Bathroom Cleaning 101

I have a secret. I love clean­ing bath­rooms. Back in the Jesuit Novi­tiate, bath­rooms are called JAKES (that’s stuff of Philip­pine Jesuit folk­lore); and it was one of the dreaded man­u­alia assign­ments. But it’s not a prob­lem if I was assigned there.

Now that I have a condo unit, I’m in charged on clean­ing the bath­room myself. My sis­ter takes care of every­thing else in the house (well, the cook­ing and the tidy­ing up of the kitchen), but the bath­room is my king­dom. It’s not a fetish, it’s just some­thing I love doing.

The key to not clean­ing dis­gust­ing muck all the time is to make sure that you have less to clean in the week­ends. You can do this by spend­ing a mere 5 min­utes of clean­ing up after your­self when you use it.

Put every­thing back in their place. Sure it’s easy to place your after­shave or your hand lotion on top of the bath­room counter, but you know you end up look­ing for said items next time you want to use them. Not to men­tion the fact that they make your bath­room counter clut­tered and messy. Take some time to be neat and orderly.

Always keep a glass cleaner and a pack of paper tow­els under the sink or beneath the counter. Wipe the mir­ror clean after using it in the morn­ing, or you can opt to do this before going to bed every night. This way, you have a spot­less mir­ror which you can use to admire your­self more clearly.

You can also keep dis­in­fec­tant wipes together with the paper tow­els. You can use this to wipe the counter and the toi­let after you use them. You can also wipe the debris in the bath­tub or shower stall off with it. This will surely keep your bath­room clean and rel­a­tively germ-free. You also won’t have to worry about that unex­pected vis­i­tor find­ing the con­di­tion of your bathroom.

Do not drop wet tow­els on the floor or any­thing else. Place bas­kets or ham­pers for worn clothes and wet tow­els. Add a waste bas­ket for your other trash.

Now that you’ve done the day-to-day mini clean­ing, the once-a-week (or month?!) clean­ing will be so much eas­ier to do:

Sched­ule your clean­ing. Assign one day a week when you’ll tackle this chore. If you wish, you may even set a timer on your­self. Give your­self an hour. Dur­ing this time, you can focus all your energy on clean­ing. This way, you won’t pro­cras­ti­nate and you won’t end up hav­ing a dirty bath­room at the begin­ning of a new week.

Be orga­nized. Store all your bath­room clean­ing sup­plies (rub­ber gloves, clean­ers, sponges, rags, and spritzer bot­tle) in one bucket or con­tainer with a car­ry­ing han­dle. Don’t for­get to wash rags and sponges in hot water and bleach (and dried prop­erly) after clean­ing so that they won’t breed bacteria.

Before you begin scrub­bing, remove items from counter tops, sinks, ledges and cup­board tops. Place them in a box and leave out­side the bath­room door. This way, you can wet, scrub, and dry every­thing to your hearts contents.

Scrub the inside of the toi­let with a toi­let brush and wipe the tank, the lid, and the seat. Don’t for­get to empty the bath­room trash con­tainer. Replace the trash bag if necessary.

Dis­in­fect door knobs and drawer han­dles with germ kil­ing clean­ers.

Make sure that every­thing is clean and dry before return­ing toi­letries and other per­sonal effects.