Pumiced Toilet

I’ve had trouble with hard water stains for a while now.  I’ve tried everything I knew to try, including using a steel wool, with very little success.  A friend recently told me that using a pumice stone would help me remove hard water stains in my toilet so I bought three from the PX at $1.39 each.

I didn’t take a picture of the toilets before I attempted to clean them because, honestly, I didn’t expect to have much success.  My previous attempts had gotten them a little more bearable but never sparkling like new.

I spent 30 minutes with my hand in the toilet in my bathroom and, I’m not kidding you, my toilet looks brand new!  (Remember back in “MOTH 8 – Off Track” I mentioned that I had had my hand in a toilet for a while?  This is why.)

Matt decided he’d give it a try in the boys’ bathroom and he spent ten minutes working before the pumice stone crumbled.  I had only one pumice stone left and figured I’d give it a try.

Here’s what the boys’ toilet looked like after Matt’s hard work:

That brown gunk was as hard as cement.  It was all the way to the edge of the water so that no matter how clean the toilet was, there was brown everywhere.  You can even see that it’s in layers, like sedimentary rock!

Here’s what the toilet looked like after I worked for thirty minutes, totally consuming a second pumice stone:

(I just said, “consuming” a pumice stone.  Surely you know I didn’t eat the stone, right?) After my efforts I was pretty much willing to let this be the final result.  I was out of pumice and my right hand was tired of being in a toilet.

A few days later I found myself in the PX and I remembered that for a measly $1.39 I could get another stone and finish the job.

I’m so glad I finished!  Here’s the finished product:

(Though a friend recently told me about this, I also had to check my handy-dandy-notebook-of-all-things-important, Pinterest.  I found a link to Stacy Makes Cents and she had a detailed blog post about this, ensuring me that it could, in fact, be done.  I’m also LOVING other things she and her husband write about.  Check out their site!  I’m only a little (a LOT) jealous that they got to do their Debt Free scream in Dave’s lobby and they got to MEET him!  It’s okay… we still got to do our Debt Free scream, so I’m okay.  I’m okay.)

 

Update:  The friend who told me about this had also mentioned a first step which would make the scrubbing step easier.  Here’s her suggestion:
“Pour in a pot of boiling hot water (and a 1/2 cup of vinegar) first. Let it sit about 30 minutes, flush that away (the vinegar can eat away the pumice stone), then scrub next time, it makes the scrubbing easier. :o)”