Keep your friends close and your enemies cleaner. Don’t fear the bathroom – attack it with these super-powered cleaning weapons.
Kill ‘em with a smile
Show your teeth and knock ‘em dead knowing you’re teeth, and the things you use to clean it, are safe and strong.
The toothbrush:
When you’re a young superhero just discovering your powers, you kind of want to just fly around and catch bad guys. You don’t really have time to brush your teeth – it’s not the cool, superhero thing to do.
When you grow into being an adult hero, you realize that brushing your teeth was part of your powers all along. I mean, who could resist that hypnotizing smile, right?
Still…enemies lurk in strange places, and one of those places is on your toothbrush. Look, we keep something we put in our mouths at least twice daily in the same room where we use the toilet. Our enemies (germs and bacteria) know where to find us.
When you flush the toilet, millions of microscopic germs fly into the air, especially if you don’t close the lid when flushing. If your toothbrush is in a holder on the sink, well…you can figure it out, superhero. So the first thing to do is obviously keep your toothbrush stored in the medicine cabinet. But even there it’s not fully safe from attack. After we use the toilet the next thing we touch are the sink faucets, before washing our hands. Then we turn the faucets off, after washing our hands and grab our toothbrush. See the path, here?
Germs transfer easily and without us knowing it. Well, until now. Replace your toothbrush often. And while you’re using it, clean it at least once a week with boiling water and rubbing alcohol. You can also run it through the dishwasher or soak the head in mouthwash. When doing that, leave it submerged overnight. When using boiling water, just dip it in for 5-10 seconds, which will be enough to kill all germs.
Instead of discarding a used toothbrush you can always sterilize it and use it as a tool for cleaning grout and small corners.
You can also get a UV Toothbrush Sanitizer to use as an extra-secret weapon against your dirty foes.
The toothbrush holder:
The fact that you took it to your toothbrush and wiped out the germs it carries doesn’t mean your job is done. Your toothbrush holder is like a pool full of bacteria. Clean or not, your toothbrush drips in the holder. Even when you’re not brushing and just taking a shower, the steam makes the holder moist. Concentrated areas of liquid, combined with the humidity from showers and germ-explosions from toilets create a dangerous and powerful foe.
First of all, if your toothbrush holds is made of wood, replace it with one that is plastic or has a UV system in it.
If it’s plastic you can put it in the dishwasher, on the top rack, and on a lower-heat cycle. As always you can sterilize it with rubbing alcohol and even Tea Tree essential oil.
Other toothbrush-cleansing allies are:
1. Mouthwash – Makes sense, yes?
2. Hydrogen Peroxide/Water – Tried and True
3. Toothpaste - I mean, this is so obvious most don’t think of it.
4. White Vinegar – It works on everything but stone and marble.
5. Lemon – My personal favorite for pretty much all-things-cleaning.
6. Baking Soda/Water – Another classic. It will fizz the germs away!
look sharp
Your razor blades:
Everybody loves a sharp-dressed superhero. Did Superman ever sport a 5 o’clock shadow? I doubt Wonder Woman could move like she does if she was distracted by her legs being all nicked up and itching.
You can’t always fly away from the scene of a crime to grab new blades when you’re looking stubbly. But, you can keep the ones you have in great shape for longer periods of time by sharpening and cleaning them.
All you need are the regular-person jeans you wear to disguise your superhero identity. Hold one leg of the jeans (while they’re hanging), and with the other hand stroke the razor blade up and down the length of the jean’s leg. Do this 10-20 times. The threads in jeans run diagonal and act like a sharpening tool; so much that this process takes up to five nicks out of your blades thus making them last longer. And, it keeps your face or legs smoother.
You can also sterilize your blades with rubbing alcohol, before and after each shave.
put the squeeze on hard water stains
love those lemons:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: lemon is my favorite, natural cleaning ingredient. Maybe it’s because my grandmother made this amazing lemon cream pie when I was a kid. Or maybe it’s just because it works.
I think it works, and Beyoncé agrees.
Regular cleaners can’t handle enemy hard water stains like they claim they can. Cut the lemon in half and rub it on the stained areas. You can even add salt to the equation if you really need some grit to break up raised stains.
form a spicey alliance with bathroom storage products
zoom zoom zoom:
Geri Halliwell is part of a disbanded team of superheroes called “The Spice Girls.” She once said “’Spice Girls is about unifying the world – every age, every gender, everyone. It’s woman power, it’s an essence, a tribe.”
Yeah; I don’t think any of that’s true. But the Spice Girls did say “All I wanna do is zoom-a-zoom zoom zoom” and that sounds pretty much like what superheroes do. When they fly. In the sky.
Hang a spice rack at the back of your shower to create extra storage space for shampoo, lotion, razor blades, loofas, etc.
You can also add another shower rod on the opposite side of the curtain and hang appropriate storage containers there as well.
close the curtain on mildew and scum
don’t blow this one:
Baking soda and vinegar is a frothy and explosive ally in your fight against mildew and shower-curtain scum. Sometimes they get a little carried away and need to be separated.
Wash your shower curtain with baking soda on a gentle cycle. Once the baking soda has done its duty, white vinegar can tag in during the rinse cycle for added cleaning power.
You don’t need to put your shower curtain in the dryer, either. In fact, you shouldn’t. It’s a shower curtain, and it lives in the shower, where it gets wet. Just hang it back up where it belongs after it’s cleaned.
If you’re stuck between trusting and not trusting your new shower curtain right out of the package, you can soak it in salt water before hanging it up to feel safe about it being clean.
public enemy number one: scum
even a baby can beat it:
Soap scum has overrated powers. It’s aggravatingly present, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s kind of like when your partner thought their superpower was being super drunk. And they were “super” surprised about how they felt so un-super the next day. Well, they didn’t have to. They could have prevented the aftermath by not drinking.
Well, you can’t shower. But you can rub a small amount of baby oil on your shower walls and tiles as a force field that prevents soap scum from sticking to the surface. Down the drain it goes. Don’t overdo the oil thing, though. Don’t be your drunken partner, only with oil…
the time the towels turned
sometimes good things go bad:
It was a super hard battle to find the right towels in the first place. You finally won and brought home the spoils of consumer victory. Alas, your soft, perfect towels had a dark side and joined with the enemy.
Now, they’re not fluffy, or fresh. Now, they’re not soft on your skin. They’re coarse and don’t stay folded.
And, they smell. They smell like bad-guy funk.
It’s time to call vinegar back into battle. Fill the washing machine with hot water. Pour in a cup of distilled, white vinegar and then add your towels to the machine. Expect resistance, so be strong. It looks like you’re going to have to do this twice.
Run the towels in the machine again, only this time, bring baking soda into the fray as flank support. When the cycle ends, the enemy within the towels should be expelled. You can put the in the dryer for testing. Once fully dry, you should recognize your favorite towels as the towels they once were. You know, before the incident.
tea towel celebration party
There’s nothing so good some wine can’t make better:
I don’t think that’s right either. But who knows? There’s wine flowing. And now that the wine rack is empty, you can put it to good use by gifting it to your reborn towels as a new, super abode. That’s right, wine racks can serve as extra storage space for your towels. It’s got a modern look to it. It gives you an extra storage place. It keeps your towels somewhere you can keep a watchful eye on them. And it shows people you can handle your liquor better than your partner could.
keep it flowing
even superheroes need air:
When you’re done taking a shower, keep your shower doors slightly open on both sides and your vent/fan turned on for a while. The air flowing in will help dry the walls and tile faster, thus preventing more scum from attacking. If you have a shower curtain (not doors) be sure to pull it on both ends about a foot from the walls. While waiting for the bathroom to get dry, you can also make an instant vacuuming of your floor from outside your bathroom door going in the best direction. So you can check out here what goes into the best vacuum cleaner for an instant superhero move!
That’s a lot of super information even for a superhero to take on. Stay tuned for more tales in the not so distant future, not so far, far away…
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