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Five cleaning mistakes you should never make in the bathroom

9honey Living’s The Wash Up: Your 30-day spring cleaning guide is a month-long series aimed at making your annual house clean easier with hacks and expert advice.
Most people find cleaning a bathroom reasonably straightforward but there are some things you should avoid doing.
Next time you do your weekly bathroom clean keep these five common mistakes in mind to prevent damage, impacting your health and making the space dirtier.
READ MORE: Professional cleaners’ top tips for deep cleaning a shower
Dusting your bathroom down first is a simple way to make cleaning more efficient. 
Bathrooms gather dust very quickly and all those particles tend to get into tricky nooks and crannies in the room. 
Wiping off dust first before adding cleaning solutions or water makes things much more manageable. 
There are few things more annoying than wet, immovable, and messy dust. It is recommended that you first use a cloth (microfibre is a good option) and then vacuum after but before spraying product.
When you think about cleaning a bathroom, your mind conjures a list of supplies you might need. More often than not, bleach and other harsh chemicals are at the top of your list, but that doesn’t mean they’re the best things to use. 
Bathroom finishes are often too sensitive to abrasive cleaners and can be damaged in the long run. 
Even though bleach is effective, an overreliance on the solution can lead to a tendency to use it on things that it isn’t compatible with.
READ MORE: Cleaning products you didn’t know you needed
For example, granite, marble, and stone are popular surfaces in bathrooms, and they can be easily damaged by bleach as the chemical corrodes the stone and causes discolouration. 
Grout and sealants are also sensitive to harsh chemicals and can often be broken down over time.
It’s always essential to patch-test an inconspicuous area before cleaning an entire surface with a new chemical. 
Creating your own cleaning solution can be a great hack but it can also be incredibly dangerous if you combine the wrong things.
Even though mixing your own cleaner may seem like the perfect way to eliminate household germs, it’s actually a recipe for highly toxic fumes or a corrosive product.
Common bathroom cleaners like bleach, vinegar, ammonia, hydrogen peroxide and acetone do not interact well together. 
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You should never mix anything with bleach or combine bleach and vinegar, bleach and ammonia, chlorine and ammonia, acetone and bleach or vinegar and hydrogen peroxide.
Always research the way chemicals and solutions mix before deciding to combine them.
When spraying a cleaning solution onto your surfaces, it’s important to let it do its job before wiping it away. 
Spray surfaces and let the cleaner sit for a couple of minutes instead of immediately wiping them off so that you are actually disinfecting and giving the solution time to work.
It is still important to wipe the spray off after a few minutes to avoid the build-up of potentially corrosive products.
READ MORE: Cupboard cleaning hack keeps them dust-free for good
Though it can be significantly more straightforward to clean the easy or obviously dirty parts of your bathroom, clean-looking areas can hide a lot of germs.
Ultimately, if you opt to clean your toilet bowl but not the exterior of the toilet and the floor around it, you may as well not bother.
Bathrooms have plenty of hard-to-reach areas that need disinfecting even though they’re trickier to do.
The taps, light switches, behind the toilet, garbage bin, doorknobs and laundry hamper are all areas that regularly get skipped.
Even though cleaning the bathroom can feel like a punish, avoiding these simple mistakes will ensure that your time is being used efficiently and effectively.
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