Removing Soap scum from Tile

Focus on My Home

Soap scum—hate the way it looks and  hate how difficult it is to clean off my beautiful tile we put up the big bathroom remodel a couple of years ago.

I’ve tried many cleaners & nothing really does a good job besides my scrub brush and some elbow grease.

I like how vinegar does works on smells in my washer and how it takes hard water deposits off faucets but it is hard to get vinegar to stay on the tile walls long enough to clean the scum off.  So when I saw this idea on Pinterest I was very excited!

The link doesn’t go to a website but here are the instructions to clean tile.

Source: Uploaded by user via Kim on Pinterest

 

“Hot Vinegar and Dawn Soap! 1 cup of HOT Vinegar (microwave 1-2 min) and 1 cup of blue DAWN liquid soap. Shake into bottle and creates a gel that will clean your showers."

Well I had to give it a try so here are my results.

I was so excited to start I forgot to get a before picture on the faucet but here is a during and after.

       

It did a good job getting deposits off the faucets but truly they weren’t really built up as I’ve tried to wipe them down with vinegar every so often.

Here is a good close up of the tile.  The grout is supposed to be dark brown but it is a chalky grey.

 

A bit messy to apply but the Dawn is thick enough to cling to the tile and give the vinegar time to work.

I had to let the grout dry after rinsing to get a good picture and there was blue goo left so I headed to the kids bathroom in the basement(which I haven’t cleaned in ages—kids are in charge—yikes!)

Here is the worst tile before--very gray & chalky    

After cleaning—back to the original dark gray(YES!)

 

Now back upstairs after a couple hours of dry time.

Better in places.

As you can see I got mixed results.  Near the faucet I deliberately didn’t apply the solution to the left side so I could see if there was a difference.  So this solution does a good job but you have to be careful with your application to hit all the spots or come back and hit the ones that were missed.

I liked how easy this was to mix up and apply but I will be more careful and particular in my application next time around.