Don’t you ever wish that your bathroom would just keep itself clean? Cleaning the bathroom has to be one of the grossest jobs in housekeeping. It’s so easy to let it build up. But when we eventually have to do a deep cleaning, the process is miserable and takes forever. How can you keep your bathroom clean everyday, while spending the smallest amount of time as possible?
We all want to have clean and pretty bathrooms that smell fresh. And we all have those friends who have sparkling clean bathrooms no matter when we happen to pop by.
How are they doing it? Hint: They don’t let it build up to a big deep cleaning.
There is an easy solution. You just have to install a handful of super quick habits into your daily life, and you will never have to do a nasty bathroom overhaul again. Sure, once in a while you can spend a little extra time on the details, but if you follow daily clean-bathroom habits, it will always look (and smell) ready for company!
Make your bathroom easier to keep clean
Simplify!
Give your cabinets a good decluttering. It is very hard to keep a clean bathroom if there is stuff everywhere. The first step in how to keep your bathroom clean everyday, is always to get rid of as much as you can, and then create systems that make it easy to put things where they need to go.
Keeping your stuff pared down and organized is important for keeping your bathroom clean. Cull your cabinets a couple times a year. Also make sure that there is a place for everything so everything can be easily put in its place. When our family put up labeled hooks for each member of the family, our towel clutter (and our mysterious towel disappearances) completely vanished. Mostly because I could tell at a glance who the offender was.
Simple surfaces
Store as little on the flat surfaces of your bathroom as possible. The more stuff on the sink, the harder it is to clean. If it isn’t a decoration, or something you need every time you wash your hands, it should probably be put away in a drawer or cabinet. Even if you use it every day, it only takes a second to open a cabinet.
Keep decorations to a minimum. Clean shiny surfaces are beautiful on their own. Less is more when it comes to bathroom decorating. Try putting ALL the decorations away so all surfaces are completely empty. Live with it for a week, then put things back one at a time. Once you get used to the openness of it, you might enjoy having fewer decorations, rather than a gazillion doodads all over the place just because they’ve “always been there”.
Keep a hamper in the bathroom. Make it a family rule than no clothing ever goes on the floor in the bathroom. Not only is it gross, but it’s easy to “forget” to pick it back up. As each garment comes off your body it either goes in the hamper, or gets folded up and set on the counter in a tidy stack. Then when you are getting ready to leave, you can pick up the stack, and they are all ready to go back in the drawer.
Don’t let the germs spread!
Keep your toilet lid down. Not just the seat, but the LID. Each time you flush the toilet, a small amount of the germy water becomes aerosolized. And you really don’t want that settling on your toothbrushes (another reason to keep things in the cabinet). Also if you flush with the toilet lid up, you are much more likely to end up battling smell problems because of that very fine mist of urine-water (or worse) that you have spread around the room. Enforce from this day forth with everyone in the household that the toilet lid must always be down BEFORE you flush.
Make it easy to clean
Keep all your cleaning supplies (paper towel, spray cleaner, disinfectant wipes, etc.) right there in the bathroom. If you have multiple bathrooms, keep an identical set under each sink. It is soooooo much easier to clean when it takes 30 seconds, rather than five minutes to go get the supplies and put them back away.
Always have a tidy space
Each time you use the bathroom, glance around and make sure that everything is picked up and tidy. It only takes a second to make sure everything is put away. When you walk out, take with you anything that shouldn’t be in the bathroom.
Trash that never gets forgotten
Each time you throw something away, check the trashcan. If it is half full or more, empty it. Nobody enjoys trying to stuff an empty shampoo bottle in a little bitty trashcan that is full of who-knows-what. Also bathroom trash can contain some nasty stuff. You don’t want that to be in there long enough to start to smell. If you empty the trash when you throw something away rather than at a set time each week, you never have to worry about remembering to do it later. Also when you are tying off a trash bag that isn’t super full, you won’t accidentally touch anything you really don’t want to think about.
Don’t forget to keep new trash bags in the bottom of the can, underneath the current bag. That way you don’t have to make an extra trip to bring back a new liner. You just take the old bag with you when you leave.
Fresh toilet
Let be honest, the toilet is the part you are dreading. The easiest way to deal with this core part of how to keep your bathroom clean everyday is simple. Every day before you hop in the shower, give your toilet a swish with the toilet brush and prop the brush under the toilet seat to drain. When you get out, you can put it away and not have a puddle of nasty water in the holder.
After each time you use the bathroom, before you wash your hands, check and see if the toilet is yucky. If it is, grab some toilet paper and wipe up any moisture, hair, or anything else, and flush it away. Need a little more than that? Grab a disinfecting wipe and go over the toilet. If you have boys in the house and things are a little icky on the floor around the toilet, you can quickly wipe down the floor. If you use your shoe instead of your hand, I won’t judge.
A sparkling sink
After you brush your teeth and wash your face each night, take that day’s wash cloth and wipe down the mirror and the sink, and then chuck it in the laundry. My hamper doesn’t have a lid so I hang them over the edge to dry, so the germs aren’t sitting there growing in a damp cloth petri dish. The next morning I knock the dry cloth on into the hamper. This also keeps your damp cloth from mildewing anything else while it waits for laundry day.
Fresh towels
Each time you do your personal laundry (preferably no less than once a week), throw all the towels and washcloths in the hamper. If you have a rug, toss that in as well. Don’t try to remember to “do the towels”. Just piggyback it on when you were going o be doing laundry anyway. Also if you put them back up when they come out of the dryer, you can cut down on your folding.
Expert tip: If you have any long haired people in the house, don’t mix your towels with your underthings, just throw the towels into a load by themselves. My family pulled a lot of very long hairs out of very private places before we learned this lesson.
Clean floors
How to keep the bathroom floor clean everyday? Each day when you sweep the kitchen, do a drive-by in the bathroom too. You already have the broom or vacuum in hand so it only takes a minute, and it will keep you from discovering the collection of germy dust bunnies when you are sitting on the toilet and can’t do much about it. The same goes for mopping. When you mop your kitchen, first spray down the bathroom floor with a disinfectant cleaner. Then once the kitchen is clean, give the bathroom a swipe.
If you find that boy-funk is making the area around the toilet beyond what wipes can handle, fill a spray bottle with peroxide and a squirt of dish soap, and spray that around it. Give it a minute and wipe it up. It’s amazing how it does away with the funk.
The easy way to clean your shower/tub
At the end of your shower, squeegee down the walls to get rid of excess moisture. This is important whether you have hard water that can leave buildup, or you love your products and are likely to leave soap scum. It only takes ten seconds to eliminate a huge amount of work later on. You can follow the squeegee with a spritz of leave-on shower cleaner if you want.
Bar soap causes soap scum. Switch to liquid soap and you won’t have nearly as much of a battle on your hands.
If anybody in your home is a shedder, make it a house rule that when you step out of the shower, you clean out the drain. Enforce this for every family member over five years old. Nobody wants to be in the middle of a shower and realize there is a bad toupee next to their foot.
Keep a scrubbing wand in the shower on a hook (one of those scrubbers with the reservoir handles), and store it sponge side up so it doesn’t drip. Fill with your favorite cleaner that is safe to use in an enclosed area. You don’t want to asphyxiate yourself in the shower while you are standing there naked. White vinegar and dish soap is a good combination. When you take a shower, give the shower stall a quick scrub down and rinse it off.
Fresh air
Turn on the exhaust fan when you walk into the bathroom, and turn it off when you leave. This helps change out the stuffy air in the bathroom and keeps moisture down to avoid mildew. Plus it has the added benefits of removing any less than lady-like smells before the next person comes along, as well as covering any sound. I’m just sayin’.
You can also add a couple drops of essential oil to the inside of the cardboard on each roll of toilet paper before putting it on the holder.
Quick Reference!
- Declutter all surfaces, drawers, and cabinets in your bathroom, and keep the amount of stuff (both visible and stored) to a minimum.
- Keep a hamper in the bathroom and enforce a “Nothing ever goes on the floor” policy.
- Put the toilet LID down before you flush, and make sure everyone else in the house does as well.
- Keep your cleaning supplies in the bathroom.
- When you use the restroom, make sure it is tidy and check and see if the toilet or floor area needs wiped down.
- When you throw something away and the trash is half full or more, empty it right then. Keep liner bags in the bottom.
- Wash your towels and rug any time you do your personal laundry.
- Before you take a shower, swish the toilet and leave the brush under the ring to drain.
- Keep a scrubbing wand hanging in your shower, and give it a once over each day while you are enjoying the hot water.
- After your shower, run a squeegee over the walls.
- Enforce a “clean the hair out of the drain when you finish your shower policy”.
- After you brush your teeth each night, wipe down the mirrors and sink with that day’s washcloth, and set out a fresh one.
- Every time you sweep or mop the kitchen, do the the bathroom too. Spray the bathroom floor down with disinfectant first, before you do anything else, so it can sit.
- Turn on the exhaust fan each time you go in to use the bathroom.
- Each time you change the toilet paper, put a couple drops of essential oil on the inside of the cardboard roll.
Don’t forget to Pin this page, so you can keep this list for reference!
Each of these things only takes at most a minute (and many of them only a few seconds). If you add these habits to your life one by one, you will never ever deal with a nasty embarrassing bathroom again. As your habits for how to keep your bathroom clean everyday become automatic and you eventually don’t even have to think about them, it will feel like your bathroom practically keeps itself clean.
