On the first Tuesday Thursday of every month I will post about something I found on Pinterest that I actually did!  Sometimes it will be about a craft project, sometimes about food and sometimes about a ‘miracle’ cleaning product.

This months Pinterest Project is a cleaning solution.

(Pinterest has switched to Javascript for embedding pins.  Wordpress doesn’t support Javascript so I can’t embed the orig pin.  I am still trying to figure out a way around this problem.  So  you won’t see my pin, but I do have links to the blog post and my own images.)

I HATE cleaning my tub.

I don’t mind cleaning, I just hate cleaning the tub.

The bending over, it’s back-breaking, the scrubbing….

So I was pleased to see a pin that claimed to be “The Best Shower/Tub Cleaner” with out scrubbing.

Plus it only has two ingredients; dish soap and vinegar.  This post says to use Blue Dawn Dish Soap, which coincidentally, is the kind I have.  It is my favorite dish soap.  Some pins/posts about this mixture say it has to be blue Dawn, I can not attest to that, as I have not tried any other combo.

The science behind it.

Blue Dawn contains surfactants  as cleaning agents; including sodium lauryl sulfate (or sodium dodecyl sulfate), sodium laureth sulfate, and lauramine oxide (lauryldimethylamine oxide).

A surfactant is used to remove oils from the surface of something, like your dishes or tub.  It contains two parts, the hydrophobic tail and the hydrophilic head.  The hydrophobic tails want to hide from the water, so the molecule orients itself by pointing the tails inward forming a sphere, with the hydrophilic heads outwards.  This orientation allows for the oil soluble tails to trap oils and wash them away with water.

Vinegar is made with acetic acid and water making it a moderately strong acid.  As a cleaning solution it is great at dislodging dirt and grim that is basic.

And by basic, I don’t mean simple, but basic in acidity.  Dirt, grim, hard water, mineral build up, soaps and detergents are usually basic.  So chemically vinegar works great on these alkaline stains.

As you could guess the combination of the surfactants in Blue Dawn and the acidity of vinegar should take care of any type of grim lingering in your tub or shower.

But does it work?

OK, don’t judge me.

Here is my tub before.  For the record, the green stuff is bath tub paints, which if not washed off immediately, is a little difficult to clean.  You should have seen it when we moved in, it was much worse.

Directions

use a 1:1.2 ration of Blue Dawn to vinegar.

Heat the vinegar, do not boil, just heat it enough to enable the soap to dissolve into the vinegar.

Pour hot vinegar into spray bottle and then add the dish soap.

Shake it like a Polaroid picture to mix.  Careful not to shake too hard, it could suds up.

Then spray to your heart’s content.

Just remember that which goes on, must come off.

Let it sit.  For as long as you can stand it.

But remember it smells like vinegar, lots and lots of vinegar.  If you have a bathroom fan, use it!

Other sites say do not use water, just wipe off with a dry cloth.

That did nothing for me.

I had sprayed it on a dry shower/tub and I had to scrub, which was exactly what I did not want to do.

I had one of those green scouring pads.  I used it with water and lo and behold, my tub came clean!

Now, I will admit, it was not as miraculous as I had hoped.  But it still worked great, and each time I use it to clean the tub it works better and better.

You don’t have to confine it to the tub/shower.  You can also use it on the sink, you just want to make sure you can rinse whatever you clean really well.

Happy Pinning