Why You'll Want To Use Windex In Your Toilet Bowl

When you add up all the time people spend on the loo it can mount up to around three years of a person's life. That's the same as using the bathroom six to eight times a day. It's really important to make sure your toilet is hygienic to use if you're going to be spending that much time on it! The state of your toilet bowl says a lot about the kind of person you are, and to get a truly clean loo only one simple thing is required — disinfectant. Make sure your toilet bowl is pristine with this clever cleaning product hack. The Windex product we're talking about may surprise you — it's the Original Windex Glass Cleaner.

This glass cleaner contains chemicals designed to cut through greasy marks like fingerprints and other grime, leaving a polished shine on glass surfaces, so it'll work wonders for your porcelain toilet! The trick for using it to clean stubborn stains in your toilet bowl is to spray the product onto the wet surface of all the areas you want to clean, leaving it to soak thoroughly and do most of the manual work for you. 

To clean your whole toilet with Windex, liberally spray the entire thing. Start inside the bowl allowing the product to soak longest. Direct the spray nozzle at hard-to-reach areas like the underside of the rim. Don't neglect the top of the rim or underside of the seat. These surfaces meet when the seat is down, and urine residue easily builds up.

Next, work your way up and out with the spray: Place the seat down, spray the top of it and the underside of the lid, not forgetting the back hinges. Place the lid down, spray the top side of it, plus the neck and top of the back part of the toilet. Finally, spray all around the outer underside of the toilet bowl and leave everything to soak for five to 10 minutes.

Now the fun bit — starting from the top, wipe down all outside surfaces with your cloth, rubbing the Windex spray until you get a clean and shiny polished exterior, including underneath the bowl. Lift up the lid and wipe the underside and the top side of the toilet seat. Don't neglect the back, and get into all the corners and crevices of the hinges with your cloth. Lift the toilet seat and wipe underneath and the top of the toilet rim thoroughly. Finally, grab your toilet brush and scrub the inside of the toilet bowl as normal, not forgetting to get underneath that rim.

The most important thing to take away from this cleaning hack is to allow the Windex product to sit on the wet surface of your toilet bowl for the full recommended duration. This is what will make it just as effective as the toilet-specific cleaning products in the store. Director of Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab, Carolyn Forte says, "A product can claim that it kills 99% of germs and bacteria. But it needs to stay wet to be effective, and if you're using it for a matter of seconds, it's not going to be effective."

Windex Glass Cleaner, though effective, may be slightly less harsh than normal toilet bowl cleaners and uses different active ingredients to cut through grime. Two of the cleaning agents in Windex are Isopropanolamine and Ammonium hydroxide. Many of the standard toilet bowl cleaners on the market use bleach. When using Windex for your toilet, be sure that you're not mixing or letting it come into contact with any bleach-based cleaners. The mixture of ammonia and bleach results in toxic chloramine gas and can cause serious health issues.