Why This Kitchen Staple Is The Secret To Cleaning Your Shower Head

There are so many things you need to clean and disinfect in your bathroom that it's easy to miss some less obvious spots. While a toilet begins to look noticeably dirty after some time has elapsed between cleaning, a shower head is a different story. Most people don't look up at their showers while under the spray, so it can be easy to forget to give it a good scrubbing coming chore day. Because of this, these water features tend to get pretty gunked up, making them tricky to clean. However, a toothpick can help you get them back into tip-top shape. If you're having a hard time getting buildup out of the waterports or have some stubborn grime stuck in the grooves around the head, a toothpick can help you gently scrape out the worst of it.

This is a great cleaning hack to try since, chances are, you have a box of toothpicks at home. They're easily accessible and affordable, and they don't force you to buy a specialty scrubber made for just this conundrum. Instead, you can just use something you already have lying around the house. Intrigued? Stick a toothpick into the waterports and other crevices to see how it cleans your dirty shower head. 

To use a toothpick on your shower head, first, you need to understand how to clean it. Whether it's covered in soap scum from your showers or something a little more difficult to clean, like mineral buildup from hard water, you will need vinegar. Trusted cleaning companies swear by it, and that's because the acetic acid in the liquid eats away at the layers of buildup. To clean the head, you typically fill a plastic bag with vinegar and tie it around the shower head with a rubber band. You can leave it anywhere from 30 minutes to a full day if it's chrome and 30 minutes if it's brass, nickel, or a trendy color like black matte. If you remove the bag and notice some grime is still attached to the head, then that's where your toothpick comes in. 

Simply saturate the tip with vinegar and use it wherever you see dirt or crust. It's thin enough to pop it into the water ports and use its sharpened corner to scrub the last of the dirt. Keep re-saturating the tip with vinegar to apply fresh acid to the clinging residue, and replace the pick once the end becomes blunt rather than pointy. This should help you remove any leftover buildup, leaving you with a pristine shower head. 

If you try this hack at home and have found that it has helped you deep clean your shower head, you may want to implement it into your monthly deep cleaning routine. If that's the case, there are some tweaks you can make to this hack. While wooden toothpicks are great because they're so affordable, you can upgrade to a silicone or metal version if you plan to continually use this cleaning method. This is especially great for people concerned with sustainable cleaning and who want to limit the amount of waste they produce while sprucing up their homes. Rather than throwing out several toothpicks during one task, a silicone or metal pick will become a permanent staple in your cleaning arsenal. 

Not only can you easily clean and disinfect it afterward, but the tip won't dull or become blunt, forcing you to get a new one. They're also quite affordable. For example, you can get a pack of silicone picks for just $4.50 at Walmart. If you prefer something a little more permanent, this alloy one is only $8 from Walmart, and there is a titanium version on Amazon for $19.