Washroom Cleaning (as Learned From a Local)

I've never really cleaned a washroom before. At best, I've scrubbed some porcelain with a used sponge and called it a day. Recently though, life in Japan has instilled in me the methods of cleanliness.

Initially, I had wanted to post this piece with a before and after comparison, as a testament to how different the washroom looks after being cleaned. However, I forgot to take photos of the result, and the before photos by themselves look really disgusting. So I've settled on showcasing the products I used, and the process I went through. So here's what I did the last time I cleaned my washroom:

The grossest part of my washroom, arguably, is the floor. Somehow it gets a lot of random particles down there that I don't want to know where they came from. Fortunately, this is easy to clean. A lot of standard Japanese apartments have a sort of mold for the washroom, so many units have a washroom that looks suspiciously like any others. What this means for us is that the floor is usually made of some kind of plastic, not tile or stone. It makes it easy to wipe up using a regular Swiffer-like cleaning sheet.

I'm not picking up poop off the floor (I hope,) so this should be sufficient.

My apartment is sort of a budget one: a 1R in Japanese apartment classifications. What this means is that it's really a box with a sink in it. By extension, the toilet, sink, and bathtub are all in the same room. Why am I mentioning this? Well, in Japan, most people opt for the toilet actual bathing areas to be in separate rooms. What I have in my apartment is the poverty edition of washrooms in Japan. The advantage of this though, is that there can be slightly less effort in cleaning.

With that sorry self-justification and exposition out of the way, my next step is to set up the bath area for cleaning. I have shampoo and soap bottles set up on the sink, and toothbrushes and other toiletries set up on the toilet cistern, so I temporarily moved all of that out of the washroom and sprayed the sink and bathtub with a cleaning agent. I left the bathtub and sink to soak the cleaning agent while I worked on the toilet.

With a brand name like Scrubbing Bubbles, you can be pretty sure it's a cleaning agent.

I used to use a traditional plunger toilet scrub, but it was tiny and was equipped with a sponge as opposed to an actual brush. My toilet cleaning with that wasn't very effective. So, I was introduced to this thing:

The future is now.

This grabby-looking thing requires another bit, and it's the actual cleaning thing. They come in sheets that you have to rip apart to use.

Scrubbing Bubbles is a trusted brand, you know.

These things are flushable, and they have their own cleaning chemicals embedded inside each piece. I don't know it affects the environment, but hopefully Tokyo does something about its sewer water. I at least hope the scrub is degradable. After tearing an individual square off, it gets attached to the handle and off I go cleaning.

The future is most definitely now.

With the bowl done, the next part is the outside of the toilet, the cistern, and its seat. This part is easy, I just wipe it down by hand. I was given a scented, antibacterial wipe, and it does fairly well with small particles. It at the very least makes the toilet smell a little bit nicer. It's also flushable, so any fecal matter it picks up from the underside of the seat doesn't have to be transported to the nearest garbage bag.

Makes your toilet smell like roses. Literally.

There's one more step with the toilet. I use a small handle with a tube that squeezes out a chemical into the toilet bowl. The handle has notches so the portions are always exact. The tube has to be replaced when empty, but the recharges aren't too expensive for how often they are used.

A magic wand, but for your toilet bowl.

It's a sort of sustained cleaning and deodorizing chemical, kind of like a urinal cake, from what I understand. It's applied to the shallow area of the bowl. To show you what it looks like, here's a photo of the inside of the toilet bowl. Don't worry, there's nothing in there!

Your toilet cake. You know what I mean.

With the toilet done, the cleaning agent would have done it's work on the sink and bathtub, so I started scrubbing them down with a sponge thoroughly. This part is pretty much standard, I would assume, as every other washroom in developed parts of the world. Once I got through that and rinsing (I used water for the bathtub, a wet sponge for the sink,) I went ahead and wiped the mirror with another sheet of antibacterial scented wipes. It probably wasn't meant for that, but the wipe took out most of the dirt and left no streaks.

The last part for me, was spot-checking for mold. I feel dealing with mold is an uphill battle, so I've accepted that I would never be able to get rid of them completely, especially since I have no means to open the fan vent and clean that out. So, I've resorted to using a small block advertised for mold removal. I just go around spot checking the walls and scrubbing the mold off with the dampened block.

This blue block sort of does the job.

It works temporarily, but I find that the mold comes back the next month or so. In any case, I end off with putting everything back in, cleaning out the drain catchers, and letting everything dry off with the washroom fan running.

That's it for my washroom cleaning routine. How do you deal with your washroom?

Thanks for reading!

This post was originally posted on City-Cost on February 26th, 2020.