What is Soap Scum?
Soap scum is a white or gray filmy layer that you may have noticed covering your shower, bathtub, or sinks. It can be found anywhere on these surfaces, from shower curtains to between your tiling. To remove this pesky substance, keep reading.
What Causes Soap Scum to Form?
Soap scum is a combination of soap, calcium and magnesium particles in your home’s water supply. If your neighborhood has relatively hard water, or water with an excess amount of minerals, you may be used to seeing soap scum in your bathrooms and kitchen. The minerals in hard water combine with soap and dirt to create a scaly layer on the surfaces of many appliances, and sometimes even our laundry.
How Do You Remove Soap Scum?
If left for too long, soap scum can continue to build up and combine with mold or mildew to form a hard layer on your home’s surfaces, giving off an unpleasant smell and possibly posing a health hazard for your family.
To remove soap scum and prevent it from returning, you should regularly clean your bathroom. Apply Borax on any areas affected by the soap scum. This will also help to kill and prevent mold and mildew from building up.
How Do You Prevent Soap Scum?
Just like removing soam scum, making sure it doesn’t pop up in your bathroom in the first place means maintaining a clean bathroom. You can apply a gel gloss to surfaces that are prone to soap scum after cleaning them, this will make it more difficult for soap scum to form. A daily shower cleaner can usually help to stop soap scum, and it only takes a few minutes a day to clean.
Another way to prevent soap scum from forming is to sprinkle Epsom Salts in your bathtub. This makes soap residue go down the drain instead of sticking to surfaces — it’s like using baby powder after a day at the beach!
While cleaning to prevent soap scum, you may also notice watermarks on the areas you’ve gone over. To prevent them, try using Dawn dishwashing liquid and white vinegar. Your fixtures will be shiny, clean, and soap scum-free!
To order an at-home water test and explore your water softener solutions, call Aquarius Water Conditioning at 888-741-9025.