finding a cure

there are a lot of things i love about my house.  one kinda strange thing i love is that it's "good at being dirty."  the people that built the house picked fixtures and finishes that look the same regardless of if they're clean or messy.  like the speckled granite in my kitchen is one example.  you could have dumped two cups of granola and scattered it across the counter tops and yet they would still look flawlessly clean.  you wouldn't know about all that granola unless you wiped everything down (or unless you got down at eye level and had the sun shining in to help you see everything) and i love that.  i keep my house as clean as i can, but it's easier on my ocd when i can't see every tiny spill (as was the case when i nannied for a family with jet black granite countertops.  you could even see the streaks left over from the cleaning wipes and it drove me nuts) so i can enjoy a "clean" kitchen all day even when i only have time to wipe everything down at night before i go to bed.

one thing that is very much the opposite?  my glass shower.  it can be clean without ever looking clean because of the hard water stains that build up on the shower door and walls.  i know, i know, if you use a squeegee after every time you shower, it won't have time to build up.  that's all fine except that my husband isn't in to that stuff.  it doesn't bother him so he doesn't have the motivation (or memory) to wipe the walls or spray that every day shower spray stuff.  so my shower looks like this...

and i hate it.  and don't think i haven't tried a slew of cleaning products, vinegar, searching a million and one blogs (and pinterest) online, and asking every friend i've ever met.  no success.  so it just keeps getting worse and this morning i was showering while baby girl was working on puzzles.  occasionally she would bring me a piece and ask for help.  i would always say something super nondescript like "oh, that goes next to the orange pieces" or "it's got a straight edge so it goes next to the other straight edge pieces" which always satisfied her just fine and she would give me an "oh!" and happily run to the coffee table to put it in its place.  the thing that bothered me though was that i realized the glass was getting so bad that i could barely see through it anymore.  this was dire.  i NEEDED to find a solution!

according to a lot of comments on the internet, mr clean magic erases work well for this... but i don't have any of those in the house.  i think one comment mentioned using something abrasive to scrub it off.  so i tried some of those steel wool soap pads i have under my kitchen sink for scrubbing my cookie sheets and jelly roll pans.  well...

i couldn't believe it worked!  i made sure to test a concentrated area because (like when i tried the vinegar) it's frustrating to clean your whole shower only to have it dry and look the same as when you started.  i wasn't going to waste my time doing the whole shower until i knew it actually worked.  well it really really works... i promise!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

are you amazed?  when you're scrubbing it, you can hear and feel the difference from it scraping away the hard water mineral deposits to just having clean and smooth glass.

 

i did a couple more circles just for fun and then just started at the top and was doing a huge chunk when i heard my baby crying in the other room and realized i was supposed to pick baby girl up from play school in two minutes.  sooo, i don't have any true after pictures for you... but eventually i'll have a clean shower!  this might be the best day of my life.

*i took a million pictures so you could see but it turns out it's really tricky to take pictures in my bathroom.  so many shadows and mirrors and reflections and whatever.  oh well, hopefully it's enough to show the difference.