The Best Homemade Bathroom Cleaner Ever

Yay! Just what you always wanted! A reason to clean the bathroom. It’s your favorite thing to do. And even though you’ve probably cleaned it twice already today, you’re itching to do it again.

What? You haven’t cleaned your bathroom today? This week? This month?

Really?

Well, here’s a reason to. Right here. Right now. And it’s fun. I promise. (Except for the toilet part. Sorry about that.)

Enter the Best Bathroom Cleaner Ever. At least, that’s what I tagged the tub in both my mother’s and my sister’s Christmas gift basketboxything last year. I stand by that assertion, too. To this day, I would never, ever, never no never go back to using icky chemical bathroom cleaners after cooking up this batch of sparkly-minty goodness.

I use it everywhere in my bathroom – even the floors. But I have stone tiled floors. I wouldn’t recommend it on wood.

It cleans the bathtub like a nontoxic breeze, and whisks away dried-on toothpaste from the counters like nobody’s business. I swear on everything that’s bubbly, this IS the best bathroom cleaner ever.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? You want this! You really want to make this! Right now! Gimme!

Well, I have some bad news. You might not have everything to make this bathroom cleaner at the immediate moment. If you do not, and if you have the means, go out and buy it. Now. I’ll wait.

If you have neither the means nor the chutzpah to make the Best Bathroom Cleaner Ever, we’re going to do something else at the end. We’re going to pull a switcheroo and see if there’s maybe something we can come up with that you have and that works – and still puts Scrubbing Bubbles to shame.

Best Homemade Bathroom Cleaner Ever

• 1/2 c. baking soda
• 1/2 c. washing soda
• 1/2 c. liquid castille soap
• 25 drops tea tree essential oil
• 10 drops lemon essential oil
• 10 drops peppermint essential oil
• 2 Tbsp. white vinegar (optional)

Mix baking soda, washing soda, and liquid soap in a medium-sized container until it’s pasty and mushy. Add essential oils and mix thoroughly. If you choose to add the vinegar, be aware that the soda will make it fizz a little. But it’ll stop, so don’t freak out.

When you’re ready to use it, just scoop a little out with your sponge and scrub away. This works wonders on grimy bathtubs and goopy counters. Not that I’ve ever had those. I just assume.

Second-Best Homemade Bathroom Cleaner Ever

• 1/4 c. baking soda
• 1/8 c. lemon juice
• 1/8 c. fine sea salt
• 2 Tbsp. liquid castille soap or dishwashing soap (optional)
• Enough white vinegar to make a paste

Mix all ingredients together well and scrub away. As there is sea salt in this recipe, I would recommend testing it on a small, out of the way space first to make sure it doesn’t scuff the surface of your counter top or bathtub. It didn’t scuff mine, but I have an odd bathroom.

This recipe was purposefully created to be a one-time use only recipe, as it does contain lemon juice and wouldn’t keep outside the fridge for long. If you want to keep your bathroom cleaner in the fridge, though, feel free to increase everything.

The Story of a Toilet

This is off-topic, but it’s an interesting story. And we’re talking about bathrooms, so it fits in well.

My parents have this toilet in their house, upstairs, in the attic bedroom. It’s weird. It’s old. And when you’re, um, on it, your face is about an inch from the wall in front of you. It’s also connected, without a door, to the main “bedroom.”

It’s the toilet nightmares are made of, really. Not just little kid a-snake’s-going-to-crawl-out-and-bite-my-butt nightmares, but a grown-up’s nightmare of odd colored rusty gunk that takes five hours to scrub and then comes back the next day. And it runs a lot. Like, marathon running. Well, not like marathon running, because a toilet doesn’t have legs. I mean, it runs for marathon lengths of time. (I could have picked a less confusing word there and saved you all that reading. But … no.)

So, I stayed in this room for a good bit of time a few years ago. The toilet and I bonded, sort of. I told it to stop being so creepy, and it told me it would only keep flushing if I’d shut up and leave it alone.

And then one day, a cute boy was coming to visit. I couldn’t risk letting him see that toilet the way it was – all 19th-century boiler-room rusted and freaky. So I scrubbed and scrubbed, with everything in that house (sorry, dog) and nothing worked. And then I remembered about how Coke (that is Coca-Cola) rots your guts and dissolves pennies and all that.

I figured the toilet was kind of like a penny-plated gut in some odd way, so I poured a 2-liter in. And let it sit for 30 minutes.

Ran the toilet brush around the toilet bowl a time or two, and it. was. completely. clean. So clean, you could see your reflection in it. So clean, you could make soup in it. So clean, it blew your mind and made you even have the tiny, fleeting thought that you could put soup in it. Clearly, you still haven’t recovered.

Remember this story the next time you order a Coke.

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