Well That's Pinteresting | It's Spa Day for Your Shower!

That's right ladies, it's time for a spa treatment! Oh not for you, oh no... it's for your shower! Let's get those cleaning gloves on and give that dirty DNA water receptacle a good cleaning!

When I use to clean my showers I used Comet Bath Cleaner. Every single time I would spray it, even if I was covering my face with my shirt, I would gag and sneeze from the chemicals. So when I found this Martha Stewart recipe for a homemade tub/shower cleaner I just had to try it. Then I found this great idea on how to remove mildewy grossness from the caulking in your tub and thought, well heck... if I'm in here cleaning the shower I might as well put 5 more minutes of effort in and make it nice and sparkly.

There really isn't much to this other than simple house hold cleaners you should already have laying around, but if you don't, jog over to your local grocery store and grab what you need.

Supplies for your day at the shower spa:

water

1 teaspoon dish soap

1 cup baking soda

a dual sided sponge or scrub brush

a bowl

bleach

large cotton balls

Toss your 1 cup of baking soda in a bowl and add the teaspoon of dish soap and add just enough water to make it pasty. Not too thick, not too runny...it should look like this:

Now depending on the grossness of your tub (I know it's harsh to say, but common... some of our tubs really need this and you know it) you can either use a double sided sponge or a scrub brush. Even though mine was pretty dirty, I just used a sponge like this and put a heaping spoonful of baking soda mixture on it, then flipped it on the scrub side for abrasion. You will find that some will drip down into the tub, which is all good because you'll be using it down there too.

How dirty was my tub, you ask? This dirty. Not only had I just bathed my Sphynx kitty (she has major oils that come off of her which leave a nasty ring on the tub) I had dropped a bottle of shampoo and it sprayed everywhere plus there was the grimy soap crap on the walls too.

Here's the spotted dirty fixtures.

I used 2 heaping spoonfuls on the left wall, 3 on the large middle wall and 2 on the right wall with the fixtures, then a little more to clean the fixtures themselves. I would say I used a couple in the bath as well, plus all the stuff that dripped down. After a good rinsing I had a beautifully clean shower!

Hey look, there's me in the reflection!! So shiny!!

SOLD.

I'm never buying stinky chemical cleaners for my shower ever again.

Now on to that pesky mildew crud you see under my fixtures... (I do clean after midnight sometimes. haha!)

I poured some bleach into a small bowl (sorry Princess Jasmine...) then soaked a large cotton ball in it and stuck it up against the caulking to where I felt like it was snug enough to do it's job. You can use your fingers, or Q-Tips or whatever you want, just make sure it's nice and snug. Darn it if I didn't take a picture of this process, but I think you'll get the idea that you'll need to apply as many cotton balls to the area that is mildewed as you'll need. In the original pin the girl who tried this used the perm cotton strings you can get at a beauty supply store, but good 'ol regular cotton balls work too.

Here's my before pic. BLECH. GROSS. We just bought this house, so I'm getting use to its quirks, and that night whilst cleaning I found out that the water drips down the fixture underneath on the bottom and follows it down to the tub....hence the reason for the mildew build up right there. We have a couple other nasty areas as well, like the corners so I slapped some cotton balls there too.

Leave the cotton on overnight.

Awake in the morning, remove and toss your cotton balls and yell "BOOYAH" because the mildew will be totally gone.

Ahhhhhh... wasn't that spa treatment so relaxing?

Ok ok, cleaning is not relaxing, but rather satisfying instead knowing that you aren't spending a horrible amount on cleaners and you aren't damaging your lungs by breathing that nasty stuff in.

TIP TIME

1.

As you can see, my shower walls are tile and my tub is old school porcelain from the 70's. This concoction of baking soda and soap worked great in my situation. It should work well in yours too, if you have the same type of thing. I've also read that fiberglass shower/tubs will be ok and shouldn't scratch up using this mix.

2.

In the original Martha Stewart post they suggest using anti-bacterial essential oils like Tea Tree Oil. I didn't have any of that, and personally didn't see a use for it. And as for fiberglass showers, apparently essential oils can mar the surface, so I wouldn't suggest adding any to the mixture if you have a fiberglass shower/tub.

3.

I didn't even use all of the baking soda soap mix during this process, even though I was using heaping spoonfuls, so next time I think I might do 3/4 of a cup instead of a full cup.

I hope you enjoyed my shower cleaning day at the spa!

Make sure to pin one of my pictures from this post please

and have an amazing weekend!!