Every Monday is bathroom cleaning day here at our house. I often share bits and pieces of my process over on my Instagram Stories, but I thought a step-by-step blog post with more specifics would be a great resource for you guys to be able to refer back to any time you have questions about methods or products! Any time I switch things up (because I found better ways to do things or better products), I’ll be sure to come back and update this post so it’s always optimized for you!
Let’s talk about what’s in my bathroom cleaning caddy really quick.
The products i use to clean our bathrooms
My bathroom caddy is actually a personalized galvanized bucket that someone made to be used for our wedding – it held drinks on ice at our drink table. Fun little tidbit there for ya 😉 Now I use it to carry my cleaning supplies from bathroom to bathroom on Mondays. It holds the following:
– Clorox toilet wand & refills
– Mr. Clean protective gloves
– Microfiber cloths for: glass/mirrors and surfaces
– Method Antibac cleaning spray
– Glass cleaning spray
– Sponge wand
The only other thing I use to clean is our Bissell steam mop and vacuum. As far as supplies go – it really doesn’t take a lot to clean a bathroom! Don’t overcomplicate it with a thousand different cleaning solutions and tools.
The process
Let’s go through my bathroom cleaning process step-by-step.
Step 1: Spray surfaces, baths and toilets.
The first step is to spray everything down. To be more efficient and to give your antibacterial cleaner a chance to really kill those germs, spray everything down in ALL of your bathrooms at the same time. That way, things have time to disinfect while you work in the other rooms. Don’t be shy with that spray – use it in and around your sink (unless you have marble countertops, then use a marble cleaner – I have to do this in Fischer’s bathroom) and spray your toilet from top to bottom. Take the time to lift the lid and seat and don’t forget that part by the floor! Be sure to also thoroughly spray your bathtubs, faucets and showers. Pretty much everything but the floor gets a good mist.
Step 2: Scrub
Once you’ve given all of your bathrooms a good spritz, I go back to the first room and start scrubbing using my sponge wand. I love mine in particular because it’s comfortable to hold and has a replaceable scrubber head (I get mine from Grove Collaborative – click here to get a free gift when you sign up to get your non-toxic cleaning products delivered to your door)! I go from room to room and scrub before I move on to step number three.
Step 3: Wipe down / Rinse off
After scrubbing, your surfaces and fixtures will be sudsy and wet. To dry and shine them, I use a microfiber cloth on the sinks and toilets. Microfiber is crucial here for two reasons – it helps to really shine up your surfaces and fixtures and ensures you’re not just pushing around dirt and fuzz. Microfiber does a really good job of trapping those tiny particles so your sinks and toilets get really nice and clean. This is also the step where I rinse down the bathtubs and shower.
Step 4: Clean mirrors
Using a new microfiber cloth (I have some that are meant specifically for cleaning glass and mirrors), I spray down the bathroom mirrors, spray the cloth a couple of times and then wipe them down. For most effective cleaning, start wiping your mirrors at the top right and move down using a zigzag motion from left to right.
Step 5: Clean toilets
I use these Clorox Toilet Wands and love them! They have disposable heads that already contain the perfect amount of toilet bowl cleaner in each one. I just use one head to clean both of our upstairs toilets and then we have a regular toilet brush and cleaner that I keep under the sink in the downstairs powder room (just because we already had it down there and the wand heads really don’t stretch to more than two bowls). I’ll scrub the two toilets upstairs first and then let the wand head drip dry into the toilet while I go downstairs and scrub that one. This helps to minimize the transfer of germs when I got to throw away the disposable head.
Step 6: Gather trash
Our garbage gets collected on Tuesdays, so it really works out that bathrooms get cleaned on Mondays. It’s at this point in the process that I grab the large trash bag from the garbage can in the laundry room and dump go around to all the smaller trash cans in the house and dump them in. This includes bathroom trash cans, the one in our bedroom and the ones in our offices. This is also when I remove and dispose of the Clorox wand head.
Step 7: Clean floors
This is my favorite part. I remove all the bath mats from the floors and toss them in the washing machine (without starting it). Then, I use our Bissell Symphony Bissell Symphony Pet Steam Mop and Vacuum to vacuum and steam clean the bathroom floors. I love how, after I use this, our floors not only look and feel clean, but I know they’ve been disinfected in a way that is safe for our pets and toddler!
Step 8: Start laundry
My final step for cleaning bathrooms is to start a load of laundry containing bath mats, towels, hand towels, wash cloths, the microfiber cloths I used to clean with and the microfiber mop attachment from the steam mop. Everything together makes a reasonable load of laundry so it all gets washed at the same time!
And that’s it! Just below this, you’ll find links to all of the cleaning supplies that I use, so feel free to shop around! If you have any questions about any of the steps above or any of the cleaning items I use feel free to shoot me a question in the comments below.
Diane says
Is that sanitary washing your face cloths with your mats and cleaning towels?
amanda says
that’s an interesting question – hadn’t thought about that? but i wash them with hot water, baking soda and vinegar so i think they get pretty clean!
melisse says
I was horrified when I read you wash your cleaning microfiber towels in the same load with your washcloths and bathing towels.
Please google bacteria in washing machines… No, your laundry method described in the previous answer isn’t adequate.
A quickly found reputable reference for you:
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/are-bacteria-hiding-in-your-washing-machine#Few-dangers-with-some-exceptions
Your towels used for cleaning the bathroom – especially around the toilet – would be considered contaminated with body fluids.
I’m a clinical scientist. Please look into this – I’m certain you’ll change the way you wash your cleaning cloths and towels.
amanda says
thanks for the input! but i think the amount of “bodily fluids” that get on my cleaning cloths would be comparable to the the amount of “bodily fluids” in soiled bed sheets or even undergarments as i clean our bathrooms every single week. something to consider though for sure and i will actually look into sanitizing my washer more regularly. thanks for the info!