So, is using dish soap in your toilet a good or bad idea? Well, Peter Daly, the CEO of Master Plumbers, explained to News.com.au that "it's safest to use cleaning products specifically designed for flush toilets," which means that dish soap isn't ideal.
Just as natural dish soap helps break down dirt, grease, and food that may be stuck on dishes and utensils, it can help break down what's in your toilet bowl.
Homemade Toilet Bowl Cleaner With Dawn & Vinegar
The grease-fighting power of Dawn is unmatched. Add that to the acidic nature of vinegar, and you have a powerful 1-2 combo for this easy recipe. In an old dish soap bottle, combine 1 cup vinegar with 1 cup Dawn.
To remove tough stains, add the baking soda and vinegar mix to your toilet and then allow the solution to sit in the bowl for up to 30 minutes. During that time, the chemical reaction between the sodium bicarbonate and vinegar will work to eat away at those stubborn hard water stains.
“Vinegar is a good cleaner because it's acidic, but when you add dishwashing liquid/dish soap to it (which is a base or neutral) - you neutralise the vinegar. You take away the very thing that makes it work well. “The dishwashing liquid works that well on its own. Adding the vinegar is a pointless step.”
Use Dawn and some hot water and a cloth or sponge to get into those nooks and crannies where grime and scale tend to build up. You can also combine Dawn with vinegar for stronger cleaning power, especially when tackling hard water stains.
You can use products that are marketed to clean and disinfect germs in the toilet bowl, but Forte recommends picking up a bottle of Clorox's toilet bowl cleaner that contains bleach, as the product claims it can disinfect the inside of the toilet in just five minutes.
You can clean toilet stains with a toilet brush, baking soda, and white vinegar. Household cleaning ingredients like Borax or a wet pumice stone can also scrub away tough mineral stains.
Try this: Swish a cup of vinegar around in the toilet bowl using a toilet brush, then add a cup of baking soda, followed by an additional cup of vinegar.
Cleaning with a mixture of baking soda and vinegar in the bathroom can work really well. To clean your toilet with vinegar, pour a cup of vinegar in the toilet bowl and let sit overnight. The next morning, sprinkle a little baking soda into the bowl, scrub, and then flush clean.
Citric acid
More importantly, it's probably even more effective than vinegar for getting rid of that brown stain in the toilet. Simply pour a kettle of almost boiling water into the bowl, follow up with 250ml of citric acid, and leave it for some hours – preferably overnight. The next day, scrub and flush.
The majority of my solutions contain blue Dawn® Ultra because it's concentrated. The regular Dawn is a non-concentrated version, (also called Simply Clean) so more diluted. Platinum Dawn is almost identical to Ultra, but it contains more surfactants.
Because dish soap is meant to break up oils and lift grease and grime from your flatware and utensils, there's no reason why it shouldn't work on the oily soap and human grease build-up accumulating in your tub or shower!
So, is using dish soap in your toilet a good or bad idea? Well, Peter Daly, the CEO of Master Plumbers, explained to News.com.au that "it's safest to use cleaning products specifically designed for flush toilets," which means that dish soap isn't ideal.
Cleaning vinegar is a natural sanitiser with 6% acetic acid, which makes it 20 times stronger than white vinegar. Like bleach, it can fight grime, kill bacteria and remove mould. It also works great for descaling the toilet and is even a better product than bleach.
Because water deposits build up under a toilet's rim, it can take only 24-48 hours for colonies to start breeding. As it grows, you will see what looks like black debris or rings inside the bowl. This can cause respiratory problems for people as the mold and mildew release tiny spores into the air.
The contaminants notorious for causing brown stains in toilet bowls are iron, manganese and sulfur. These pollutants can also produce iron bacteria, manganese bacteria and sulfur bacteria, which also can produce brown stains.
Once a week at least.
Tetro says your bathroom is the ultimate bacteria host; E. coli can be found within six feet of the toilet and in the sink. To keep it at bay, disinfect the toilet and sink at least once weekly, and the bathtub every two weeks — more if you shower often.
When using Dawn Powerwash, you should avoid cleaning porous surfaces such as marble and other soft natural stones or untreated wood. It is also best to keep Dawn Powerwash away from painted surfaces, too. Always make sure to test new cleaning products on inconspicuous areas of surfaces first.
Best for spot treatment: For best results, apply a few drops of Dawn® Platinum directly to the stain. Then allow it to sit for just a few minutes before scrubbing the spot with some water.
While the complete “recipe” is inaccessible for the masses, a Dawn spokeswoman has pointed the magic to uniquely powerful surfuctants—or, the chemical compounds that reduce the surface tension of a liquid when it's dissolved, aka the stuff that cuts the grease.