11 Bathroom Cleaning Hacks for a Faster, Easier Clean

Before you spray a single thing, move the bottles.

Shampoo, skincare, toothbrushes, soap dispensers and everything else sitting around the bathroom create tiny obstacles that slow you down. Clearing your counters, shower ledges and bathtub first means you can clean an entire surface at once instead of wiping around every bottle.

While everything is moved, take the opportunity to wipe down the bottoms of containers too. You’d be surprised how much product and moisture collect underneath them.

Hair + dust + cleaning spray = a mess you didn’t need to make.

Before cleaning sinks, counters, tubs or floors, pick up loose hair and dust first. Vacuum, sweep or use a dry microfiber cloth depending on the surface.

Once that dry debris is gone, your cleaner can actually reach the grime underneath instead of turning dust into damp residue that you have to chase around the room.

This is especially helpful around baseboards, behind the toilet and along the edges of bathroom floors, where hair and dust seem to gather overnight.

There’s no reason to clean the same surface twice.

Start with mirrors, shelves and other higher surfaces, then move down to countertops, sinks, the toilet, tub or shower and finally the floor.

Anything you knock loose along the way ends up on a surface you haven’t cleaned yet.

It’s a simple change, but once you get used to cleaning a bathroom in this order, going the other way feels slightly ridiculous.

Here’s one of the simplest bathroom cleaning hacks: fold your microfiber cloth into quarters.

Now, instead of using the same increasingly dirty section of cloth on every surface, you have multiple clean sides ready to go.

Wipe one area, flip to a fresh side and keep moving.

And once the cloth starts looking dirty? Grab a clean one. Spreading toothpaste residue from the sink onto the mirror is not efficiency.

Before you start soaking your faucet in vinegar or rubbing it with a lemon because you saw someone do it online, check the manufacturer’s instructions.

Different faucet finishes have different care requirements and acids, abrasives or harsh cleaners can damage certain finishes.

One thing that is almost universally helpful? Drying the faucet.

After cleaning, wipe fixtures with a clean, soft cloth rather than letting water evaporate on the surface. This helps reduce the mineral deposits that create many of those cloudy water spots in the first place.

Sometimes prevention is a much better hack than trying to undo weeks of buildup.

It’s easy to focus on the toilet bowl and forget about everything surrounding it.

The handle, tank, lid, seat and exterior can all collect dust, hair, splashes and everyday grime. Cleaning Mama’s All Purpose Cleaner makes it easy to clean compatible hard surfaces on the outside of the toilet as part of your regular bathroom routine.

Start at the top and work your way down, paying extra attention to the flush handle, hinges and the area around the base. Use your preferred toilet bowl cleaner separately inside the bowl, following the directions on the label and giving it time to work before scrubbing.

Then save the floor around the toilet for later. Anything you knock down will get picked up when you finish the bathroom floor.

You’ve dusted. You’ve wiped the counter. You’ve cleaned the mirror, sink, toilet and shower.

Now you can clean the floor.

Bathroom floors collect everything that falls while you’re cleaning the rest of the room, so doing them first almost guarantees you’ll have to touch them up again.

For compatible bathroom flooring, Cleaning Mama’s All Floor Cleaner makes this last step easy. The concentrated formula is made for wood, tile, laminate and stone and cleans without leaving behind sticky residue.

Start at the farthest point from the door and work your way out so you aren’t immediately walking across the floor you just cleaned.

Then close the door and admire your work for the five minutes before someone needs the bathroom.