When Cleaning Solutions Go Wrong

I am moving out of my apartment and into my dream home. So excited! What I am not excited about is fulfilling the list required cleaning items to make the apartment better than professionally cleaned as I was instructed.

That's where the trouble begins. We had been told that the apartment could be lived in, when we moved out, normal wear and tear. But that wasn't the case. The apartment had to be in better condition than it was when we moved in. As a Christian and someone with OCD, that sounds great. But you have to remember, I have paid $25,000 over the last two years to live here. Why exactly do I have it so clean that it is "better than professional"?

One of the projects that I am most concerned about is the grout in our bathroom. I have kept the bathroom clean and in working condition at all times. The tile floor gets swept frequently and moped regularly. I have spent many weekends on my hands and knees scrubbing stubborn stains. On most occasions (except for a few particularly busy or lazy weeks), you can come to my apartment and find a squeaky clean, sparkling bathroom.

Despite all of this, the grout has noticeably changed from sparkly white to a strange shade of gray. It doesn't look horrific or extraordinarily dirty. It just isn't white anymore.

Like any modern twenty-something, I scoured the internet for multiple ideas on how to clean grout, made a shopping list, and headed off to Target. A grout brush, gloves, sponges, vinegar, a spray bottle, baking soda, and bleach.

Then I proceeded to test a combination of vinegar and water. No luck.

Test #2 - A combination of baking soda and water. No dice.

Test #3 - Bleach. A minuscule difference. This set of tiles was slightly whiter than any of the tiles around it. I thought I might not have let it sit long enough and planned to try again on my next day off.

So this morning it was time to try this again.

Test #4 - Bleach on a much larger section of the bathroom floor than the previous day off. This time I let it sit for a half hour, scrubbing at the 15 and 30 minute mark. Minuscule difference, so I repeated the steps, and one tiny section of grout is almost white. When I finally moped up, the tile section was definitely lighter but not impressively so.

Before

After

I ended up spending almost the entire day cleaning the shower, baseboards, and grout in my bathroom only to find that there was no significant difference in shade. Certainly not enough to impress my landlord. My husband might have stopped home and caught me nearly in tears of frustration.

I may have also tried scrubbing the floor with toilet bowl cleaner (as suggested by pinterest) and Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (which worked impressively well, but took quite a bit of elbow grease).

Moral of this story: Find out how much it will cost from of your security deposit to skip cleaning the grout. It isn't worth trying to change its color while working, moving, setting up house, and getting out of your old place. We decided it was worth the cost to just skip it.

In the end I ended up with a super-clean, but still awkwardly gray grout and a brand new huge crack in an entire section of grout. In the end it wasn't worth the entire day of cleaning.