How to Clean Bathroom Mold and Mildew With White Vinegar

Mold and mildew often grow on surfaces in the bathroom, but can be easily cleaned with vinegar and baking soda.

Mold, and its early-stage counterpart, mildew, are forms of fungi that grow in damp areas and replicate quickly. Mold and mildew can cause allergies and respiratory conditions, and sometimes more serious health problems that affect the nervous system. Therefore, you need to get rid of mold and mildew quickly. Bathroom surfaces, particularly tile around the tub and shower, tend to be mold and mildew incubators because of the heat and moisture that accumulate there. But you can usually remove the unwanted substances easily using white vinegar in combination with baking soda as a scouring agent.

Things You Will Need
White vinegar
Spray bottle
Baking soda
Scouring pad or microfiber cloth
Stiff bristle toothbrush
Water

1 Fill a small spray bottle with white vinegar.

2 Spray the affected areas -- including tile, grout, painted walls, and any porcelain or ceramic surfaces -- liberally with vinegar. Let it sit for one to two hours.

3 Scrub the mold and mildew away with a damp microfiber cloth. Scrub tiling grout or hard-to-reach corners and crevices with a stiff-bristle toothbrush. Rinse with water.

4 Make a paste of 3 parts baking soda to 1 part water. Apply the paste to any hard-to-remove traces of mildew or mold. Spray with vinegar, and scrub with a damp microfiber cloth, scouring pad or stiff-bristle toothbrush, depending on the severity of the mold or mildew.

5 Rinse the affected areas with water. Repeat Step 4 if necessary.

Tips

Keep the bathroom well-ventilated when working with vinegar and baking soda together in large quantities; the combination releases carbon dioxide.

A microfiber cloth is soft on the surface and highly absorbent. However, in instances where mold and mildew is very hard to scrub off, try a stronger scouring pad instead.

If mildew and mold in tile grouting does not go away after you scrub with white vinegar and baking soda, clean the affected surfaces with hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle. Be careful not to mix hydrogen peroxide and vinegar, because the result can be toxic.

If vinegar and hydrogen peroxide do not work, which may be the case with highly affected grouting, try a solution of 3 parts water to 1 part bleach. If you do this, make sure your room is well-ventilated, wear gloves to protect your skin and be cautious not to mix bleach with other cleaning agents.

Vinegar, Bleach Erase Bathroom Mildew And Stains
October 01, 1999|By Tim Carter. Special to the Chicago Tribune.

Q--It is a long, long story but the bottom line is that my ceramic tile shower is a mess. There is mildew everywhere and other really tough stains that are nearly impossible to remove.

Is there a way to make the white grout look like new? It seems that the mildew has penetrated deeply into the grout. What can I do to restore the shower to its original condition? What can I do to prevent this from happening again?

A--Six weeks ago, a friend of mine told me he had the same problem. He had tried many off-the-shelf cleaners and products to clean his tile shower, but wasn't satisfied with the results. He said he was ready to tear out the tile and grout and start over.

I told him that he had the necessary cleaning products in his house the entire time and had overlooked them. When I told him the solution to his problem, he couldn't believe it. Two weeks ago, he said his shower looks fabulous. Ah, another satisfied customer.

To restore your ceramic tile shower to near perfect condition, you are going to need several things. Get a new scrub brush that has stiff nylon or plastic bristles, a roll of paper towels, a gallon of chlorine bleach, a gallon of white vinegar, a spray bathroom cleaner or ultra mild abrasive cleaner, and your birthday suit.

The stains and dirt have taken months to accumulate. Don't think you are going to complete this job in 30 minutes or less. The entire process is going to take place over a period of hours and possibly several days.

The first thing to do is to use the scrub brush to remove as much mildew, dirt, soap film, etc. as possible from the tile and grout. Get into the shower and scrub well using lots of water and plenty of cleaner. Rinse often and scrub as necessary to make the tile surfaces shine like a mirror.

Don't worry that the grout is still gray with deeply embedded mildew. We will deal with that shortly.

After this cleaning process, you will probably have some dull stains that won't budge. These are very likely hard water deposits. You will remove those using some paper towels and white vinegar.

Saturate some paper towels with the vinegar and place them over the hard water stains. Do this on the floor and any vertical surfaces. The wet paper towels will readily cling to vertical surfaces. Vinegar is a very mild acid and it works slowly but efficiently to dissolve the alkaline water deposits.

Get dressed or put on your robe and go relax for a while. Stop back every hour to make sure the towels are still wet with vinegar. Pull away a towel and scrub the deposits. They may completely wash away. If not, pour fresh vinegar on the towels to continue the cleansing chemical reaction. Heavy deposits can take up to eight hours or so to completely melt away. The trick is to keep fresh vinegar on the towels.

Once you have all of the hard water deposits removed, clean the shower again to remove all traces of vinegar. It is now time to attack any residual mildew that has stained the grout. You are going to use the pure chlorine bleach and the remaining paper towels to accomplish this task.

Saturate as many towels as necessary and put these in contact with the mildew-stained grout. It can take hours and possibly days to bleach out all of the mildew in the grout. Be careful not to splash the chlorine bleach in your eyes or on any fabrics or carpets. It can harm you and it removes color from dyed fabrics.

To prevent the staining problem in your shower, it helps to understand mildew. It is an organism that requires food and water to live. Showers and bath areas provide the moisture and you provide the food every time you use soap, shampoo, cream rinse, etc. Even the dirt and oils you wash from your skin and hair are food for mildew.

If you minimize or eliminate the food and water, you can eliminate the mildew.

I feel the best way to defeat mildew is to clean the shower every two weeks.

Every day after you have showered use a plastic cup to pour clean water down the sides of the tile. Then use a squeegee to quickly wipe down the tiles, directing as much water as possible to the shower drain. These two simple steps will remove a huge amount of food and water from the shower each day.

Also, when you get ready to leave the bathroom, open the shower curtain or shower door. Keep the bathroom door open as well. You want as much air to circulate in the shower as possible. This will dry all bath surfaces quickly and rob any microscopic mildew spores of water.