h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a quick question for all of you. I'll compare answers and maybe try a few different options.

In addition to the lovely vinyl shower curtain with the day-glo orange monkeys in our bathroom, we also have two liners (because we have one of those big, oval tubs with feet and the wall is exposed, I placed a liner on either side of the tub). Neither of us actually uses proper "soap", but we still get some residue on the liners, and it looks icky after it accumulates for a couple of weeks.

I can't use bleach around the apartment because the fumes give me screaming headaches (as do cleaners containing pine, and anything even vaguely vanilla scented), so I use some oxygenated powdery stuff for the laundry- but it doesn't work for household cleaning because it seems to be activated, at least in part, by the agitation of the washing machine.

Any suggestions regarding a strong cleaner that (a) doesn't give off fumes that will make me sick, and (b) won't eat holes through the vinyl would be appreciated.

Hello! Long time no chat. I don't think I have anything particularily helpful to say except that toothpaste is very good at cleaning ink off of things, maybe it would be useful here? You could try putting toothpaste on and scrubbing it. Or maybe just waterdown and regular cleaner so the odour is not so bad?

Should be water down THE regular cleaner...

You need Bon Ami cleanser. It's a scrubbing powder that doesn't have any bleach in it. I'll look for a link.

No perfumes or dye either. Here's the link:

http://www.bonami.com/

By the way, I LOVE this subject line.

*Looks puzzled*

*people CLEAN showers?*

Are showers not supposed to clean the people? Have you tried TALKING to your monkey shower?

"listen, monkey-wooh, i know you have issues with fur "n stuff but...."

zdt*helpful as always*

I saw a thing on a DIY show about how a mixture of water, vinegar and bicarbonate of soda ('Baking Soda' in US?) is great for getting grease off kitchen surfaces and grime off cupboard doors.

That's about the sum total of my knowledge. (Personallly, I'd have thought the vinegar and bicarb would react with each other to form water and some kind of inert salt, but what do I know.)

I may try that Bon Ami cleanser, because it sounds like it'd be great for the sinks (stainless steel in the kitchen- so non-bleach scrubbing powder would be fantastic!) and the tub itself. No bleach and no perfume means I could actually stand to be in the same room with it.

However, since I already have some vinegar and baking soda/bicarbonate of soda in the house, I may try that first...

You guys are so helpful! Thanks!

PS- hi FF! The toothpaste suggestion is a good one- I'd need a bit too much to get the curtains done properly, but I *do* use it to polish the stainless steel fixtures on the sinks and tub (like the spigots and faucets, etc), and it works wonderfully.

Yeh, great title

I was gonna say bicarb too

Or a maid....

>Or a maid....<



Don't I wish!!

Funny you should mention that- I've been toying with the idea of hiring a service for Spring Cleaning of the walls and the floor in the bathroom and kitchen (and maybe all of my kitchen cabinets, too)... not that they're filthy or anything, just that there's a lot of white in those rooms and I'd like everything *really* clean.

K says he'll do it and we'll use whatever money the cleaning service would have charged to buy CDs with. Which sounds like a good idea.

But what do you think the odds are that whoever winds up doing the wall washing is going to have me looming behind them, offering feedback ("no, no, no, not like THAT!!"), the entire time?

When monkeys get dirty they usually need a good spanking...

But park that thought. This soapy residue - is it soap or scum? ie do you have hard water? In which case (trawls memories of chemistry lessons), you will get calcium sterate deposits. They can probably be dissolved in a solution of vinegar. I'd have thought. But if it;s soap, surely it should just wash off, without any need for additional...soap.

A man needs a maid...

It's probably hard water residue- I'm fairly certain that our water's slightly on the hard side. So the vinegar solution should work.

I don't think it's "soap scum", as we don't use actual "soap", but liquid castile, which I wouldn't think would leave much scum?

So it is most likely calcium sterate deposits. I'll give the vinegar treatment a try this weekend!

On a similar note- do any of you know of or use a toilet bowl cleaner that is effective yet doesn't contain bleach, ammonia, or anything really caustic? I usually buy Lysol bowl cleaner, but I'm trying to get away from stuff that makes me nauseous when I use it- I hate doing my cleaning on a weekend morning, and then feeling vaguely off for a good part of the afternoon afterward.

But I'm not willing to sacrfice effectiveness. I want my bathroom *clean*. I've been wondering if I should just try the castile I already use on the wood flooring? (And is castile safe to use on ceramic tile, which I have in my bathroom? Some cleaners are rough on the grout)

Ah...when I say 'soap', I mean 'things containing sodium/potassium sterate' - which covers most bubbly personal hygeine products.

Toilet bowl cleaner - although I don't see the point myself; it's not as though you're going to eat out of it - again, vinegar. We have this strange TV show over here in which two scary women visit the homes of poor unfortunates who have 'let things go a little' and make them all spic and span. They seem to recommend either vinegar/lemon juice or sodium bicarbonate for most household tasks. And one time they poured a bottle of coke down the toilet and left it overnight.

We don't tend to use ammonia over here. After all, it smells like p**s.

'Cleanliness is next to impossible.'

Oh...and the scum is deposited due to the reaction between the hardwater and soap. Do you get furry kettles?

Actually - do you use kettles at all? I was very amused when a Californian friend raved about our amazing water-boiling gadget.

The French seem astonished too. Vinegar sorts out furry kettles also, though it does stink while it's doing so.

Awww....furry kettles; you could make them in the shapes of various fluffy animals, little hotty jackets, imagine making a cup of & your steaming at you. I suppose a would be better, if it's a green one then all sorts of limescale jokes come to mind.

As to toilets, ho ho ho. I am of the old school, don't use anything at all except a bog brush, but do use that each time & so does viking. I have a very nice clean toilet. One reason i won't put anything down it that's not been eaten first is that Yoda sometimes decides she wishes to drink from it, disgusting litle beast. Mooon kittie regularly fell in whilst attempting to copy this trick.

Lord help you if Herman tries this one!

I knew someone who had a called Fang, who had a ceramic fetish, used to poo in showers, sinks, bathtubs, toilets...his owner used to store the dirty dishes in the fridge, then of course forgot about them.

The owner was a man. The house was occupied by 5 men & Fang.And a who lived in the back yard 'cos he had grown too big to be led out through the house. One day i couldn't stand it any longer & cleaned the bathroom. It went down in folk history; there was astonishment when i revealed the bathroom tiles were originally pink, not brown.

zdt

Hmm, I don't think Herman could get into the toilet even if he wanted to, but I keep the lid down anyway so it's probably nothing I need to worry about. Will see what vinegar does for it.

I've never had a furry kettle. I use the kettle occasionally- when I make tea. The coffee maker does get deposits, though, so it's probably a case of having hard water- it's Lake Michigan water, after all.

>there was astonishment when i revealed the bathroom tiles were originally pink, not brown<

That is one of the most disgusting things I've heard in a while. I'm not anal-retentive or anything, but I need, at the very least, for the bathroom and kitchen to be clean, and if at all possible, for the floors to be washed at least once or twice a month. If my bathroom tiles were to turn brown, the culprit would be made into a pair of potholders.

That goes for K as well... though he has not, as of yet, pooed on the floor. At least not to my knowledge.

Oh, and I have never been able to stand the smell of ammonia. It gives me nasty migraines. Not quite as badly as pine cleaners do, though. The downstairs neighbor uses Pine-Sol in the foyer, and in the few seconds it takes me to walk past to our steps, is enough to make me throw up when I get upstairs.

The solution to that has been to burn incense out on our landing to drown out the smells from downstairs. As an added bonus, it would seem that the neighbors dislike incense as much as I dislike Pine-Sol. So at least everyone suffers equally.

I was going to suggest vinegar as well but I thought of it after I signed off and then I moved and couldn't get on again until now. I use vinegar for the rabbit stuff (bunny pee is very high in calcium) and it works very well.