Let’s face it: Most household chores suck. They’re repetitive. Some of them are gross. There are some I hate so much that I have gone to rather extreme measures to avoid them (see the confession below). The worst of the worst for me is not cleaning the toilet. It’s not folding laundry, it’s not even kitchen clean-up — though that runs a close second. Nope, the worst ever chore is:
Cleaning the Bathtub
Photo attribution
Photo by Skin – ubx, Originally posted to Flickr. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
I hate cleaning the bathtub. Hate, hate, hate, hate. And one more hate. There is something about it that, to me, makes it much worse than cleaning the toilet (which I actually don’t mind all that much). I find that leaning over the side of the tub to reach the walls leaves me with no elbow grease power, so I have to actually climb into it to get the walls clean. That in and of itself skeeves me out. I don’t dig the idea of standing barefoot and with all of my clothes on in a dampish tub {shudder}. Nor do I want to stand in it naked while I’m scrubbing {double shudder}.
In my last house I had a small enclosed shower in the master bathroom and the idea of standing in there to clean freaked me out so much that I actually hired a maid to come every other week JUST to clean that room. (I never told my husband I was doing that. He must have thought elves mysteriously showed up every couple of weeks).
The tub seems to get funky so quickly too! It’s not like anyone in the house digs ditches for a living, so where is all of this stuff coming from? And the shower curtain. I’m pretty sure the bottom of it isn’t supposed to be pink.
How to make it better
The first thing I’d suggest — Get your teenager to do it. Tell the kid it builds character. He can list it on his college resume as community service work.
Barring that, prevention is the best way to deal with it. If you’ve neglected the tubs for a while, that first time scrubbing is going to be hellish, no matter what you do. Once you’ve gotten it clean, a very small amount of daily maintenance will make the weekly (ok, let’s be honest… monthly) tub chore a lot easier.
Bathtub acrobatics
I keep an old washcloth hanging on a hook in the tub. While I’m showering I throw it on the floor and use my feet to scrub around the bottom of the tub. Then I wring it out and hang it back up. If you do that every day you will probably never have to actually scrub the tub again. If you do it two or three times a week, you’ll never again have to take a shot of whiskey before being able to face the job (you don’t have to do shots before you clean the bathtub?).
Aside from the washcloth dance, the main way to keep a tub or shower happy is to keep the area as dry as possible. I bought a squeegee thing from the dollar store and have it hanging in the tub area. After a shower I take literally 15 seconds to squeegee the walls. You won’t believe how much water will shear off of the tile.
If you have a fan in the bathroom use it. Turn it on before you get in and leave it running for a good 20 minutes after you get out. If you don’t have a fan, open a window. Even if it’s -15 degrees outside. Ok, maybe not. But if it’s not feasible to open a window while you’re bathing, do consider having a little portable fan that you can use to move the air around. It makes a huge difference.
What about the shower curtain?
This is a sticky widget. You want the shower curtain open so that you have a better flow of air around the tub after you bathe. But if the shower curtain is pushed open, it’s also scrunched up. A wet, scrunched up shower curtain equals a pink, gross shower curtain. What is a girl to do? I try to make a sort of compromise. I keep the curtain pulled shut (straight) and make sure all of it (including the liner) is hanging outside of the tub. This gives it a chance to dry and keeps the wet curtain off of the side of the tub.
Do you have any special tricks for lessening the horrors of cleaning the bathtub?
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