Keeping your bathroom clean and tidy can sometimes seem like a fulltime job. Almost everything in your bathroom needs to be cleaned or maintained at some point. Oddly enough, one of the most visible yet often neglected things in your bathroom that need cleaning is the grout between your tiles. While there are a few treatments that can be applied to your grout during the bathroom remodeling process to keep it from getting dirty, you will still need to clean it eventually. Here are a few tips you can use.
Use a Vacuum before resorting to other methods
The most common cause for dirty looking grout is the presence of loose dirt and debris that may settle in the spaces between your tiles. You may find that using a vacuum on grout can remove a lot of the dirt that makes your grout look dirty. Try this method first and if it isn’t enough, you can move on to more drastic measures.
Base not Acid
Some people may be tempted to use acidic cleaners like muriatic acid to clean grout but this isn’t a very good idea. In fact, it is better to use alkaline solutions for grout because it will not damage your tiles. Most acidic cleaner can take the sheen of your glossy ceramic tiles. Aside from that, alkaline solutions are also safe to use with a lot of other materials such as porcelain, granite, slate, limestone, and other stone tiles. In a worst case scenario, you may end up doing another bathroom remodeling project just to replace your tiles.
Go easy with the brushing
You can use an alkaline cleaner with a brush to take out tougher stains. Make sure to brush lightly or you may end up damaging the grout. You may find that using an old toothbrush is the best way to get in between those hard to reach areas.
Just like everything else, prevention is often the best remedy for this problem. If you are currently going through a bathroom remodeling project, you may want to remind your contractor to use highly quality grout sealer on your bathroom. This will help keep your grout clean for a long, long time.
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