I just spent an hour cleaning the bathroom walls and the toilet seat, and I had forgotten how similar vigorous cleaning is to exercise, in that I need special clothing for it and afterward I feel GROSS.
I would like to say some appreciative things about this toilet seat. When I bought it, I bought it because it had a child’s potty lid built right in. What I paid no attention to was that the whole seat unit was “easily removable for cleaning.” I have never thought to actually remove it for cleaning, since that seemed like a whole different level of cleaning than I ever do: I don’t really feel the urge to clean place no one sees or touches, considering how many places we DO see and touch are ahead of those on the priority list.
However, today I DID remove the seat, because I wanted to see some information about our toilet which was hidden by the seat, and OMG. It was so extremely pleasant to clean that thing by putting it in the tub and using a giant scrub brush on it. It was so much easier to clean places we CAN see but that are hard to GET at, like around the hinges and around the screws. And while removing a whole toilet seat seemed like it would be a burdensome task, it was seriously easy: move two clasps and pull it right off. It took like 6 seconds, and that included 4 seconds of peering to see if there were instructions. A++++++ would buy this same concept again.
I’m not sure cleaning the walls made a definite enough difference to be worth the time, but I KNOW it’s more worth it than cleaning a sock drawer. Also, we’re in that awkward time period where it’s much too early to clean the regular parts of the kitchen/bathroom for the impending guests, and yet I am almost PANTING at how much cleaning needs to be done. My hope is that it’s like when I clean out under a piece of furniture and it feels like it makes a HUGE difference in the clean feeling of the room, even though that makes no sense because most of the under-furniture can’t even be seen.
It DOES seem to me as if the whole bathroom looks cleaner (I cleaned things like light switches and outlets while I was at it), but perhaps that’s mostly the lemon scent. Also, it quieted some of my cleaning anxiety: I have Made Progress! Next I plan to do the floor. “Next” as in another day: TODAY-next involves a Hershey bar with almonds, and the Shirley Jackson book that distracted me from my Jane Austen study program, and washing my hands a dozen more times to try to remove the smell of rubber gloves.
I have vowed to clean some part of my house every day. It’s kind of nice to not think ohh dear god when did I last clean THAT because I know it was in the last month.
We have that toilet seat, and it is The Bestest Thing Ever In The Whole History Of Toilet Seats, except that we didn’t acquire it until after Mr. Sensitive Tush had already acclimated to the padded portable potty seat, and now — even at the age of seven (7) — he refuses to use anything else for his sitting-down needs.
It’s still installed on the toilet, though. Waiting.
Which Shirley Jackson book?
It contains three books: We Have Always Lived in the Castle; The Lottery and Other Stories; The Haunting of Hill House. I’ve read the first two and am now on the third.
I love Shirley Jackson, all of those, but esp. The Haunting of Hill House. I used to teach it in a genre fiction class, as an example of horror. I chose it because it’s not that scary (not everyone in the class was a horror fan so I wanted to go easy on them) but it’s very eerie.
Oooh, those are all three great! Please tell me you have read/are planning to read “Life Among the Savages” and “Raising Demons.” They are hysterical, and one of the (many) reasons I love this blog is that your writing style reminds me very, very much of hers. Like if Shirley Jackson and Erma Bombeck had a literary baby–you are that baby.
Ha! I love it.
I read Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons back when I read these other books the first time (though last time I skipped The Haunting of Hill House, which is a shame because so far it’s my favorite of the three books in this volume), but I barely remember them at all. Time for a re-read, I think!
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is my favorite book ever…but I don’t usually tell people that because it’s really weird.
It always seems crazy to me to, like, clean the bathrooms on Monday, and vacuum on tuesday, or whatever, because some things I have to do every day (laundry, sweeping) and also it feels kind of robotic, but I like doing it that way for the reasons mentioned above – like on Monday I’ll be like oh Lord, this bathroom looks horrible, when did I clean it last? and then I think, lighten up, self, it was just last Monday. Mostly I want to say that toilet seat looks excellent, thanks!
I subscribe to your “drops in the bucket” theory when it comes to cleaning – even though I rarely have the time/inclination/wherewithal to deep clean the entire house, I spot-clean as I go and figure that anything I manage makes it better than it was before. Even if the bathtub still needs to be scrubbed, it’s a little cleaner if I’ve taken 3 minutes to wipe the toilet down with Lysol and sweep up the (tiny) floor space. Drops in the bucket! IN! Same with laundry…even if I can’t manage to fold the entire load, if I hang up a wrinkle-prone shirt and fold three pairs of socks at least I’ve done SOMETHING. Then the rest of it can just sit in the clean laundry basket, awaiting my next burst of motivation.
This comment has no real point, I now realize. Other than to say thanks for being awesome, I suppose! :-)
And THIS is why, after cleaning out closets and drawers that no one can see into anyway, a room always feels cleaner to me, even if the surface clutter and dirt is still there. I KNOW IN MY HEAD THAT IT IS CLEANER.
So, our powder room (as in, the ‘guest’ bathroom right by the front door) reeks of urine and has for a good month. I have a 2 currently-potty-trained boys who are totally the culprits but for some reason I cannot get the smell to go away. First i realized one of them had peed directly INTO the basket of extra toilet paper, which, not cool man. So that went and some of the smell dissipated. But then I realized that someone (else?) had peed on the toilet brush (!!??) so had to clean that. And finally I realized that the Mickey Mouse potty seat was holding stale pee from god knows when and oh ick. So anyway, fixed all those problems and it still reeks! Today I Cloroxed all the walls (had already done the floors and toilet several times over) and it’s finally starting to smell better, but seriously.
I guess it’s embarrassing to admit that I have not done a full on cleaning of it all month, but I have 4 small children and 4 bathrooms, so it’s not like I have been doing nothing at all over here. I just hope that it is finally smelling more like lemon-fresh and less like outhouse. Ugh.
When I had that problem with my bathroom and I had cleaned everything I possibly could and it STILL smelled like pee, I ended up taking the whole seat off and discovered that there was yuck in the hinges. I posted about the procedure http://amdoingmybest.blogspot.com/2011/09/psa-how-to-take-apart-and-clean-toilet.html or you can google “how to take apart a toilet seat”. It definitely took longer than Swistle’s easy-off seat, so I looked on Amazon and you can get easy-off seats without the child seat too! http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B002R5B1CW/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER I’m ordering that RIGHT NOW because I STILL have people who can’t be bothered to aim, grrr!
You know what is gross? When pee puddles at the bottom of the toilet where it meets the floor, it get wicked under the toilet! Since you can’t actually disconnect and remove the toilet itself to clean there, I’ve only had success getting that pee smell out by first jamming the edges of paper towels under the toilet over and over until no more pee gets drawn out, then flooding that area with a mild, nice-smelling cleaner and wicking it back out again with the paper towels. I repeat this process a few times.
What you can’t do is caulk the edge of the toilet to stop the pee from getting under in the first place, because if you do have a seal go you need to be able to tell toilet water is leaking from the bottom of your toilet.
Thank you for this post. I was cleaning the kids’ bathroom today, and found myself ready to take a sledgehammer to the toilet because I could. not. get. in. there. to. clean! But then I remembered you talking about easy to remove toilet seats, went straight to the internet, and now a new seat is winging its way here. I would never have known such a thing exists without your post. I fully expect a drastic reduction in cursing the next time I scour that bathroom.