Recipe 19 of 100 · The Country Cleans Mix Book
How to Remove a Toilet Ring and Clean Under the Rim Before Company
Pump the bowl water down with the brush so the ring is exposed. Dissolve 1/2 cup oxygen bleach powder in 4 cups hot tap water, pour half slowly around the rim, then press paper towel strips soaked in the rest up under the rim and against the ring. Leave it overnight or at least 4 hours, then scrub the ring and the rim jets and flush twice. Lid closed and door shut, since pets drink from toilets. No boiling water.
What it fixesThe dark ring at the waterline and the sour gunk hiding up under the rim jets.
You need
- 1/2 cup powdered oxygen bleach (sodium percarbonate, sold as OxiClean Versatile or store brand oxygen bleach)
- 4 cups (950 ml) hot tap water
- toilet brush
- a few paper towels
- rubber gloves
Mix it
- First, get the water level down. Push the bowl water over the trap with the toilet brush using two or three hard pumps, or shut the supply valve and flush once. You want the ring exposed.
- Dissolve the oxygen bleach in the hot water in a bucket or old pitcher and stir until the powder is gone.
- Do not cap or seal a container of this. It releases oxygen as it works and pressure builds.
Use it
- Pour about half the solution slowly around the inside rim so it runs down over the ring.
- Fold the paper towels into strips, dunk them in the rest of the solution, and press them up under the rim and against the ring so they stay wet and stuck to the porcelain. This is the part everybody skips and it is where the smell lives.
- Leave it overnight, or at least 4 hours. Put a note on the lid if anyone else is home so nobody flushes your work away.
- In the morning, pull the towels, scrub the ring and the under rim jets with the brush, and flush twice.
- If a hard mineral ring survives, wet a pumice stone made for toilets and rub the ring with light pressure and lots of water.
Dale's noteOxygen bleach is the cheapest real cleaning power in the house and it is the same powder you will use on the deck in the next chapter, so buy the big tub. It works on time, not on force, so a long soak with a weak mix always beats a short scrub with a strong one.
Don'tClose the lid and shut the bathroom door. Dogs and cats drink from toilets, and a bowl of dissolved oxygen bleach burns the mouth and throat. Do not pour this into a bowl that still has a commercial toilet cleaner sitting in it, because most of those are either acid or bleach based and you do not want that reaction happening in an enclosed bowl. Flush twice and let the bowl clear first. Also do not use boiling water, since dumping it into a cold porcelain bowl can crack it.
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