In hard water areas, limescale is a fact of life and it will build up on my bathroom taps, inside the kettle and shower heads if I don’t keep on top of it
For those people living in an area plagued by hard water, limescale and the mess it makes is an inevitable part of life.
It can feel impossible at times to get your kitchen and bathroom as sparkling as you’d like because of the pesky build up of limescale. But Chanelle Georgina, a senior reporter with The Express, was determined to come up with a solution so she tried out a popular cleaning hack to see if it would do the job. Here’s how she got on.
Limescale is an inevitable nuisance and will form on bathroom taps, inside the kettle and shower heads if you don’t keep on top of cleaning it.
For the sake of my job, I allowed limescale to accumulate on my shower screen which made me feel quite uncomfortable. Hard water stains stuck to the shower screen, which couldn’t shift with just a simple wipe with a cloth. I was eager to test out a cleaning hack, I turned to one natural ingredient for my experiment – citric acid. The Express reports that one of the most effective ways to prevent water stains from forming on the shower screen in the first place is to invest in a squeegee.
When used with cleaning agent Elbow Grease Citric Acid, I applied the natural cleaning agent onto a damp microfibre cloth. I was amazed at how the citric acid – naturally found in citrus fruits such as lemons and limes – immediately cut through the hard water stains. After wiping the shower screen on both sides, the glass was clear – not a single stain remained. Thankfully, no scrubbing was required, and all I did next was dry the shower screen with another (dry) microfibre cloth. The entire process was incredibly straightforward and now citric acid has certainly earned its place as one of my favourite cleaning agents.
If you use a squeegee – available from Dunelm, IKEA, and John Lewis – to remove water and cleaning suds after showering, then water marks can be avoided. The Essentials Squeegee which costs a mere 80p from Dunhelm has been receiving rave reviews. One satisfied customer penned: “I use this daily to clean the glass in my shower. Very cheap but good.”
However, one gripe was that it lacked a “smooth edge”, meaning some spots on the shower glass might be overlooked unless you go over it again. The Mirror reported earlier how TikTok’s @jetlagremedy, a cleaning whizz, has let slip a top-notch trick for gleaming glass. “How I clean glass as a professional cleaner”, she divulged in her viral video. “I’m gonna show you how I personally clean a shower screen as a professional cleaner. First up I’ve got some spray which is [dish] detergent and water”, she revealed. She then doused “the entirety of the screen” with it, “both inside and outside”.
Next, she suggested buffing the screen with a “cloth or a soft sponge”. “I personally find that doing circular motions helps”, she added. If your shower head is fixed and can’t be aimed at the screen, “use a bucket” or “a bottle of water” to rinse it off, she advised. She then demonstrated pouring water over the top edge of the screen so it cascades down like shower water. The savvy cleaner then grabbed a squeegee to wipe away “as much of that water off” as possible.
