A woman cleaning her mother's bathroom was hit with a nasty surprise when she used a powerful chemical bleach cleaner … and ended up destroying part of the toilet.
The scoop
TikToker Zoë (@CaptainMumCleans) shared a video of the process and the unintended results. She identified the product as Cillit Bang.
"I used the bathroom cleaner that I found in her cupboard. I checked the back of the bottle before I used it; it said it would be fine," she says in the video. "Everything was going to plan … something went wrong. I came to the toilet. I've just sprayed it on as normal, and then — look at the stains."
She shows the inside of the toilet, which is streaked with faded chalky stains, and says: "It's ruined."
Zoë clarified in a comment that the bleach didn't stain the rest of the bathroom, but she did have to replace the toilet seat, which had been made of engineered wood.
Other commenters had encountered a similarly frustrating situation. "This happened to me too," one person wrote. "I was FUMING."
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How it's (not) working
Zoë mentioned that she usually stays away from bleach due to its abrasive smell — and her instincts are good.
Bleach can cause skin, eye, and respiratory irritation when used in a poorly ventilated area, but it can be dangerous and even fatal when it reacts with other cleaning agents to create toxic fumes, per research from the online medical journal StatPearls.
Fortunately, while bleach can be a powerful sanitizing agent on appropriate surfaces, there are effective and safer natural cleaning products that can replace it to avoid incidents like this one. For example, one TikToker went viral cleaning her mirrors with white vinegar instead of Windex. Another shared a hack for cleaning with baking soda and aluminum foil, which took tarnished jewelry from gunky to shining.
Generally, there's not much that lemon juice and baking soda can't clean, from glass to plastic, countertops, and tile. When it comes to cookware — especially well-used pots and pans with set-in stains — simply boiling water for several minutes can help remove them with zero added chemicals.
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Some "eco-friendly" products still use chemicals to create scents, so opt for naturally derived cleaning products as often as possible to keep your home clean and the people (and pets) who live there healthy.
What people are saying
Many commenters were familiar with the frustrating side effects of powerful bleach. "Every brand of bleach that I have used … has stained the inside of my toilet," one wrote.
"I just did this and kept cleaning thinking it was getting off extra dirt," another shared. "Nope it was dissolving the paint off!"
"Done the same to my bathroom tiles," another vented.
"Omg this happened to me," another empathized. "I used bleach on my white toilet seat and it stained it brown/yellow … absolute nightmare!!"
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