Did you know that there’s a day dedicated to celebrating our trusty toilets? In this article we’ll share tips for toilet cleaning.
There certainly is. November 19 is considered World Toilet Day. On this day, people are encouraged to care more about sanitation and their toilets—a luxury that 3.6 billion people do not have, and 24 per cent of Australians live without.
Have toilets always been this important for it to have its own day? Of course. Even though people tend to just flush and forget, toilets are, in fact, necessary to facilitate the sanitation value chain since they contain human excrements.
Without it, we would still have practised open defecation, which perpetuates the spread of diseases like diarrhea—the second leading cause of juvenile death.
Furthermore, on average, Australians use toilets at least once a day, and I’m sure you do too. This only shows how important a toilet is in our daily lives. But are you doing enough to keep it in top shape?
If not, explore these seven tips that might change the way you maintain your toilets.
Toilet Cleaning Tips: How to Clean your Toilet
1. Disinfect your toilet with hydrogen peroxide
There is no need to spend a lot on disinfectants when you can just use the resident germ killer, hydrogen peroxide.
A 2018 study even suggests that it’s a more effective disinfectant than quaternary ammonium compounds—active components of cleaning products available in the market.
Since even 0.5% hydrogen peroxide is effective enough to kill bacteria and viruses on your toilet surface, you don’t have to use much to disinfect your toilets. 2.5 parts water and 0.5 parts 3% hydrogen peroxide will usually suffice.
Let this solution sit for 30 minutes on the toilet surface and then flush to rinse.
2. Unclog toilet pipes using boiling water
Toilet clogging is usually caused by oils and greases that stick around the pipes. To break these apart and allow water flow, pour boiling water into the toilet bowl.
3. Use a pumice stone to remove stubborn toilet stains
Still no success in scrubbing the ring inside the bowl away?
The answer to your worries is a pumice stone. You might’ve known about this extrusive volcanic rock as an effective scrubber of dead skin from your knees and elbows. But, it’s also effective in removing toilet stains.
To avoid scratches on your toilet’s surface, always start by soaking the pumice with warm water. Afterwhich, scrub with all your might until the stain is gone and flush the toilet to clear out the scrubbing debris.
4. Give your toilet a vinegar treat
Sometimes there are stains that not even a scrub with pumice stones can remove. These stains are usually caused by hard water or water with high dissolved minerals, like calcium and magnesium.
Fortunately, these stains are not permanent and can be easily removed by white vinegar. You can either spray the affected surface with vinegar or let a vinegar-soaked paper sit overnight on top of the stain.
5. Remove and clean the toilet seat
Done disinfecting the toilet bowl but is the unpleasant urine odour still present?
That’s probably because of the urine deposits stuck in your toilet seat joints. Hence, make sure to remove the seats and get a better view of the joints for cleaning.
6. Keep your toilets rust-free using a nail polish
Although toilets are mostly made of ceramics, the bolts and screws connecting their components are iron or an alloy prone to rust. Hence, even if you scrub your toilets, rusts are always bound to form again.
A solution to this is to coat these metallic parts with nail polish. As the acetone in nail polish evaporates, it leaves a tight coating on the metals. Since this coating keeps the iron surface from moisture and oxygen, rust could not form.
Apart from this, the coating also helps tighten the screws to prevent seat shifting.
7. Maintain floor dryness
Apart from posing a risk for slips and falls, wet floors also provide a desirable environment for bacterial growth. And since toilets are connected to the floors, they can easily be infected.
Conclusion
These tips are simply a reminder of the care that our toilets should be receiving. We know that it’s not the most desirable thing to clean, but just like any furniture or component in the house, they’re also prone to breakage and therefore deserve to be adequately maintained.
It’ll also help if you keep your toilet’s surroundings or the entire bathroom in topnotch condition since the stains and grimes eating your bathroom’s beauty away are pretty much the same pests lingering on your toilet seats.
But, if you want to take your bathroom cleaning to the next level, you can trust reliable house cleaning companies, like Cleanrific, to remove the toughest stain and bring out the pearl-white shine of your toilet after cleaning.
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