I tend to be wary of most of the fancy bathroom/kitchen cleaning solvents that are on the market these days and wanted to know if just plain white vinegar would do the trick while not reacting with vinyl/PVC or whatever stuff that shower curtains and bathtubs are made of - don’t want it to corrode the stuff, and don’t want it to react to make harmful vapors instead. Anyone tried using vinegar for cleaning these materials before?
It might handle hard water spots OK, but it won’t do much for mildew. I toss mine in the washer with detergent and bleach.
Skip the dryer.
I intentionally flooded my bathroom with almost a gallon of vinegar a few weeks ago. I just let it sit for a few minutes and then soaked it up with a mop and dumped it in the bathtub. It cleaned everything, including the tub, fairly well with no residue and certainly didn’t hurt anything. Everything was clean at the end including the tub because I used the mop on it too. The only minor complaint was that it didn’t leave the floor very shiny like Mop N Glow or something else like it would because it took off the glossy layer as well but I could have added that back if I wasn’t so lazy.
It won’t hurt anything as long as you don’t let it sit for hours and it is a fairly effective cleaning agent that has been used for ages.
Vinegar, being 5% acetic acid, is generally pretty good at getting rid of mineral deposits and general sanitizing. Given enough time on a surface it may make a decent fungicide, but you’d probably still want a dedicated anti-fungal for that. It shouldn’t be reactive enough to damage polymers.
Most non-bleach containing cleaning products are just long-chain alkyl ammonium salts when it comes right down to it. There’s not really anything to be wary about with those, other than cost vs. cleaning power. If you’re looking for something different, I’ve found Simple Green to work pretty well (here’s the SDS as a PDF).