How to Deep Clean a Toilet the Right Way

Did you know that 1 in 4 Americans feel like they don’t clean their home well enough? If you’re part of that group, you might feel like you don’t have the proper knowledge to give your home the deep cleaning it needs.

Good news! You’ve come to the right place for help.

Bathrooms contain plenty of germs, so they’re a great place to start when you want to give your home a thorough cleaning. The toilet, specifically, needs special attention, but how can you be sure you’re cleaning it properly?

Keep reading to learn how to deep clean a toilet the right way, so you can feel confident that your home is free of germs after you clean.

Gather Your Cleaning Supplies

Before you get started, you’ll want to make sure you have everything you need to do a proper toilet cleaning. We recommend getting a bucket so you can keep all your supplies in one place, to make it easier for you to deep clean your toilet on a regular basis.

As a good rule of thumb, you’ll need the following supplies before getting started:

Thick rubber cleaning gloves
Bristle toilet scrubbing brush with a holder for storage before and after use
Toilet bowl cleaner
Disinfectant spray and/or wipes
Paper towels
Pumice stone on a stick
Bleach

Once you’ve gotten all of your supplies together, you’re ready to conquer the porcelain throne.

Clean the Exterior

When you’re making a list of your house cleaning tasks for the bathroom, you probably remember to scrub down the bowl. But, do you ever overlook the exterior of the toilet? It’s still a hotbed for germs, so it’s a good idea to start there when you are deep cleaning a toilet.

Put on your gloves and use the disinfecting spray or wipes to clean the entire exterior, including the hard-to-reach areas like the back and base of the toilet. Every time you flush the toilet before closing the lid, microscopic germs are dispersed into the air, eventually landing in the bathroom, particularly around the toilet’s exterior, so neglecting to clean the area leaves you vulnerable to bacteria.

Make sure that you let the disinfectant sit for a few minutes before wiping it clean, so it has a chance to go to work, eliminating germs.

And, don’t forget to thoroughly disinfect the handle! Since we touch that with dirty hands, it can hold more germs than other areas of the toilet, but it often gets overlooked when cleaning.

Focus on the Lid and Seat

The average toilet seat has about 295 particles of bacteria per square inch, so the longer you go without deep cleaning the seat, the more that bacteria builds up and transfers to you when you sit down on the seat.

Once again, use the disinfectant spray or wipes to clean the top and underside of the lid. After you let that sit and wipe it clean, repeat the step with the top and underside of the seat. When you lift the seat, you should also disinfect the top rim of the bowl, where the seat meets the bowl.

Tackle the Interior of the Bowl

While using toilet bowl cleaner is a good way to keep your bowl clean in between deep cleaning sessions, you’ll want to go a step further to get it really clean. Start by draining the water out of the bowl by turning off the water valve at the base of the toilet and flushing it once.

With the water out, you can really get in there to scrub the bowl clean. Apply the toilet bowl cleaner around the top of the bowl as well as under the rim, which can get particularly grimy. Then, use the toilet scrubbing brush to scrub the solution in and around the bowl and under the rim, to make sure it gets in all of those hard-to-reach areas.

After you scrub, allow the cleaner to sit for 5 to 10 minutes, so it has time to really get to work.

Remove Stubborn Stains

If your toilet bowl is stained, it could be a result of minerals in your water that leave behind rust-colored markings. If you notice that the toilet scrubbing brush is not powerful enough to remove the stains, try using the pumice stone on the stick instead.

All it should take is a few scrubs with the stone to remove the stains, leaving your toilet bowl looking good as new. And, because pumice is a relatively soft stone, you won’t have to worry about it scratching the porcelain in the process.

Once the stains are gone and the bowl is clean, you can turn the water valve back on and flush it again to clear out the cleaner.

Sanitize Your Supplies

Now that your toilet is nice and clean, take the time to sanitize everything you used. You’ll want to pour bleach over the end of the toilet scrubbing brush and let it sit for a few minutes before rinsing it with clean water. You’ll also want to clean the scrubbing brush holder, so you don’t put the clean brush into a germ-filled mess.

Let both the brush and the holder air dry before you put the brush back inside it, to help prevent bacteria growth.

Before you remove your gloves, you should also wash them with soap and hot water to prevent any germs on the gloves from transferring to your hands when removing them. You should also let the gloves air dry before putting them away.

Now You Know How to Deep Clean a Toilet

After reading our guide on how to deep clean a toilet, you’re ready to tackle your bathroom in new ways. However, we recognize that not everyone has the time or ability to deep clean their home as often as necessary.

If all of this sounds like too much work for you to handle, why not leave it to a team of professionals instead? Here at Val’s Cleaning Maids, we offer high-quality house cleaning services to take these tasks off your plate so you have time to focus on the more important things in life.