The Surprising Way to Reuse a Nose-Tip Squeeze Bottle to Clean Annoying Messes Beyond the Kitchen
If you live with people who stand up to pee, you’ve probably dealt with the gross-but-necessary process of figuring out the best way to clean splatters from the outside of your toilet. Cleaning the bowl’s exterior is easy enough with a rag, but what about all those crevices around the toilet seat and base?
Turns out, one common (and inexpensive!) tool from your kitchen can help you solve that problem! In a viral TikTok, user BayouDoll85 posted a video cleaning the toilet with a nose-tip squirt bottle — aka condiment squeeze bottle — filled with bleach. The tip makes it easy to clean on and around the toilet seat hinges with precision, along with the lip of the toilet itself — no more trying to fit a cloth or paper towel in those tiny crevices!
A few safety caveats, if you go the bleach route: Always make sure to properly dilute bleach with water before cleaning with it, and never mix it with other chemicals (especially ammonia). It’s also important to wipe the bleach away from the surface after allowing proper dwell time for disinfecting (aim for at least a minute). Lastly, ventilate your bathroom by running the van and opening a window, and be sure to don protective gloves and a mask.
If you’d rather not clean with bleach, you have other options. One commenter recommends using distilled white vinegar, which can also effectively stave off germs. It may seem counterintuitive to clean the outside of your already-dirty toilet with something as pungent as vinegar, but it’s fantastic at neutralizing bad smells (like pee) and won’t leave a vinegar-y scent in your bathroom.
If you have a few squeeze bottles on hand, designate one for the toilet and another for other hard-to-clean crevices — stove knobs, grout, shower and window tracks, faucet crevices, whatever you can think of! You can use whatever cleaner you want inside the bottle, and for a little extra scrubbing action, add an old toothbrush or small cleaning brush to the mix. No matter what you use the bottle for, enjoy your newfound precision!