How to safely clean countertops and fiberglass shower stalls.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

If you have a fiberglass shower stall, you know you cannot use scouring powder like Ajax on it. We have been using SoftScrub, but it comes in “lemon” and “fresh” scents. We are trying to maintain a fragrance-free household, and these products stink to high heaven. I called Dial, the company which distributes SoftScrub and found that the abrasive is calcium carbonate. Chalk.

I got some chalk line chalk, and now I am in business. You want to get it in white. Just sprinkle it on a wet soapy sponge and you are good to go to strip soap scum off your fixture. Incidentally, calcium carbonate is also an ingredient of many toothpastes. It is 3 on Mohs hardness scale.

[deleted eBay link]

Actually, you could use talc powder, which is even softer, being a 1 on the Mohs scale.

2

Neat. I normally use acids to remove soap scum and hard water spots, but have used toothpaste as a mild abrasive for other things (polishing scratches out of optical discs, for instance). Never thought to wonder what the abrasive in “soft cleansers” actually was. And, miracle of miracles, I have a useless bottle of powdered chalk that was last used a decade ago to snap lines onto some stuff I was cutting for work… I’ll try it next time I need some mild abrasive action.

And for some reason, I now wonder what Clorox Magic Erasers rank on the Mohs scale.

3

race_to_the_bottom, if you want to advertise your eBay sales, you can become a member and post in the Marketplace. In MPSIMS, this is considered spam.