DIY Shower Cleaner Recipes
While helping a friend clean up an old house that they had purchased we removed a small section of dry wall. Behind the drywall we found someone had used old newspapers as insulation. One of the newspapers from 1946 had an ad stating “More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette”! That ad was shocking, but not surprising. Things like that happened back then. Oh wait, things like that still happen today.
I told my friend about my coughing fit while cleaning our shower the other day. What the heck made me cough? The shower cleaner was a product I had been using for many years. I decided to do some digging. I came across a website that rates cleaning products from A-F based on how caustic they are called EWG.
There it was – my beloved cleaner with an F rating! It had some nasty stuff in it. This is a product that the manufacturer is encouraging us to use every day! Every day, in a small, warm, enclosed area. Yicks!
A couple of my other cleaning products had some cancer causing ingredients in them as well. Nine, almost new bottles, went into the trash that day. I decided to find some DIY shower cleaner recipes.
Are We Still Being Brain-Washed?
Fast forward 70 years, and still, manufacturers are trying to pull one over on us. Many of them don’t care about our health – only about making a buck. That’s obvious.
It’s up to us to take the bull by the horns and check the products we have in our cupboards. I’m done supporting companies that don’t care about our health! How about you?
What can we use? Daily cleaners are still a favorite. I went to work trying to find a product that won’t give me cancer, an asthma attack, a rash, or a third eye. I found several that had an A on EWG.
Dawn & Vinegar Cleaner Recipe
1/4 part Dawn 1/2 part Vinegar. Keep in mind that this dawn and vinegar cleaner has soap in it so it must be rinsed, otherwise it will cause a slipping hazard.
Vinegar as a Glass Cleaner
1/4 cup white vinegar (apple cider vinegar will work as well)
1/4 cup isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol
1 Tbsp cornstarch (the cornstarch reduces streaking — anyone know why?)
2 cups water
8-10 drops essential oil of choice (optional. Lemon, orange, or another citrus would be my choice here, but lavender or others would be nice as well. Go here to learn why I chose this company as having the best essential oils for the money.)
Items that are Essential for Keeping a Tile Shower Clean
- Squeegee
- Rain X
- Cleaning clothes
- Non caustic tile cleaners
- Make your own Daily Cleaner
- Best glass cleaners
- Steam cleaner – the only one we recommend for grout.
- Use a scrubber for tough areas
Daily Habits
After every shower make these things a habit and you’ll never have moldy grout or soap scum:
- Spray down walls and any area that gets hit with water with your daily shower cleaner – except the glass if applicable.
- Squeegee to clean the water off of your glass if you have it and then squeegee off water from all walls and floor from edges to drain.
- Apply the rain x once a month on your glass to keep the water spots down.
- Clean glass weekly.
- Every 6 months steam clean the grout.
- Every 6 months scrub tough to clean areas with scrubber and the dawn and vinegar cleaner.
Does It Really Matter?
People used to think nothing of smoking in the car with kids. Now, you’ll pay a hefty fee if you’re caught doing so. Too bad so many people had to die from secondhand smoke before some regulations were set up. With the help of the internet and websites like EWG we don’t have to find out the hard way any more. Thank you, EWG for the work that you do and for the power of the information that you give consumers.
Feel free to contact us here at Tile With A Smile🙂
Thanks!
Ron
