Grout=0, Me=1

Nothing beats those beautiful new tiles when they are first laid ... and let's not forget about that gorgeous grout keeping everything together and still in its original and intended colour.

Fast forward a year (or five) and a few spills later and it's hard to remember what shade the grout used to be. At least that is the case in my house. Perhaps you are all perfect, scouring cleaners and have impeccable floors and sparkling grout.

It starts out with a simple observation of how much darker a certain area of the grout is than another i.e. around the sink in the kitchen or with a realization that you can't keep kidding yourself that the white grout in your shower is not yellowing slightly (A LOT!!) and then it starts to really bug you, and then one day you decide to do something about it. This means war!

Before you run out and get some commercial-grade cleaner like I did with so many warnings, it's amazing it doesn't just eat right through the plastic bottle its packaged in, let me share with you a little secret .....

WATER + VINEGAR + BAKING SODA + TOOTHBRUSH

Yup, that's it. Way better results, way safer (i.e. did not have to evacuate my house and fear for exposed skin and lungs) and you can involve your wee ones.

No Treehouse for this kid, only scrubbing the kitchen floor

These pictures are not taken with the best quality camera but I think you'll get the idea. This is a picture of some of the tiles beforehand:

And here are the same tiles after some minor scrubbing and not much time at all.

My son lost interest after about 20 minutes so I didn't quite finish so here are some more results showing my 1/2 cleaned and 1/2 still dirty grout.

I was so excited to share this because I really couldn't believe how effective these natural, non-toxic products were. If they work so well, why does the other stuff even exist?

Do yourself a favour, if you've got some filthy grout issues - go natural!! (and let me know what you think)