Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Removing Hard Water Spots from Shower Doors

For most of my adult life, glass shower doors have been the bane of my domestic existence.  We live in an area with very hard water, and we have a water softener, but if the salt runs out, the water runs hard.  I also don't think the water softener does its job all the way.  I can remove soap scum from the glass shower doors, but the little bitty hard water drops (you know what I mean, if you struggle with this) were impenetrable by even the most obnoxious cleaner--Scrubbing Bubbles.  I always try to use homemade and nontoxic cleaners, but nothing seemed to touch my shower doors.

Recently I saw a recommendation for dawn + vinegar, so I tried it yesterday. It works! I used an entire quart jar of homemade cleaner on our basement shower doors (I just poured, splashed, and scrubbed it on) but now that I know this works, I'm going to invest in a high-quality spray bottle for this stuff.  Next time I won't use an entire batch, either--this will be a great maintenance cleaner. 

Here's the method:

*Heat 2 c. vinegar in a microwave-safe container (or you can heat it on the stovetop). I heated it for about 2 minutes. 

*Pour this into a jar, spray bottle, or squirt bottle, and then add 1 c. blue Dawn dish soap. (Some recipes call for a 1:1 ratio, but you don't need that much!)

*Shake.  Then spray/pour/squirt onto your shower doors. I let the solution sit there for a few minutes while I did other things, and then I went back to start rinsing and wiping it off.  

It worked great! I had to scrub a bit here and there (the worst spots were at the bottom of the doors), but many of them just sort of disappeared without any scrubbing at all.  I had to do a lot of rinsing with clean water because the Dawn makes things very sudsy and slippery--I just used a clean bucket of water and a cup to pour all over the shower doors.  It was messy but I was working with what I had! 

And now I go into the bathroom to look at the doors whereas before I avoided that bathroom because of the doors.  So, there you go! 

3 comments:

  1. Dawn is a detergent Polly isn't it? Any special qualities? I will definitely be trying this when I've recovered from a back problem I have presently. Thank you.

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    1. Rose, I hope your back feels better as soon as possible!! I think the only special thing about Dawn is that it's a de-greaser dish detergent. That may not even be that special. I am not very well-schooled on dish detergents!

      Feel better soon!!

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  2. I've started keeping one of those kitchen handled sponges filled with peppermint castile soap in our shower, and before I finish my shower I quickly swipe the doors. For some reason it seems to keep the spots down, which makes cleaning the shower doors a lot easier each week!

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