How to Clean a Toilet with an e-cloth® or Norwex Cloth
- If you use your Norwex/e-cloth® to clean your whole bathroom, clean everything else before cleaning the toilet.
- Use a damp e-cloth® (General Purpose, Bathroom, or Cleaning Pad) or Norwex cloth (Enviro cloth or Bathroom Mitt) to clean the tank, handle, base, and seat of your toilet. I use whatever cloth I have used to clean the rest of the bathroom. To see which cloths I prefer for bathroom cleaning, click here.
- Neither Norwex nor e-cloth® recommend using their cloths for the rim or inside the toilet bowl. You can use an e-cloth® or Norwex cloth in the bowl as long as the cleanser you’re using doesn’t have bleach in it – bleach will destroy the fibres. Personally, I prefer to use a brush and green cleaning liquid in the bowl.
- If you’re worried about watermarks or streaks, give everything a wipe afterwards with a Glass & Polishing e-cloth.
- Rinse your Norwex cloth or e-cloth® when you’re done and set it aside to be laundered.
Can I Clean More than 1 Toilet with an e-cloth®?
Eeeee-yes. Note that’s a “yes” but I have a weird look on my face as I say it.
As a part of e-cloth’s clinical studies, Silliker Inc. found that if you rinse an e-cloth® under warm water after you’ve used it, you can use it again without transferring bacteria. In fact, less than 0.01% of any bacteria that was picked up previously will be transferred to the next surface.
Note: I’m sure Norwex cloths would have similar results but I haven’t seen the results of any testing like this completed on their cloths so I can’t say for sure. I am aware that most of the Norwex cloths are BacLock but FYI, Norwex recommends that you launder their cloths after cleaning toilets.
So, if you’ve got a few toilets to clean:
- Wipe the exterior parts of Toilet #1 (tank, handle, base, seat, etc.) with a damp e-cloth
- use a disinfectant/cleanser inside the bowl and on the rim. If the cleanser doesn’t contain bleach, you can use your e-cloth® with it.
- RINSE YOUR e-cloth in hot water and then go on to Toilet #2
- Repeat steps 1-3 until all your toilets are clean.
- Rinse and launder the e-cloth®.
Do I Need a Cloth with Antibacterial Silver to Clean Toilets?
NO! All e-cloths pick up over 99% of bacteria (note that this is NOT true for all brands of microfibre cloths so be careful if you’re not using e-cloth®). The silver in microfibre cloths does NOT help to pick up bacteria. If you’re confused, don’t worry -you’re not alone – but take a quick read of my post on how the silver in microfiber cloths works.
Click Here for more information on Silliker Testing of e-cloth®.
More Information About Cleaning Toilets with e-cloth and Norwex
Check out my 4 Things to Know before Cleaning Your Toilet with e-cloth or Norwex post.
Kate–
Is it okay to use essential oils with e-cloths?
Molly – yes, you can use essential oils with your e-cloths but… make sure that you wash the cloths out very well immediately afterwards to get the oil out of the cloth. Residual oil on the fibers will make them less effective and can cause your cloth to stink.
When you rinse the cloth out, do you do it in the sink? If so, wouldn’t that put gross stuff into your clean sink? Sorry if that sounds stupid but just wondering…
Krista – here’s my little rinse regime: (1) Clean the counter or whatever with my ecloth. (2) Shake the cloth out over the sink and then wipe the sink. (3) rinse the cloth. Depending on what I’ve cleaned, this might just be a quick rinse under the tap with hot water or it might be a rinse/soak/swish in the sink with a bit of dish soap. if I use soap, I rinse in just water afterwards. (4) rinse the sink and wipe if I feel it’s necessary. (5) rinse the cloth again if I wiped the sink. This seems like a lot but it only takes a few seconds.
Do you clean all your toilets once a week then wash the cloths once a week? Or do you clean more often and launder every time you use the cloths in the bathroom?
Sydnee – I typically do a thorough clean of my toilet once a week (with a cleanser in the bowl and a full wipe-down of the tank, seat, rim, outside and around the floor). I do that on the same day that I do a thorough clean my bathrooms (Mondays). I do the toilet last, rinse the cloth and then put it in the laundry. Then I bring out a fresh cloth that I use through the week to wipe the counter, sink, faucets, mirror as required. Every other day (or third day – depending on my mood and the mess), I pull out a separate, new cloth to wipe the rim and outside of the toilet and the floor around the toilet. I completely blame the boys for this. Sometimes I pull out a completely fresh cloth for this, or sometimes I use one that I’ve been using for general cleaning (spills, art messes, etc.).
At any given time, I have one cloth in my bathroom, two in the kitchen (one for kitchen cleaning and one for table wiping, spot cleaning floor, etc.), and one in my laundry room (for any messes that happen throughout the house). If I need to wipe around the toilet, I’ll take one of the ones from the bathroom, kitchen or laundry room that I’ve been using and then replace it with a fresh one. I always rinse the cloth well in hot water after I use it around the toilet and then put it away to be laundered.
I have stockpiled quite a number of e-cloths so I typically only launder them once every 10 days or so. If the used ones are wet, it’s important to hang them while waiting to launder them so that they aren’t bunched up damp somewhere.
In my early e-cloth days, when I only had a few, I was washing them in the sink by hand so they would always be available to me.
Hope this helps.
kate