Cleaning magic

Wait! Wait! Don't let the title scare you away! This is fun!

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across a blog post testing a Pinterest cleaning tip: the idea that combining equal parts blue Dawn soap with regular old white vinegar will purportedly clean a bathtub all by itself. You're skeptical, right?! But the blogger - and most of the commenters - said that it worked miracles. It sounded easy enough for me to handle and remember the right ingredients at the grocery store during my next shopping trip, so I filed the idea away. Today the project popped into my head when we were in the cleaning aisle, and I said "WAIT!" (to Josh) and dashed to get the blue Dawn liquid soap and vinegar.

You're supposed to put that solution in a spray bottle, but I don't have one, so I swished it together in a covered plastic bowl and then sloshed it on the shower walls and around the tub with a little scrubbing pad. And then you're supposed to let it sit for an hour, but some of the blog post's commenters had said that the solution dried after sitting that long, so I went back into the bathroom 30 minutes later and wiped it down.

I was pretty pleased: it didn't get the worst marks out of the tub, but the walls were gleaming and the tub looked pretty good. I ran cold water for a little bit and poured pitchers of water down the sides of the shower to make sure it cleared away the soap residue (another potential problem mentioned in the comments). The running water collected and got all bubbly at the bottom of the tub, but I left the room and let it drain on its own.

Then, about half an hour later, I went back in and saw the bubbles in the bottom of the tub. And just out of curiosity, I took the scrubbing pad to the most disgusting significant spots on the tub, and while it wasn't quite as effortless as I had hoped, the stains lifted and disappeared.

And now the tub is totally clean, like you're about to move out of your apartment and you really want your security deposit back level of clean. (We've all been there, but that sentence will probably resonate particularly strongly with my mom, thanks to a certain cleaning frenzy in an old apartment of mine a few years back.) It's cleaner than any tub I've ever had in my possession. I'm not one to get all riled up about cleaning tips, but wow, this one hit a home run and was easy and not scary.

I'm sure I'm the last person in the world to find out about this tactic, but if not, I just had to share. Happy Sunday!