P.S.

April 8, 2009 on 11:22 pm | In Bett's | No Comments

I deeply regret that I have not thoroughly cleaned the toilet bowl in months, possibly even more than a year.  I have cleaned my toilet hundreds of times since we moved, even occasionally using a small brush to scrub out those groves that I tend to forget are not naturally yellow-brown.

Inspired by Passover and its requisite spring cleaning, I decided to thoroughly clean my bathroom, with the goal of tracking down and eradicating the source of that faint urine smell that always seems to linger about the toilet, no matter how freshly-cleaned it may be.  I had previously called the scent a side-effect of potty-training kids, and did my best to ignore/mask it.

I would like to pass this information on to other moms who may be battling that same problem.  If you have hard, mineral-filled water and you do not SCRUB (there is no shortcut to this, sorry; let me repeat, SCRUB) the holes in the top of the toilet bowl where the water enters, what can happen is Buildup.  When these building up, barnacle-like minerals come in contact with human excrement, the combination produces a kind of smelly cement that you cannot see unless you stick your head upside down very close to inside the toilet bowl (and who in their right mind does this?).  It is a myth that there are chemicals in existence that can break down the p.s. without any scrubbing on your part.  NOTHING but Scrubbing.

It took me twenty minutes, a lot of strong chemicals, and even more Scrubbing.  Twenty.  Minutes.  But our toilet does not smell like urine anymore and that persistent brown chunk of what n8 called p.s. (petrified…um, stuff), is gone.   My toilet is so clean that no one is allowed to use it for the next few days… like till September.