Toilet Tip

This may fall under the category of Too Obvious to Mention, but I've finally found THE WAY to clean a toilet without having to do something disgusting twice.

Typically, you find lurking behind the average toilet a flimsy plastic wand with flattened bristles. This is what you are supposed to use to restore a be-ringed and be-pooped and be-smattered toilet to its pristine porcelain...er, pristineness (hey, it's late). But what really happens is that you take this thing in your bare hand and gingerly swirl it around the bowl to knock down the grossest stuff (while dodging germy splash-back), and end up leaving not only a ring, but a hard yellow crust in the crevices and this black stuff up under the rim. Then you are forced to find some other way to clean the toilet and thus end up engaging in a chore far more often than you should really have to.

Now despite the enormous amount of effort put into discovering new and less-repugnant ways to do this chore using ever-more noxious chemicals and ever-more expensive supplies (disposable toilet scrubbing wands?), I've found that the simplest and best method is the old-fashioned one. Put on a pair of rubber gloves, get down and personal with that toilet, and scrub the heck out of it. Rubber gloves help enormously in doing your housecleaning--they add an element of objectivity and reduce the gross-out factor, as well as saving your hands.

You must use a heavy-duty scrubbing pad to get the scale off, and my favorite is the grey 3M floor stripper pad you can find at your home improvement store. We used these in the military both to scrub black gunky grease off the grill and to strip the floors of old wax (not at the same time). The first few times will require more elbow grease, but as you begin to see those crevices turn white and shiny again, you will experience house-cleaning nirvana, knowing that you have the cleanest toilets on the block (maybe in the city). Follow up with a frequent antibacterial wipedown and you have toilets that a toddler could eat from.

Well, OK, they don't eat from them--but I have caught them chewing on the edges.