Speed Cleaning (5 page)

Stock your carryall tray with the following items:

Stock your cleaning apron with:

Here is
your
bathroom. Looks a mess. Towels—some wet, some dry—in heaps everywhere. Mold growing in crevices. Toothpaste smeared on the mirror. Crud on the grout. Looks like a weekend job? The equivalent of three trips to the beach? Not at all! Eventually you’ll be out of here in just 15 minutes or less.

Walk into the bathroom. Do not be afraid. Face the tub. Put your tray down on the floor at the right end of the bathtub. The strategy for cleaning this room is to pick a starting point and proceed around the room clockwise, cleaning as you go—never backtracking, carrying all the tools and cleaners necessary with you in your apron and pockets. We’ve picked your starting point for you: where you put the tray.

Tie your apron around your waist tightly. Check to be sure the toothbrush and other tools are in their proper pockets. Hang the Blue
and Red Juice by their handles on your apron loops on the appropriate side: If you put the Blue Juice on the left side, then always put it on the left side. This is so you can quickly reach for your Red or Blue Juice without stopping to see which is which. It saves time. (Remember, the tops of the spray bottles have an annoying tendency to come loose at the worst possible moments, spilling the contents everywhere. Avoid this by automatically tightening the tops when you first pick them up.)

Don’t put your feather duster or whisk broom in your back pockets or put cleaning cloths in your apron yet. In the bathroom, you’ll be making two trips around the room instead of one: the first to do the wet work (the shower, tub, sink, and toilet), and the second to do the rest of the room.

Alert readers will notice that asking you to make two trips seems to be a violation of
Rule 1
. It is. Without going into a lengthy explanation, we’re asking you to work like this in the bathroom (a) to avoid splashing previously cleaned areas, and (b) because you will be using brushes you normally don’t carry with you. Don’t think about it too much: just take our word for it.

Put any trash containers just outside the door (or in the doorway). Lay any throw rugs outside the door
flat
on the floor: no corners tucked underneath. No rumpled mess. You’re expecting the vacuumer (who may very well be you) to do the rug later, so make it as easy as possible.

Set any items that are around the edge of the tub out on the floor. Whenever you move items like this, move them the shortest distance possible and keep them in the same relative position they were in. For example, if there is a shampoo container or a rubber ducky, move it straight toward you and set it on the floor in front of the tub. There are two reasons for doing it this way: (a) It is faster; (b) When it comes time to replace the items, you automatically know where they were. If there’s a bar of soap, put it upside down on a folded cleaning cloth on the floor. (You’re keeping the soft side up so soap isn’t smeared all over.) Now that we’ve covered how to move a bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap, and a rubber ducky, let’s move on.

First clean the shower walls around the tub—at least the areas that get wet when the shower is on. Wet the walls using the shower wand. Then use Tile Juice and the tile brush. (You have two brushes—one for the toilet and the other for the tub/shower and sink.) Although these are not in your apron, they are in your tray. And your tray (thanks to your observation of Clean Team
Rule 1
) is right at your feet. The Tile Juice is
in a plastic squeeze bottle that squirts instead of sprays, so you don’t have to inhale the fumes.

Most people’s arms are long enough to reach into the tub enclosure to clean—and remember the brush adds more length too. So we recommend that you stand outside the tub to clean. An effective cleaner like Tile Juice liberates an extremely slippery layer of soap onto the tub floor. If you decide to step into the tub or shower to clean, at least make sure you are wearing nonslip rubber-soled shoes. And lay down a couple of cleaning cloths to stand on to make the surface less slippery. When you step out, step onto dry cloths so you don’t slip or track Tile Juice plus gunk into the room.

Don’t squirt Tile Juice in the areas that are already clean. (The higher part of the shower wall doesn’t normally get wet during a shower and therefore doesn’t need cleaning very often.)

Start by squirting some Tile Juice on the wall of the shower that is farthest from the drain, and use your brush to spread it around evenly. Don’t scrub. Continue around the shower, squirting Tile Juice and spreading it around with circular movements of the brush. Just distribute the juice with the brush until you’ve covered the area of the shower wall that needs cleaning. Tile Juice works mainly by chemical action, so scrubbing is a waste of time at this point. It’s got to sit there for a couple of minutes to loosen up the soap scum and hard water deposits. With the possible exception of the burned-on goop on the inside of an oven, there is nothing more resistant to cleaning than the hard water
and soap scum deposits that you encounter in an ordinary shower … so let the Tile Juice work for you.

If there are shower doors, continue applying Tile Juice on the inside of the doors after you’ve finished coating the walls. Replace the Tile Juice in your tray. Now start scrubbing the shower wall where you first applied the Tile Juice. The brush works much better than your white pad here because it digs into the grout between the tiles as well as the tiles themselves. Scrub in circles from top to bottom. Clean the plumbing fixtures as you come to them, using the tile brush (and toothbrush) as needed.

You’ll be making a bubbly mess on the wall. Relax. It’s just Tile Juice agitated by your scrubbing action, mixed with the soap and hard water deposits you are cleaning off. “See through” this mess (
Rule 5
) so you can tell when it’s clean underneath and can quit cleaning one area and move on. You do this by learning to tell the difference between how your brush feels when it is cutting through the scum versus when it is down to the clean bare surface. One way to learn this difference is to scrub a clean tile high on the wall and then scrub a dirty one. Notice the difference in friction between the two areas as you scrub. Or use your fingers on the clean versus dirty areas to be able to feel the difference.

When you come to the soap dish, clean it with your toothbrush: First scrape off the soap that has collected in the dish with the
handle
end of your toothbrush. Now brush out the remaining soap with the bristle
end. Use Red Juice only if necessary. Final rinsing comes when you rinse the tub/shower area.

After you have scrubbed the tile wall, continue around to the inside of the shower door. Switch to the white pad for the shower doors, as it’s more effective on this surface than the tile brush. (But only a white pad—never a green pad, which can scratch the glass.) If you have a shower curtain, skip ahead. (Don’t try to clean it by hand: Throw it in the wash with a towel or throw it away.)

If the shower doors overlap, and you can’t clean the area where they overlap by moving the doors, then spray some Red Juice on your white pad, wrap the pad around your scraper, and slide it into the gap between the doors. (If the white pad is too thick, use a cloth instead.) Now move the scraper up and down to clean this area. Be careful as you work that the scraper doesn’t get exposed because it could scratch the glass. Next, remove the scraper and wrap a dry cloth around it for a final wipe. The reason you use Red Juice here instead of Tile Juice is that it’s a difficult area to rinse, and Red Juice doesn’t require the rinsing that Tile Juice does.

If there is anything like paint or those 1960s daisy stickers on the shower door that can’t be removed with the Tile Juice and white pad,
use your razor blade. Be sure that the blade is sharp, and use it properly (at a low angle), and you won’t scratch the glass. And be careful not to nick the rubber gasket around the glass door.

It’s still not time to rinse.

Next, take care of the shower door tracks (runners). Usually you can clean them with your toothbrush and Red Juice. If this doesn’t work, use your scraper wrapped with a cloth. Move it back and forth inside the runner to clean it. Or fold your white pad in half and push it into the runner and move it back and forth. Again,
don’t rinse yet.
There will probably be a lot of junk in the tracks, and the temptation to rinse repeatedly will be strong. Cleaning the shower runners is one of those jobs that’s a mess the first time, so don’t expect it to be perfect yet. It becomes less of a chore each time you do it, eventually needing only a quick wipe.

Next is the tub—leaving the shower runners, the shower doors, and the shower walls clean but covered with Tile Juice and whatever ungodly mess you have loosened up—all
unrinsed.
We haven’t forgotten.

Wet the sides and bottom of the tub if they need it. Get the powdered cleanser out of the tray and sprinkle it in the tub. Don’t apply it anywhere but
in
the tub—not on the shower walls or faucets or shower
head—just in the tub. Use the cleanser appropriately. If the tub isn’t very dirty, don’t use very much. While you are learning, resist your impulse to bombard the tub. Be conservative, since most powdered cleansers are abrasives and wear out porcelain. Also, it can take as much time to rinse it away as it does to scrub the whole tub. If you have a nonporcelain tub, use a specialty product instead of powdered cleanser.

Use your tile brush to scrub the tub, starting at the end away from the drain. Use the same “see through” method so you know when the porcelain under the foam and powder is clean. As necessary, use your toothbrush at the top of the tub where the tile meets the tub. This is often Mold Heaven (or Hell). It comes off rather easily if you can get at it with your toothbrush. The problem arises when it is found growing in the tiny cracks in the grout and can’t be removed with your toothbrush. Remove what you can. Later you can use bleach on the rest, but not until you are just about to leave the bathroom, since chlorine bleach is obnoxious and you don’t want to breathe it if you can help it.

Now everything inside the tub/shower area is a clean but foamy mess, and you are ready to rinse. Put your
unrinsed
tile brush in the sink, and leave it there while you rinse the tub/shower area.

Turn on the shower to rinse. Use cold water so you don’t fog up everything. If you are lucky enough to have a detachable shower head on a hose, rinsing is a pleasure. We happen to think that rinsing is a good enough reason to buy one … let alone being able to wash the dog with it.

Completely rinse the walls and doors before you rinse the tub. Rinse the shower walls from front (starting above the drain end) to back and from top to bottom. If there are areas that you can’t reach with the shower spray, first try using your hand to deflect the spray to the area you need to rinse. If you still can’t get it all rinsed, then use the plastic container that was over the top of the cleanser to catch water and throw it to those last nasty unrinsed spots.

After the walls are rinsed clean, rinse the tub—this time back to front toward the drain.
Use your fingers
to feel the bottom of the tub to know when all the cleanser is rinsed out. Don’t depend on sight alone, as it is impossible to see a little leftover cleanser in a wet tub. The reverse, of course, is also true: If you leave a tiny bit of cleanser in the tub and wait for it to dry, it makes a powdery film that you can see halfway down the block.

After you have rinsed the tub and there is no leftover cleanser or Tile Juice, turn off the water. Don’t replace the items from around the tub yet, because if there’s any mold left you will spray it with bleach in a few minutes. But now is the time to wipe the chrome dry and shiny in the tub/shower area.

Reach into the sink where you had set your tile brush. Wet the bowl of the sink. Since the brush is still full of cleanser from the tub, use it as is to clean the sink. Be careful to keep the cleanser only
inside the bowl
of the sink, since it is difficult to rinse away.
Never
let powdered cleanser get onto an area that is hard to rinse … especially the top ledge of the sink around the faucets.

When the sink is clean, rinse out your tile brush in the sink and put it away in your tray. Rinse out the sink. You haven’t touched the sink rim or faucet yet because you will do that on the second trip around the room. Grab the toilet brush and cleanser from your tray.

Sprinkle cleanser in and around the sides of the toilet bowl. Wet the toilet brush by dipping it in the toilet and sprinkle some cleanser on it. Start high in the bowl, on the inside upper rim. Move the brush in a circular motion and clean as deep into the bowl as you can. The water will quickly become cloudy, so be sure to start at the top and methodically work your way around and down the bowl. Don’t forget under the rim! All kinds of gremlins live there.

As you wash the toilet bowl, you are also washing and rinsing the toilet brush free of the cleanser you originally sprinkled on it. Shake excess water into the bowl and replace the brush. Flush the toilet. That’s out of the way!