A Virtuous Woman Cleans the Bathroom

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

Hey, ladies, it's day 11 of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge at Money Saving Mom, and my house is looking better and better!

Today's task is to clean the bathroom, and these are Crystal's suggestions:

• Set the timer for 20 minutes and put toilet cleaner in each of the toilet bowls and let it soak.
• Remove any items that don’t belong in the bathroom, put away items that need to be put away in the bathroom, empty the trash.
• Spray and wipe down the sink and tub.
• Finish swishing and cleaning the toilet.
• Shake the rugs outside (or throw them in the laundry) and mop or vacuum the floors.
• Wipe down the outside of the cupboards and clean the mirror.
• You’re done!

We already had a bathroom cleaning day one day last week, so I pretty much did most of these things last week, and if that was the last time I cleaned the bathroom, I'm sure I would need to do them all again today. 

However, as a person who has struggled with messiness/disorganization off and on for years, I've done lots of reading and research on cleaning and organizing, and tried lots of different housekeeping systems.  Some of them work for a while, some not--and most of the time the success or failure is due to the operator (moi) rather than the system itself. 

When I'm not off my game (as I have been lately), I have a routine that I've culled from several different sources and perfected over the years that makes the bathroom seem practically self cleaning. Almost.

The first time I read about doing this was in the book Sidetracked Home Executives, by Pam Young and Peggy Jones, who billed themselves as "the slob sisters".  In their original system (pre electronics days) you made a 3 x 5 card for every chore that needed to be done to keep your house clean, and sorted them by daily/weekly/monthly/ and seasonal chores.  And bathrooms was a daily. 

Don't bail on me here. 

That's the same thing I thought.  "Who has the time (or inclination) to clean the bathroom every single day?" 

But the flaw in that logic is that most of us clean our bathrooms, at most, once a week (sometimes less for some of us) and what we picture is the major clean and spray and scrub and oh-my-goodness-somebody-please-save-me-from-this-Cinderella-life kind of cleaning. 

Fast forward a few (!) years to Flylady and her book Sink Reflections. Her explanation made sense to me. 

If we do certain small tasks every single day, we will never have to deep clean scrub our bathrooms again.

Here's what works for me. 

Every day, after my family is done in the bathroom for the morning, (we only have one) I go in and brush my teeth and wash my face; as soon as I'm done,while I'm standing there, I wipe out the sink, then I take the hand towel and wipe down the vanity, and faucets, and the mirror, putting anything away that was left out. Once a week or so I wipe out the soap dish.  This takes about a minute.

 (Sorry for the darkness of the pictures, I was trying to use "natural light" on a cloudy, rainy day.  Should have just turned on the lights.)

Then I take a small wad of toilet tissue, dampen slightly, and wipe the outside of the toilet, starting with the tank and moving down to the bowl, finishing at the rim. I throw the paper into the toilet and flush, then while the bowl is still wet, I swish out the bowl and under the rim with the toilet brush, using only water from the bowl. About once a week I splash in a little liquid disinfectant and swish it around, then leave it in the bowl until the next time it's used and flushed. This takes about a minute, too.

Moving on to the tub--we have a habit of hanging our washcloths and towels and letting them dry before we throw them into the dirty clothes basket in the bottom of the linen closet, from early years of apartment living and going to the laundromat only once a week.  We continue that because here in the south, if you leave a basketful of wet or damp things for very long, you'll have a mildewed, stinky mess on your hands.  So I pick up the dry washcloths, etc, and put into the dirty clothes.  This takes seconds.  (Towels are left, we let them dry then re-use.  We each have a separate place we hang our towel.  We can do that because we're a small family.  I like the idea for larger families of using color-coordinated towels and washcloths, one color for each family member.  Don't know if it really works, seeing as I have never tried it, but it sounds good, anyway.)

Back to the tub. Once or twice a week, while I'm in the shower, leaving the conditioner on my hair for the two minutes the manufacturer recommends, I take a washcloth and wipe down the tub surround, including the ledges with all of the shampoo, body wash, soap, etc, on it, that seem to get so grimy.  You know that most grime in the tub is just soap scum, right?  If you wipe it before it gets built up, it doesn't get grimy.  This takes less than two minutes.

Since we all mostly take showers, I clean the tub itself sporadically.  Today I took the non-slip mat out the bottom and washed it, and used a Mr Clean magic eraser on the tub (and it worked like magic, too!) which took around a minute, maybe a minute-and-a-half. 

Last but not least, I throw the hand towel in the dirty clothes basket, and put out a fresh one.  Then as I leave the room,  I turn and admire my clean, uncluttered bathroom, including my favorite and almost only "frou-frou" element, my battenberg lace valance on the window. (I'm the only female in my household.  "Frou-frou is few and far between for me.)

 Clean and sparkly--and taken with flash, finally!

I admit that I've been falling down on the job for awhile, so last week I did the full spray-and-scrub cleaning, but since then, I've been back on my game and have done this daily routine, keeping the bathroom clean every day. I always forget if Flylady calls this "Swish & Wipe" or "Wipe and Swish", so I've taken to calling it my daily "Swish and Swipe"!

Depending on your family, you may want to add a pass through at night to pick up after bathtime, especially if you have younger kids. 

One reader on facebook mentioned that she'd like to have a self-locking door that closed behind each family member and wouldn't unlock until all of the clothes were picked up and put in the hamper! What has worked for me since I've reinstituted the daily clean, is just to pick up and put things away behind them consistently, and honestly, after a couple of days, my family is so glad at the state of cleanliness that's pervading the atmosphere, they've been good about picking up behind themselves. 

Or you could try locking the door behind them, he he.

Next time we clean bathrooms for the 30-Day Cleaning Challenge, it'll be time to tackle the drawer on the vanity and the linen closet. 

Until next time...

To see other posts in this series, click on Clean in 30