Bathroom cleaning getting you down? Ideal Standard, the UK’s No 1 bathroom brand, will show you 5 easy ways to lighten the load.
Bathroom cleaning: the ultimate drudge. The most tiresome of tasks. The most challenging of chores. A job so lacking in redeeming features that you’d rather dust or iron first.
Every week—or more if yours is a busy family home—we march upstairs armed with enough cleaning products to wipe out billions of bacteria. We spray, we scrub, we wipe and we rub. It’s a hot, sweaty exercise where the reward is to see your hard work undone minutes later by the careless aim of a young son or the flooded floor following a teenager’s shower.
But what if there was a better way? Surely, we can shave a few minutes off the time it takes to bring out the sparkle and shine. There must be some tips and tricks for cleaning toilets and tiles. Well, yes there are. The bathroom experts at Ideal Standard have drawn up a list of five things we can all do to ease the burden of the weekly wipe. Here’s how to turbocharge your bathroom clean.
Does cleaning your bathroom sometimes feel like this? Never fear, help is at hand...
1. Invest in some good quality tools
Cleaning your bathroom can be back-breaking work at times. Stretching and reaching to ensure that all nooks and crannies are germ-free or using your last reserves of elbow grease to rid your bath of soap scum. But the days of simple cloths and scourers are numbered. Putting a few pennies toward some superior tools will make the job quicker and lighten the load on your poor joints and muscles.
If yours is tiled floor to ceiling then an extending handle tile and bath pad is a must. For showers, try a squeegee. For tiled, laminate or lino floors, a steam mop will clean and sanitise in seconds. Don’t think of it as money spent—think of it as time saved.
Make sure you invest in good quality bathroom cleaning tools
2. Plan your bathroom for easy cleaning
Product designers have woken up to the fact that consumers will spend money on goods that make life easier. Stores online and in the high street are awash with gadgets and gizmos that save us precious seconds or simply make tasks that little bit easier. The bathroom is no different.
Opting for products which have been developed with easy cleaning in mind are a sure-fire way to speed up the weekly clean. One example is the back to wall toilet. Moulded for cleaner lines with fewer or no bacteria-friendly grooves and with—as the name suggests—a rear end which extends fully to the wall, there’s no hard-to-reach area behind the bowl. Vanity and vessel basins have similar advantages over traditional pedestal basins and shower enclosures made from specially developed glass, such as Ideal Standard’s IdealClean glass, are also well worth a look.
A back to wall toilet or a close coupled toilet with a closed back, like this one from the Ideal Standard Concept Air collection, will help make cleaning easier
3. Use branded cleaning products
Remember the Fairy Liquid advert that compared the number of plates cleaned with one bottle of the brand leader versus one bottle of the cheaper alternative? The basic premise of the campaign was that going for the low-cost supermarket own brand was a false economy. And the same is true in the bathroom.
Brand leaders are brand leaders for a reason. They are established products often with decades of research and development behind them and, for the most part, they are worth the extra spend. High quality products will power through dirt, grease and bacteria much faster, requiring less scrubbing on your part, so saving valuable time and energy.
4. Reward yourself
Cleaning the bathroom often feels like a thankless task. An hour of spraying, scrubbing and sweating that the ungrateful cherubs who inhabit your home are unlikely even to notice. But even if no-one else is showing gratitude, you can thank yourself with a little treat to say “well done” for your sterling efforts.
A good soak is a reward in itself but why not put a cherry on the top with the addition of prosecco and a few chillout tunes to relax the mood? Or take time out with your favourite book or magazine. Or – let’s be 21st century about this – prop up your phone or tablet in a safe position (this bath caddy is ideal!) and watch a bit of football or an episode of the latest binge-worthy series on Netflix.
With IdealClean glass, the Ideal Standard Synergy wet room panel brings "reward time" forward
5. Motivate with music
It’s hard to get into a rhythm when cleaning the bathroom. Even your current earworm isn’t enough to entertain during your lavatory labours. So how best to distract yourself while you work your way from basin to bath, from toilet to tiles?
Charge up your Bluetooth speaker or plug in your headphones, crank up the volume and let some up-tempo dance music or some fast-paced rock provide the soundtrack to your scrubbing. Dance while you disinfect and wipe your seat to the beat. You’ll be done in no time! Check out this bathroom cleaning playlist.
Shop Ideal Standard
For a bathroom that’s low maintenance yet high in quality, check out all our Ideal Standard suites. From the stylish Tesi collection to the space-saving Concept Freedom range, we’re the first major UK bathroom retailer to work in partnership with Ideal Standard, giving you the most comprehensive choice of products.
