We Begin by Going Down the Toilet

Welcome to Socal Stuff, my new resource for products and services I'd like to share with my friends (for better or for worse).

Those who know me best have heard me say that Life is Too Short for Housework. I like living in a clean house -- I would just prefer it if someone else was doing the cleaning. My biggest goal in life is to win a hundred kajillion dollars in the lottery -- or at least begin earning enough -- so I can hire a housekeeper.

In the meantime, I do whatever I can to minimize the pain -- mainly by purchasing just about every cleaning product in the supermarket. I've got stuff that promises to make it easy to clean the the kitchen counter, kitchen sink, stainless steel appliances, tile floors, wood floors, carpets, windows, bathrooms... You know, I'm proud of the fact that I don't buy a lot of beauty creams and lotions that promise to rid you of wrinkles, because I realize they are all fraudulent. But if a cleaning product claims that it will do the job without any elbow grease on my part, I lap it up. Every time. 

A few years ago, everyone was putting out new tools with disposable pre-filled cleaning pads, and I must have invested in every one. Most worked OK. Some, like the "Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner," worked well for a while and then broke.

And then there was the Lysol Ready Bowl Toilet Cleaner, which was a canister full of cleaner that snapped into the brush handle, allowing you to press a button, squirt the cleaner, and brush everything away. It was neat. You could accomplish everything in one step. And to my horror, I discovered last week that refills for the thing are no longer available.

Which is how I ended up back in the household cleaner aisle last week. My sister and her family were coming to stay with me, and since I don't want to gross them all out, I wanted something heavy duty for the bathrooms, something that would be at least as easy as my beloved Lysol product with the canister in the handle. I was about to settle for an old fashioned squeeze bottle of stuff, when I found this:

Kaboom Bowl Blaster Foaming Toilet Cleaner, which claims to clean, freshen and deodorize, even under the rim - WITHOUT "hard scrubbing." You fill the cap with the magic powder, it fills the bowl with foam, and five minutes later, you flush out all the icky stuff. What could be easier? That is, if it worked.

So I gave it a try last week. I DID have to scrub, but not hard, so I suppose there is truth in advertising there. And they suggest that by using the stuff on a weekly basis, you may get by without scrubbing at all. I just gave my toilets their second application, and I'm afraid I did have to do a little scrubbing... but it was easy.

The only thing I don't like about this product is that it's hard not to breathe in the powder when you pour it into the cap, and it makes me cough and I wonder -- if it's that strong -- what that might be doing to my lungs, not to mention the environment.

I am going to continue using it -- at least, until I've finished my container of the stuff. And in the meantime, I'm going to keep scouring those supermarket cleaning aisles for something that will work even better -- because that's easier than scouring my toilet, or any other bathroom fixture.