How to Prevent Unpleasant Bathroom Odors

There are few things worse than having to use a stinky bathroom. Remember drinking too much water on an extremely long road trip? If you’ve ever had to use a bathroom at a remote rest stop you know how unpleasant a stinky bathroom can be. Here are a few tips on how to prevent reoccurring unpleasant bathroom odors in your home.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Sponge/Cloth
• Bleach
• Water
• Rubber Gloves

1. Clean the inside of the toilet. This is an obvious step and listed as the first step just to get it out of the way. As odd as it may sound, the true smells rarely emanate from the inside of the toilet. Lets face it, unpleasant odors don’t smell half as bad when they’re covered with water. Have you ever, er, pooped in a toilet bowl with no water? (Perish the thought). Things, no matter what it is, smell less bad when it is covered in water so the inside of the toilet isn’t the main culprit.

2. Clean the outer part of the toilet. Get on your hands and knees with a sponge or cloth and a bleach water solution and clean the base of the toilet. Make sure to reach around the back of the toilet and thoroughly clean it. Rinse the sponge several times and change the bleach water solution as many times as necessary to ensure the back of the toilet is clean.

3. Meticulously clean the floor around the toilet. Again, pay particular attention to the hard to reach back of the toilet area where most people clean with one quick wipe (no pun intended). This is an area that is usually shield from the light and a nice place for bacteria to hide and grow.

4. Wash down the wall in back of the toilet. This is really tough because the area between the base of the toilet and the wall is very tight. A great hiding place for poorly aimed urine splashes to hide. You may find that the base and the wall behind the toilet is the culprit in dispersing the foul bathroom odors. Be sure to wash, rinse and repeat as often as needed to make sure the wall is clean.

5. Ensure the toilet wax bowl ring is in tact. If you’ve done all of the above (and cleaned the rest of the bathroom too) and the bathroom still has an unpleasant smell, it’s time to bring out the big guns. You’ve got to check that all of the appropriate sealants and gaskets that serve to keep the ugly stuff from coming back onto your bathroom floor are in tact. For information on how to replace the wax bowl ring on your toilet, check out the resource below “Replacing a Wax Bowl Ring On A Toilet”

Tips & Warnings

• One part bleach to ten parts water is sufficient to clean most bathrooms. If your bathroom needs more heavy duty action, add more bleach.

Resources

• Replaing A Wax Bowl Ring on a Toilet

[lildutchgirl56]

on 10/19/2008 There's nothing worse then having that wax ring seal break, yuk!5*