The shower in my bathroom is enclosed in a clear glass cubicle. The nice thing about the clear glass panels is how light and spacious they look. The not-so-nice thing about them is how quickly and obviously the dried up droplet marks accumulate and stand out.
And boy are they stubborn. They don’t wipe off with Windex. The “leave on then rinse” soap scum removers don’t work on them. Neither does dish washing liquid, nor rubbing alcohol nor WD-40. The only thing that worked (up till now) was copious amounts of JIF and intense scrubbing with a rotary scour pad on a cordless drill. Even then, it was like scraping gum off the bottom of a sneaker.
Then, just this weekend, I discovered vinegar!
As it turns out, these stains are carbonate mineral deposits left behind after the shower droplets evaporate; and the only way to break them down is with an acid like vinegar. So I bought a bottle of cleaning vinegar from the local supermarket, sprayed it (undiluted) on the panels with a spray bottle and left it to soak. After fifteen minutes, I used a microfiber cloth to loosen the stains and hosed the panels down with the handheld shower.
The panels were spotless. It was like a miracle. For so long I’d been brute-forcing it mechanically, when a chemical solution (ha!) had been sitting in the pantry this whole time. With vinegar and a bit of time, these stains clear up as easily as your phone screen with an alcohol wipe.
My mind was so blown by how well this worked, I had to write about it. Hopefully it helps someone out there!