Things to do with Harpic - other than clean the loo

Long ago, before I became a mum, my house was always spotless. I was quite minimalist too so cleaning was easy. Better still, when I cleaned, it stayed clean. These days I vacuum at least once a day, and wipe the surfaces countless times. It bothered me for a while that my house wasn't as clean as it used to be before BB was born, but then I realised it was pointless to worry about it. I should just accept it.

I do find having a good clean is rather therapeutic though. My approach over the last year or so is to the daily wipes, sweeps, mops and vacuuming, and then every couple of weeks have a real blitz on one room - so that I get the satisfaction of having it done. This usually happens on the Saturday morning of the weekends when DD isn't visiting.

The bathroom had come to the top of the list, so when a challenge to find things to do with Harpic other than clean the loo, I decided that I'd take on the glamorous task and create my own list of bathroom cleaning tips. 

Two bottles arrived yesterday morning

So, dressed in old clothes and rubber cloves, I headed into the bathroom this morning for a spot of deep cleaning therapy. Now... where should I start?

This patch of limescale and mould on the shower has been bothering me for a while so I decided to start here. I am one of those people that rarely uses harsh cleaners, preferring those cloths that require no chemical, or a gentle spray. That method is great unless things get really bad, when it just doesn't work!  I used an old tooth brush with a bit of the blue limescale remover. It splashed a bit, so (don't laugh!) I actually went out to the shed an got my safety glasses out - well, you can't be too cautious with your eyes can you? It cleaned really easily - I was impressed! 

 

Next I went for the shower pipe. Long ago, while I was travelling, I worked in a pub. Every Sunday we had to clean these pipes on the post mix machine with a toothbrush - it was the worst part of that job. I had a bit of a flashback, but when I looked closely at the part of the pipe where the shower runs on it all the time, I did think that perhaps I should have tried this before!

All of the time I was doing this, I was being quite cautious. My biggest concern was leaving some chemical in the bath that BB would get into later, so I was constantly rinsing everything with the shower water.

I couldn't resist having a go at the back of this shower mat. I do scrub this with an old tooth brush regularly, but it never really gets clean. With the Harpic, it came off easily. This was perhaps the height of my 'chemicals are good' euphoria.

I then tried the white bottle on the mould around the edges of the bath and the window

 

 

Not perfect, but a noticeable improvement in all cases. I think better than my usual gentle approach usually gets it.

At this point BB came to join me. He was quite happily playing with his train and watch TV up until a certain point, then he obviously decided I'd been gone too long. He wanted to know what I was doing, I was paranoid about him getting chemical on him and tried to persuade him to do something else - he wasn't interested. Instead he hung around the bathroom, pulling all the loo roll of the holder, and the dental floss out of the box and other helpful things. I guess I was getting more casual about putting the chemical on my taps too.

And then this happened!

I knew it was corrosive, that was also part of my reason for being so generous with the shower water before, especially when I first started - but it was all going so well. I'm not sure if this tap was just different to the others, or if the cleaner was on here longer because I was distracted, or if I didn't rinse it quite so well, but needless to say I was not quite so happy now! I'd say that on closer inspection, everything else is stainless steel, and this tap was chrome, though I had no idea they were any different before this incident. So, I'd say be cautious and don't use your Harpic to remove limescale from chrome taps!

My final project was the washing machine. I know you are not supposed to put bleach in your machine, but I do. You can't put baby and toddler soiled clothes in a machine every day and not have it stinking! It needs a good clean every now and again, and a hot wash with bleach is simply cheaper and more effective than the expensive washing machine cleaners you can buy. I thought the limescale remover version of Harpic might be good at this, and it had been stinking for the last few days.

I wiped the seal and the door and the detergent tray first, then added a bit of the Harpic and put it on a 50ºC wash with a pre-wash and extra water. I then wiped the seal again and put it on for a separate rinse just to be sure all the chemical was out. It did a good job. Stink gone. For a while at least.

So there you have it - lots of things to do with Harpic other than clean the loo. I certainly wouldn't use it on my bathroom every time, the gentle cleaner suits me fine, but every now and then for a deep clean I probably would use it again - though not on my basin tap, and I'd use plenty of water to rinse everything thoroughly too!  I think I might regularly adopt it as my washing machine cleaner.

Disclaimer: This post is in association with Harpic