How to make cleaning the bathroom faster or more enjoyable?

Question

I don't really like cleaning the bathroom, so I was wondering if any of you have ideas on how to make the process faster or more enjoyable? I am listening to podcasts, but maybe you have more ideas.

Answer 1

The easiest way? Don't let your bathroom get really dirty.

Incorporate cleaning the parts that get dirty quickly into your daily routine, buy don't go in there to "clean", clean while you are there anyway. One extra minute is already enough in many cases.

Examples:

• Take a shower or bath. Once you get out, immediately spray the tub or shower walls with a cleaner (store-bought or home-made), let it work while you dry yourself off. Take the shower head to rinse your tub or shower. Optional: if your towel is going into the wash, use it to give the tub or shower a quick wipe to dry it.
• Brush your teeth, wash your face... then use a (microfiber) cloth to give the sink and mirror a quick wipe. Use a squirt of window cleaner, if necessary. (For the ladies with an elaborate routine: if you use more than one serum / cream / ..., you should wait a minute between applications, that time is more than enough.) Doing it in the evening has the added benefit of waking up to a clean sink and mirror.
• Same goes for the toilet - use one bathroom break to quickly swirl the brush in the bowl and wipe down the seat.
• When my kids were smaller, bath-time could be a wet mess, so when I had to mop up the water anyway, I simply cleaned the whole floor. Today, a child taking a shower and not closing the curtain carefully has the same effect.

In short, this means you'll never get that nasty build-up of caked-on dirt that requires dedicated and extensive scrubbing. You should also make sure that you store the necessary cleaning supplies in the bathroom, if you have to go and fetch them from a remote closet, you will never clean "on the fly". Oh, and as an added bonus, your bathroom will always be "company ready".

Every now and then, you should tackle the parts that aren't part of the daily routine, but that's a) rare and b) not too much work.

Answer 2

You have to get ahead of the problem before you end up with needing to clean everything at the same time. This can also change depending on who else is living with you. If it is you alone or you and a spouse this can be a lot easier than trying to manage several people doing chores. This involves two steps:

1. Assessing what needs to be done
2. Assessing how frequently that needs to be done

For example, you may find that your sink gets dirty every third day if you have poor aim after you brush your teeth, as I do! But you may find the floors really aren't bad even after two weeks. In my case, I separate it into these categories:

• Shower
• Toilet
• Floor
• Sink
• Under the sink
• Cosmetic/towel closet

The sink, as I mentioned, needs to be done perhaps every three days (in my case). This means I'll set a recurring Google Calendar event that sets aside a certain part of my day to clean the sink, usually in the morning after I've done other things but before I head off to work. Since I do it every three days, it means that it doesn't take much time at all. I spray it with the cleaning solution and wipe it down with a papertowel. If the faucet appears grimy, I'll use Windex on it to shine it up. I will also do that to the mirror (which I consider to be functionally part of the sink). Doing this results in no more than 5 minutes of work for this component.

On the extreme other end, the towel closet doesn't require much maintenance at all. Once a month I'll clean all the towels in it so they don't get dusty. You may wish to go through all of your 'under the sink' stuff to make sure its in date and that you use it. Removing clutter that sort of thing.

If you simply do the remaining items: floors, toilets, and shower on different days then you'll find you're only doing 5-10 minutes of work at any given time.

Then, of course, you can extend this to other parts of the house such as the kitchen. Small maintenance tasks are a lot easier than doing one, hellish, awful day of cleaning.