What you need- Salt, Baking Soda, Water, and One or Two Lemons.

Direction for making an organic grout cleaner.  In a small bowl or cup, mix equal parts of salt and baking soda. Add just enough water to it to make a thick paste. With a soft or medium brush apply to tile walls and grout. This scrubbing paste should help you remove the crud on the tile and the grout. Then wipe off with a wet sponge. It you have any discoloration in the grout apply lemon juice to it. Let is sit for a 10-15 minutes. This should remove some of the stain and help the grout retain its original color.

The salt in cleaning the mixture allows you to gently scrub even hard to reach places. The baking powder whitens a little as it cleans and both of them together act as a disinfectant.

Be careful not to procrastinate tile and grout cleaning to long because it only gets harder to clean the longer you wait.

For cleaning kitchen grout be sure to remove as much of the grime as possible out of the grout before starting. For a deeper cleaning you may want to let the paste sit for a few minutes before scrubbing.

In the bathroom, you may also want to use a separate general disinfectant. Vinegar is a great option as it has been proven to kill 99% of bacteria. Just fill a spray bottle and spray it on. However, recently studies have shown that using Hydrogen Peroxide 3% (the regular supermarket variety) after an application of vinegar is even more effective. A last solution you can use is Borax. Use ½ cup Borax to 1 gallon hot water. You can actually also put ½ cup Borax into 1 gallon vinegar to increase the effectiveness of the vinegar. A last solution is 2T Borax, ¼ cup lemon & 2 cups hot water. Any of these are a great all natural organic grout cleaners and disinfectants.

Cleaning Shower Tile and Grout. This is where I begin when cleaning my bathroom. As I have a small bathroom, cleaning my shower is about 1/3 of the work and gets me off to a great start. To get started, wet every thing down. It works great if you have a flexible shower head; if not just use a bucket, a large cup, or a spray bottle (just work fast). Using an organic paste, vinegar, or a store bought disinfectant, and a sponge, wipe tiles until they are smooth to the touch. Before you start there is probably a grimy texture from soap build up. Make sure you compare & the tiles are smooth so you know you have gotten it all.

Next you will work on the grout. Spray it with a grout cleaner or use an organic grout cleaning paste. A bristled scrub brush is what I like to use, but you can also use the abrasive side of a sponge or other soft scrubber. For hard to reach crevices, an old toothbrush is great, it works especially well around the fixtures in the shower & bath. If you have some really small crevices that not even a toothbrush can reach, a great tool to use is a butter knife with a cloth on top, or a toothpick.

You can quickly finish off the rest of the bathroom with a vinegar solution (one to one vinegar to water). First, clean the metal fixtures in the bath & shower. Glass surfaces should cleaned next, you can use a store bought glass cleaner or the vinegar solution. Next quickly wipe down the sink, floor & toilet in that order (with a quick swish of the toilet brush for inside – don’t forget to spray off the toilet brush with your vinegar solution to disinfect when your through). And finish off with ½ cup of bleach or vinegar down the sink to break up any hair or other dirt blocking that is inevitably in the drain.