cleaning time

Back home in Canada I never was one to clean the house much. My logic being if you keep things clean as you go there isn't much else to clean and it worked pretty well. Out here I use the same logic but have to clean more often (every week or two instead of monthly). It is more challenging here as with all the dust and hard water is a nasty and annoying thing to deal with as you can see with my shower.

Before (a year+ of calcium buildup)

After

I'm liking the shiny white color much better. One of the challenges of getting this clean was what to use to clean it. Cleaning solutions out here aren't as good as stuff in Canada so it was a bit of trial and error. One suggestion was to use some battery acid (and be very careful with it) but I wasn't too keen on that as it seemed a little extreme for this. What I found worked was citric acid (thanks T for the suggestion) left to sit on it for a while with some water. I love the sizzling sound it makes as it eats through the buildup. After rinsing away the citric acid I took a flat razor and scrapped it all down. It took a few hours to get it all cleaned up and I still need to do the sides but I'm liking the results so far.

Vinegar is another useful product I've found to be helpful to cut through the calcium buildup. About once a month or so I take down the shower head (or have J do it since I'm too short) and soak it in vinegar for a few hours. Its also useful in keeping the sinks somewhat shiny too.

My next challenge is to get the water stains out of the toilet and off the floor. Both are more of a challenge as they aren't flat surfaces like the shower tiles so I can't use the razor blade to scrape them clean. One of the other people who live here suggested a specific cleaning solution so I'm hoping that will work but for now I'll just ignore the stains. I still have lots of other cleaning solutions to use up and with everything being so expensive, its not worth a closet full of cleaning supplies that may or may not work.