I'm Lisa from Active Domestics and I had a request from one of my subscribers, Louise:
Thank you for asking me to do a video about grouting and one of my other
subscribers, Eagles also asked about mold but I'm going to talk about both of
those things together. For a start, (for a start) this is- welcome to our oldest bathroom.
We've got three bathrooms in our house and this is this is the oldest one it's
also one of the final rooms upstairs that I haven't painted yet
I've actually painted the external part of the house and all the rooms and stuff
like that. I usually do most of the painting. My husband Paul, he always helps
with prep work and stuff like that but I like to do the painting because I reckon
I'm the best at it.. but anyway, so this is the oldest
bathroom in the house and first of all you might point out here how scratched
this is this is what how it was when we first moved in and this is the very
reason why you do not ever use something really abrasive to clean a bathroom
particularly these days bathroom kitchen you just can't use a really abrasive
things because even, the sort of gradings of the materials that they use
in building just doesn't seem to be as great as what it used to be and a lot of
surfaces are actually very easy to damage and one of the main things about
cleaning is you want to avoid doing any damage while you're actually cleaning
cleaning the area. So this is our oldest bathroom, we've yet to, you know - they used to
have a glass door here and one day we'll get the bath either replaced or the whole
bathroom remodelled... It's on the list and one day it will
happen. But for now it serves as a really good example of why you shouldn't use
the abrasive stuff. This yellow mark here it's not because any of the boys have
been peeing in the bathroom. It's actually just because the surface - we've lived
here for like five and a half years now everyone uses this bathroom a lot
because the kids have worked out this is where all my really good products and
stuff are so it's it's just it's just getting worse and worse basically. We
may not even be able to resurface that we may have no choice but to to get it
get a new one. I don't know. But anyway so I've actually been going on a journey
lately of trying to use less chemicals in my cleaning. For many years now I've
cut back using chemicals in my health care products like shampoos, soaps,
toothpastes, makeup -All of those- I seek out products that usually ...if you see
this second ingredient--- The first ingredient is often water then if the
second ingredient is Sodium Laureth or Sodium Laurate (SLS), something like that then
I always avoid that product. I go for the ones that clearly state they've got no
SLS's, no petrochemicals and I can't think of what the other thing is that
it's commonly put in them but anyway so it'll say no there's no this, no that but
but other things that are chemicals that are very commonly found in our
personal care products and over time they can lead to skin sensitivities in
allergies. They can be they can help make sinus and hayfever worse.
They can lead to psoriasis and also eczema... all sorts of things like that
and we've certainly found since we've stopped using things like that that we
have noticed a lot of health benefits throughout the different members of my
family because we're not using all those sorts of things with chemicals in it and
you can see if you've watched any of my other videos,
so I recently shaved all my hair off and stop dyeing my hair as well so this is all
part of that journey. Getting to the cleaning now - so here's a little product
that I picked up from (a market) it's actually made in Brisbane. "The Essential Cleaner" and
this has actually made out of... its ingredients are water, unscented castile
soap and certified pure essential oils. That's all it's got in it so I don't
actually need to wear gloves when I'm cleaning my own bathroom here because
I'm not using anything that's harsh and it actually it smells really nice. I like
this product but what I've done I've actually I've actually already done the
I've actually already cleaned the grouting for the rest of the shower and
you can see I mean given this is such an old bathroom it still it actually looks
really good and what I think I'm finding--and I don't think this is just
my imagination --but I think that since I've been using products in the last few
months that don't have the cleaning products that don't have chemicals in it
I feel like the bathrooms' staying cleaner for longer and easier to clean and
things like that. I've had to really sort of resist wash washing this part so I
can give you a good example of dirt in the grout so I've been saving that up
for you Louise, so that I can make this video but basically what I've just done when
I've done is just spray this all over the product(doh) all over the tiles. I'm
standing in the bath because it's a lot safer to do that when you're cleaning so
you're not bending over trying to clean tiles like that but with no matter what
products you want to use you want to sort of let it sit for a little while
and stuff like that but I'm going to get right into it what I normally find
is to get into the tiles you really just have to rub all this grouting and
I've been doing this for a while now and so the grouting is actually coming up
really nice we're gonna get down here to see because I've let this build up and
grow a little bit I'm gonna take a bit more of a scrub but if I just keep
going over that I probably shouldn't have left it so long but I had to wait
for someone to take this video for me.
This will just come back up fine. I'll keep going over that but I want to show
you another tool that I've got and this I just got from Aldi it's a Sonic
Scrubber right - so using the wrong hand - (I'm right handed)
(Sound of buzzing from machine)
okay no I've accidentally taken the thing off
it's just giving it a bit of extra boost but really what I've found over time is
that if you just take the new one so what I found like yes you can use
something like that but if you actually just it's just as good to keep rubbing
in the tiles and stuff like that -- not the tiles-- into the grouting (I beg your pardon)
So that is coming cleaner but because I left it so long so that I can
have a dramatic sort of dirty look for this video, it's probably going to take me a
couple of cleans to get that looking really good again and a bit more
scrubbing... But it'll come back up. But basically what I wanted to mention about
things like grouting and mold is that what I've really been reading lately is
that when we use different mold sprays, the traditional sort of bleach
based mold sprays everywhere I've read says that that bleach is only taking the
color out of the very surface mold. It's actually not, it doesn't get rid of the mold.
It doesn't kill off the mold spores. All it does is actually bleach the mold
spurs/spores so that it looks better but so what I've been doing is
just using a vinegar based cleaning thing I've got other natural cleaning
products and some of them are based on a vinegar solution and it's vinegar that
actually, naturally cleans and naturally kills off the mold spurs argh SPORES
mold spores so anyway it's just a matter of working this through you
takes it takes elbow grease it takes a bit of time as I said I left this for a
period of time I left it for probably too long and so it's going to
take me a little while to really get rid of that again but as you can see by the
rest of the tile of tiles and the grouting in the tiles I've actually
managed to really get them looking better than what they've looked in a
long long time and and really keep them looking really good so I'm going to keep
going with cleaning this but that's that's basically no no easy measures
just got to keep wiping them and keep them clean and keep using products that
I think not overly strong because when we use really strong products I don't
know it seems to create sort of a bit of a buildup or it seems to get dirtier
quickly I'm not too sure. It's a bit like remember when we used to use Mr. Sheen
to shine everything and then you know we've never used anything like that
these days because what Mr. Sheen or products like that sort of a furniture
polish they actually have like a silicone base, well they used to, they
used to be made out of the silicone so you'd be spraying a silicone base over
the surface and that would actually attract more dirt. I don't know the
science behind all this cleaning and stuff like that I only know I have a
house that gets dirty very very quickly have to clean it a lot and I sort of
know what works and what doesn't work for me so hope that helps just really
get into the every bit of grouting every time you clean the bathroom wipe over
into every bit of grouting in your sea and Stoke builds up in layers it comes
off and layers - and you'll see you'll start to see it really looking good if
you keep doing that okay so thanks for watching and have a great day bye