My Favorite Products to Make Cleaning the Bathroom Easier

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A surprising number of products are on the market, promising to help you clean your bathroom. You don't necessarily need to spend a lot of money to find some good ones that will actually work to make the job easier, but some are definitely better than others.

As someone who writes about cleaning for a living, you can imagine I've tested a good many of them. Here are the ones I have found to be the best over the years.

The two best products for cleaning (most of) your bathroom

It's not worth worrying about the different products you're going to need to clean your tub, sink, toilet, and fixtures—you really only need two products, and they both work fabulously.

For porcelain and tile, pick up some Soft Scrub. I was first introduced to this product two summers ago, when my boyfriend suddenly decided to get a boat. Every night when we docked, we were tasked with scrubbing away the salty water that covered its many surfaces, and we quickly found that Soft Scrub, with its mix of a gentle abrasion and a lot of suds, was the most effective and least harmful product for the job.

I soon picked some up for use around the house. I think of it like a mild exfoliator for everything that needs cleaning. It ever so slightly buffs and resurfaces, never scratches, and foams up to provide a good clean. For the bathroom, I suggest a formulation with bleach.

For fixtures like faucets, handles, or the toilet flusher, I recommend the same thing I recommend for kitchen metals: Brasso. This seven-in-one polish is inexpensive—you can usually find it for under $5—and makes copper, steel, chrome, and more shine with minimal effort.

My favorite products to clean tougher spots in the bathroom

In the past, I've recommended using electronic scrubbing brushes to ease the burden of scrubbing tiles, grout, and crevices. Since I started using the more abrasive Soft Scrub, though, I find they are usually unnecessary.

For anything I do have to scrub with a little more vigor, I again go back to another product I like to use in the kitchen: My trusty Mr. Clean Magic Eraser Extra Foamy. You can get five of these sponges for under $10. I buy one pack and use them all around my home. Like traditional melamine sponges, they make quick work of sticky messes and scuffs, but thanks to the little foaming pods of cleaner inside, they also suds up, providing extra grime-busting effectiveness.

Last week, I tried a new body scrub, which mean that this week, I had an ugly ring of crust around my tub. My Mr. Clean Extra Foamy cleared it up instantly—a huge relief to me, a renter who did not anticipate the cheap body scrub causing such a mess in my bathroom.

That said, if you have a bunch of tiny crevices in your bathroom—tiling, air vents, and spaces between storage containers—an electronic brushes may still be useful for you. There is really no good reason to overwork your elbows when something like this Rubbermaid scrubber exists and costs around $20.

More of my bathroom-cleaning essentials

In addition to the trusted tools above, I also keep a miniature squeegee in the tub. Whenever I finish a shower, I use it to quickly clean the glass shower door. This has significantly reduced how often and how hard I need to give it a more thorough cleaning, as it prevents moisture buildup and stops water stains and streaks before they start. Here is the one I have, which cost me less than $10.

For drain cleaning, I never use liquid cleaners or decloggers, as their effectiveness pales in comparison to a Drain Weasel. This long drain-snaking device has a rotating handle. With regular preventive use, I find it easily yanks gunk and hair out of the drain before a big buildup poses a problem.

As a big believer in the old adage about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, I also consider other preventive measures part of my "cleaning" routine. I have this set of three coatings from spotLESS MATERIALS ($24.99), and I've found them to be effective. One is designed to coat the toilet, another handles fixtures, and the third is for glass. I spritz them onto their corresponding surfaces to create a moisture-repelling barrier, which stops streaks and stains from appearing. (I also use the glass-coating one on my glass table to get out in front of food-related messes.)

Finally, consider this cordless window vacuum from Sharper Image if you hate cleaning your tooth-paste covered mirror. You fill with water, run it across your mirror, and let it do the work for you. It sprays down the glass and removes the water, sorting it into a separate reservoir so the clean and dirty water never mix. It's $63.99 and admittedly unnecessary, especially if you only have a small mirror (like me), and realize you can accomplish the same thing with a bit of effort and a bottle of Windex (which I do). Still, it's cool, and that counts for something.