Tub and Tile Cleaner Recipe
Maybe it's best that I forgot to take "Before" pics of this tub. Embarrassing....
As you know, I have been hard at work trying natural homemade recipes to replace both personal products and household cleaners that contain harmful chemicals. A couple of weeks ago, I tried a basic baking soda and vinegar cleaner on my bathtub, with only moderately good results. This week, since I hate the smell of vinegar anyway, I thought I would try to more literally replicate my favorite soft scrub cleaner by mixing baking soda and–you guessed it!–Dr. Bronner’s liquid castile soap. My bottle of Dr. Bronner’s has peppermint oil already in it, so this made for one naturally clean-smelling bathroom. And best of all, this recipe was easy to throw together at the last minute with no prep and worked far better than baking soda and vinegar. It removed most of the soap scum on my tub and did a terrific job cleaning hard water stains when scrubbed into the little jets in my tub. Hooray! Here it is, in all its simple glory. I’m thinking of trying this on my toilets as well, to see if it takes care of those stubborn rings.
I scrubbed my cleaner into the edges of these Jacuzzi jets as far as my fingers would go, removing nearly all the hard-water stain buildup. As you can see in the photo, the sealant around the jets is still stained, which makes a good comparison for before and after color.
Homemade Natural Bathtub Soft Scrub Recipe
- Shake some baking soda into the tub–about the same amount as you would use of a dry scrub cleaner like Bon Ami.
- Squirt a couple quarters’ worth of Dr. Bronner’s liquid castile soap on a damp rag.
- Get the tub just a little wet with some water from the faucet.
- Go to town.
I’m a big fan of foaming scrub cleansers, whether it’s for housecleaning or washing my face. Why didn’t this occur to me sooner? It’s so simple! I’m sure you could find a way to suspend this solution in just a little water and store it for a few months, but it’s so simple to throw together there’s really no point. There is literally no prep here. Just throw the ingredients in the tub and go to work. And my favorite favorite part is that this requires no extra elbow grease to work. As some of you know I’m still recovering from a torn round ligament that has plagued me the past 2 years since my pregnancy, and nothing aggravates the injury faster than scrubbing a bathtub, since it is located near my lower back. This recipe didn’t require any extra scrubbing and didn’t aggravate my injury one bit. I will never use anything else again. Now that’s a win-win EcoFrugal recipe! Cheap, natural, eco-friendly, effective, and easy.
NOTE: This recipe is for scrubbing the surface of a bathtub. If you have a Jacuzzi tub like mine pictured here, you should use a different cleaner for the jets. I’m experimenting with greening my jet-cleaning routine by using eco-friendly dishwasher soap run through the jets, rather than the effective but not-so-green bleach plus traditional dishwasher soap alternative.
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