by M. J. Joachim

Created on: October 31, 2009

We all know how backbreaking it can be to clean the shower. Not only that. But the fumes from all of those well known cleaners seem to get the best of us in such tight quarters. Leaning down and scrubbing the bottom and side of the shower stiffens our knees, tightens our back muscles and wears us out in a hurry. There is an easier way, and it costs a lot less too.

The first thing we need to think about when cleaning the shower is how we can do it standing upright. Well, we use a broom to sweep the floor, and its bristles sometimes can be used as a scrubber to loosen tough stains before mopping. Why shouldn't we use that same broom to scrub the shower floor and sides?

Dry sweeping works well at first to loosen dirt and push it right toward the drain. Just sweep, sweep, sweep all that grime and dirt, loosening it as we go when the shower is completely dry. All the while we can stand upright, maneuvering the broom around the sides and floor of the shower. Then when all the dirt has been loosened and directed toward the drain, we can turn on the water and rinse it down, making sure to sweep the sides and floor again with clean water for a sparkling shower.

Of course sweeping the shower doesn't necessarily sanitize it. To do that, we need to use products that will eliminate odors and help us scrub dirt out of crevices. Baking soda has long been used to minimize and get rid of odors. It's cheap, easy to use, and nontoxic. By simply sprinkling a little bit of baking soda over our entire shower before sweeping, we can use its built in abrasion factors with our broom to make broom scrubbing the shower even easier.

A really neat trick is to pour plain white vinegar over the baking soda to create scrubbing bubbles. The baking soda and vinegar interact together, and they literally loosen dirt. Then we sweep and scrub with the broom, and voila! Our shower never looked cleaner, especially since baking soda whitens as it works. The vinegar also works as a disinfectant, and while it has its own peculiar odor, chances are it won't make us light headed. Upon rinsing the shower thoroughly, the vinegar and baking soda clean the drain and pipes too.

Finally we need to polish our shower to make it shine. All we have to do is take a clean dry mop and move it around the shower while still standing upright, just like we did with the broom. In no time, we have a disinfected, clean shower without the pain of bending over and getting a stiff back. To top it off, we also end up with a clean broom in the process.

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