Your Good & Bad Bathroom Habits
Everyone loves their bathroom to be clean and comfortable, but to keep it that way takes hard work.
But who works harder to keep their bathrooms the hygienic heavens they want them to be?
And who needs to up their bathroom cleaning game?
We surveyed the general public to uncover your good & bad habits and to find out who needs a little more bathroom TLC!
The Toilet
When it comes to germs and nastiness in a bathroom it’s usually the toilet that springs to mind.
Thankfully, around half of us clean our loos at least once a week or every other day, with 22% cleaning it every day.
However,at the extreme end of the scale – 8.1% of people clean their loos after every use and quite horrifyingly, 3 people surveyed said they NEVER clean their toilet.
Never! Just think about that for a minute. Okay. Sorry.
People living in Northern England are likely to have the filthiest loos, as they mostly only clean their loos once every 2- 4 weeks.
Whereas the ones with the sweetest smelling kermodes are the Northern Irish; with 44% cleaning it every day and 11% after every use.
The Bath
Keeping your bath spic and span can be a bit of a task in itself, and it would be easy to not clean it all if you have a shower bath.
But, despite the work required to keep it clean, more than a third of us clean our bath every other day; with 75% doing it once a week, at least!
1 in 10 people clean their bath once every fortnight and 6 people surveyed said they have never cleaned their bath – let’s hope none of them live with the 3 people that never clean their loo!
Baths in Northern Ireland and South West England are cleaned more often than those in the north of England and Scotland.
But it is the Welsh that take home the beautiful bath prize with nearly a quarter of those surveyed saying their bath got the beauty treatment after every single use.
The Shower
Perhaps because it’s always flowing and washing away things when we are using it, but the shower doesn’t seem to be cleaned as regularly as some of our other bathroom essentials.
Around a third of us clean it every 2 to 4 weeks with a quarter making it a weekly task.
1 in 10 do it after every use and just 2 people said they didn’t bother cleaning their shower at all.
The Welsh have the cleanest showers with 24% saying it was wiped down after every use.
And Northern Ireland appears less bothered about shower cleaning than with toilets and baths, with around 60% cleaning it anywhere between every other day and once a month.
The Shower Screen
Not one everybody has to worry about, the shower screen can play a big part in making or breaking the look of your bathroom space.
So, it would follow that keeping it clean was high on the agenda for most of us.
Well over half of us clean it every week, with a quarter cleaning every other day or so – one in 10 of us take the time to clean it up after every use.
Really? Who are these people?!
Well, those people are mainly from central England, as 15% of those surveyed there take the time to wipe down shower screens after each use.
For most of us, cleaning the shower curtain is a weekly task, but for 2.4% of Welsh and 1.5% of those surveyed in the South West, it’s not something they ever really bother with!
The Shower Curtain
One that I am guilty of neglecting, much the rancour of my wife, is the shower curtain.
Thankfully, it would appear I am not alone, with 15 of those surveyed saying they never bother with it.
Most of us clean it once a week or at least every month, with a few super clean freaks doing it every day of the year – how can they be bothered with that, I have to ask?
Across the regions of the UK, Northern Irelanders give their shower curtains a once over every day, but most other areas of our green and pleasant land tend to leave it for around a week or so.
The Welsh tend to leave it a little longer, which makes me wonder – maybe I’m a bit Welsh…or just plain lazy.
The Toilet Flush
As you may expect a whopping 65% of those surveyed took to cleaning their toilet flush handles at least once a week, with 22% doing it daily and around 6% doing it after every flush.
Perhaps a little more shocking – and considerably more stomach-churning – is the fact that 20 (or 2%) of those polled said they never cleaned the loo handle.
When you consider what we use a toilet for and what our hands have been touching while we’re there, learning that 2% of people don’t bother with cleaning the toilet flush is a little disturbing.
Home to all manner of bacteria, if you’re in that group of people not cleaning their loo handles, you might want to think about cleaning your toilet again.
The UK’s cleanest toilet handles can be found in the South West, with 12% of people there cleaning them after every use.
The dirtiest are likely to be in the North West or South East where weekly cleans are more likely the order of the day.
And sadly, it’s Welsh loo handles that need the most disinfectant, as 5% never get washed at all!
The Basin
The one bathroom space that sees more action that most is the basin area.
It’s therefore no surprise that most of us (80%) give it a clean at least once a week, with a quarter of those giving their sinks a deep clean every day.
We’re guessing the same three people that never clean their loo are also not cleaning their basins and we believe they live in the North of England! The shame!
The cleanest basins can be found in Northern Ireland (we’re sensing a pattern here) with an impressive 16.7% saying they wipe it down after every use and 27.8% cleaning it every day.
The Taps
In the midst of a global pandemic, we would have thought that the taps in our bathrooms would be getting the once over more often than not.
Thankfully, that is kind of reflected in 19.4% of those polled saying they cleaned them every day.
Just 4.8% said they do it after every use, and most of those were either from Northern Ireland or in the South West of England.
Again, the North West appears to not consider tap hygiene to be top priority, with a third of those polled saying it was a weekly task in their homes.
The Heated Towel Rail
Perhaps not something many of us ever consider cleaning, heated towel rails get a surprisingly high level of TLC, with around a third of those polled saying they clean it at least once a week.
The super cleaners of South West England will often do it every day (6%) and 28 of those polled said it never entered their heads to think about sprucing up their HTRs.
1-in-5 men were more likely to clean it once a week, with most of the ladies in our poll opting to do it every other day 20.4%
South East England has the nicest looking towel rails with over a quarter of those polled wiping down their hotboxes every other day.
Sadly, it is again the North of England that scores low on the clean streak scale with 3% of people saying they never bother to clean their towel rails.
Hashtag Sad Face.
The Door Handle
Often overlooked, but used by everyone, the bathroom door handle is a place that we all need to think about cleaning a little more.
77 of those polled said they never cleaned it; higher than any other bathroom item in our list.
Unfortunately, that 7.7% may need to reevaluate their cleaning habits, as bathroom door handles can be a super hot spot for all sorts of nasty bacteria.
Thankfully, most of us already know that, with two thirds of us cleaning it at least every week.
South East England has the cleanest bathroom door handles, with around 40% of them being cleaned every other day.
Wales brings up the rear with most people doing it once a week, while Northern England redeemed itself a little with a third of those polled cleaning the handle every few days.
Overall, a quarter of those polled left it anywhere between once a fortnight and once a year, so it might be time for a national campaign about cleaning those bathroom handles!
Although we’re not supposed to have anyone in our homes right now, if you have children at school that use the same bathroom as you, perhaps now is the time to get your bathroom handle clean on!
The Floor
The one thing that anyone and everyone is going to use in any bathroom is the floor.
Of course, you may not wash your hands or ever take a bath or a shower, but if you visit the bathroom you will use the floor unless you’re a David Blaine levitation sort.
Thankfully, for most of us at least, cleaning the bathroom floor happens once a week at least (37.5%) with a third of pollsters doing it more than that.
2 people never clean it and another 9 of those polled said they do it once a year – I can’t imagine what their slippers look like!
Women have the ever so slightly cleaner bathroom floors with 70% cleaning it at least once a week or more, compared to 67.6% of men.
And the Midlands have the cleanest flooring of any region of the UK with Wales only just behind South West England in the race for the dirtiest floors!
It’s a Clean Streak!
So, there we have it, the UK & Northern Ireland’s clean and filthy bathroom habits.
There’s a lot more to be sharing with you about what we each get up to in our bathrooms, so keep your eyes peeled for more grim and gritty info in the coming days and weeks.
We’ll look at the nation’s favourite shower gels and whether men are cleaner than women – and we’ll crown the biggest bathroom superheroes in the UK & Northern Ireland – so that should be fun!
In the meantime, go and find out if the pandemic made us cleaner or not!
John trained in journalism before joining the Big Bathroom Shop team. His exceptional journalism skills (and modesty) allow him to meticulously research bathroom topics and bring you the very latest news and views on all things bath and shower related. He’s a dab hand at Scrabble and is currently undertaking a domestic plumbing course to be sure he actually does know what he’s talking about!
