Fairy Juice

Fairies are mystical magical creatures.  Juice is liquid.  Put them together and you have a mystical magical liquid to use for... cleaning!  It's the best thing for mineral build-up from hard water and for anything else that's got stubborn, yucky grime.  I found the recipe for this amazing nectar on Pinterest about a year ago.  I hardly ever get on Pinterest, but it was all worth it just for this one recipe.

We have issues with hard water at our house.  I've had an extremely hectic January, so my shower stall got sadly neglected.  See how sad it looked this week?

Ugh.  Nasty demoralizing minerals were firmly adhered to my chrome fixtures, glass doors and fiberglass shower stall.  I've tried so many different cleaners over the years with varying results, but this stuff is the cheapest and best.  And it's very easy to make.  You take an empty squirt bottle, fill it up halfway with plain old white vinegar and fill it the rest of the way with Dawn dish soap.  That's all there is to it.  The original recipe said to heat the vinegar in the microwave first, but I don't usually bother to do that.  If it makes you happy, go ahead.

 my Fairy Juice

You can just keep it in the spray bottle indefinitely and give it a good shake before you use it.  Sometimes I pour in some hydrogen peroxide for extra disinfecting properties.

Then you just spray it liberally on whatever you want to clean and let it sit for a few hours or overnight.

You see, vinegar dissolves the minerals, while the dish soap dissolves grease and also makes the vinegar stick to the offensive minerals long enough to dissolve them.  Make sure you let it soak for a good long time to let it work!  It will stink, so just close the door and ignore it.

After the Fairy Juice has done it's job, grab a rag or scrubby, dampen it and get to work.

Your results may not be absolutely perfect the first time if you have heavy build-up, but two or three go-rounds should do the trick.  Then once every week or two will maintain your sparkly clean surfaces.  This works great on and around sink faucets in your kitchen, grimy buildup on your stove... it has lots of uses.

Don't forget to rinse it off after you're done scrubbing, otherwise someone will slip in the shower and kill themselves, and you don't want that on your conscience.

See how much better it looks?

Now the only thing I didn't explain was why I call it Fairy Juice.  Well, last summer we were visiting our son and daughter-in-law where they live in England.  They have very hard water there too and my dear daughter-in-law was valiantly striving to keep her "toilets" clean (in England they call their bathrooms "toilets" instead of bathrooms.  It's very disconcerting and confusing.  Our kids still call their facilities bathrooms, but I wanted to use the British terminology for fun).

See?  I mean it, that's what they call them.  This is a sign along the street in Cambridge.

Anyway, I mentioned to E. that I had found an amazing cleaning solution that would help her out, so we set off to the local Waitrose grocery store to find white vinegar and Dawn.

They did have little bottles of white vinegar, but alas, no Dawn dish soap was available.  We decided to settle on a "washing up liquid" with the brand name of "Fairy."  Why not?  And thus, Fairy Juice was born.  I just wish Fairy household products were available in the U.S.  I would definitely buy them.