. I must say though, the bathrooms are getting much more attention as of late with my little experiments.  This time on trial, 1 part vinegar, 4 parts borax, making a paste.  First of all, I'm a ditz and mixed 1 cup borax, 1 cup vinegar and while it occurred to me this seemed unlikely to make a paste I figured I'd give it a try.  When it didn't I went back to the find the recipe and realized my mistake.  I had to add another 3 cups borax which actually turned out well as I used it all.  This was my starting point.

Yes, I know, it's still all stained.  

 And here, my darling husband just got doused in transmission fluid or some sort of gunk and didn't realize it. We had to throw his jeans away and it left the bathtub coated with this sludgy junk that smelled awful!





















And below is those pesky bathtub rings that the last homemade cleaner left on.  I should also note here that I tried the vinegar and generic dish soap with the same smelly, rather dismal results.

 So now I donned my rubber gloves, mushed and mixed my concoction and smeared it all over everything.  This was a challenge as I couldn't get the toilet to cooperate with my efforts to get rid of the water in the bowl and had to call hubby in for reinforcements.  I did manage to get it to not fill all the way and in the process found the likely culprit for the mineral stains.  The back of the toilet was AWFUL!  So, here is a few pictures of fixtures coated in their cleaning paste.

Then I left the room to watch a top gear with hubby.  The smell was very very mild compared to the other cleaner so evacuating the house wasn't necessary.  I returned about a half hour later with a sponge and started rubbing away.  It was a little bit of elbow grease but more rubbing than scrubbing. This was the end result of the sink and tub.

Not to shabby.  You'll notice the amazing lack of ring around the bathtub.  Shiny and nice smelling. Now, I have to admit here I cheated a bit.  While the toilet was clean and shiny the stains didn't fully come off, even with scrubbing and a magic eraser, and that pesky deposit in the corner of the bathtub also took some extra attention.  I located my trusty ole pumice stone and did away with those mineral deposits.  When I have more time and less people using the toilet I'll try the denture cleaner for the water portion of the toilet as I didn't really want to "go there". Here is the end result of my bathroom cleaning for the day.

So there you have it. Finally a bathroom cleaner that lived up to expectation.  While I was hoping it would get rid of the mineral deposits on the toilet I wasn't surprised it didn't.  I've tried all sorts of products to remove those, even iron off, to no avail. Didn't take but 5 minutes with a pumice stone. Silly me.  Smell was gone, both from the nasty grease stuff and the cleaning product and I didn't feel like I was dying while rubbing away at it.  I'd give this one an A for a regular bathroom cleaning product, even if your regular bathroom cleanings end up being every few weeks.  Happy cleaning!