How to Banish Soap Scum From Your Chicago Bathroom (And Keep It Away)

Living in the hustle of Chicago, keeping your bathroom sparkling can feel like a constant battle. Between work, life, and everything else, that stubborn, cloudy soap scum on your shower walls is probably the last thing you want to deal with. But what if you could conquer it for good with simple, affordable solutions?

What Exactly Is Soap Scum?

To defeat an enemy, you must first know it. Soap scum is that grimy film that forms from a perfect storm of soap residue, body oils, dead skin cells, and hard water minerals. When you shower, this mixture clings to your tiles and glass, and as the water dries, it leaves behind that textured, grayish-brown residue.

The best way to detect it isn’t always by sight—it’s by touch. Run your hand over your shower wall. If it doesn’t feel perfectly smooth, you’ve got soap scum. For a truly deep clean that feels brand new, many Chicagoans turn to a professional home cleaning service to handle the gritty details.

Your DIY Arsenal: How to Remove Soap Scum

You don’t need expensive, harsh chemicals to get rid of soap scum. You can make powerful cleaners at home for just pennies. Here are two proven recipes.

The Dish Soap & Vinegar Scum Buster

This is your go-to for glass showers and ceramic tiles.

• What You’ll Need: Equal parts white vinegar and dish soap.
• How to Use It: Mix them in a spray bottle, apply to the surface, and let it sit for a minute or two to break down the grime.
• The Technique: Use a non-scratch scrub cloth and scrub in an “S” pattern. Always start with the walls and finish with the floor to avoid slipping. Once the surface feels smooth, give it a thorough rinse.

If you’re short on time for this kind of project, you can always schedule a cleaning with pros who bring the right tools and expertise.

The Baking Soda Paste for Tough Jobs

For more stubborn buildup, level up your game.

• What You’ll Need: Equal parts baking soda and dish soap to create a paste.
• How to Use It: Apply the paste with a sponge, let it sit for a few minutes, then scrub and rinse. Pro Tip: Always test baking soda on a small, hidden area of glass first to ensure it won’t scratch.

Important Note: Never use an eraser sponge on glass—it will cause permanent damage. For a guaranteed scratch-free result, it might be time to book an appointment with a trusted Chicago cleaning company.

Prevention is Key: How to Stop Soap Scum Before It Starts

The real secret to a low-maintenance bathroom is preventing soap scum in the first place. These simple habits make a world of difference.

1. Ventilate, Ventilate, Ventilate!

Turn on your bathroom fan during your shower and leave it on for at least 30 minutes afterward. If you have a window, open it. This reduces moisture, preventing soap scum (and mold) from drying onto your surfaces.

2. Become a Squeegee Superstar

This is the single most effective preventative measure. Keep an inexpensive, good-quality squeegee in your shower and make it a house rule to use it after every shower. It takes under 30 seconds and keeps your shower looking new for years. If you’d rather not add another chore to your list, fast cleaning services can keep your bathroom in check between your own cleanings.

3. Try a Daily Shower Spray

If you know you won’t squeegee, a daily spray is a great alternative.

• The Recipe: Mix equal parts water and white vinegar, then add 20 drops of tea tree essential oil.
• How to Use It: After showering, spritz the mixture on the walls and floor. It helps prevent hard water and soapy residue from sticking.

When DIY Isn’t Enough

Life gets busy, and sometimes you need a helping hand. If you’re looking for reliable cleaning services in Chicago to clean your apartment from top to bottom, professional help is just a click away. Whether you need a one-time deep cleaning help or a regular apartment cleaning service, it’s the easiest way to get your space cleaned without the stress.

Nothing kills the vibe of a clean bathroom, specifically a shower, a tub, or tiles, like soap scum. You can have a beautiful bathroom, but if you see that cloudy gray stuff. So, in this video, I’m going to show you an inexpensive DIY way that you can obliterate that soap scum. And I’m also going to talk to you about some preventative measures that are easy but make a huge difference in reducing or totally eliminating soap scum. Give this video a thumbs up for clean bathrooms. You know when you go to a hotel and you walk in and you’re like, “Wow, this bathroom is perfect. How good is that feeling?” Thumbs up for that. And just a quick reminder if you haven’t done so already to subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. And a quick note to mention that this video is brought to you by Makerscle, which is our sister company. Makers Clean sells premium microfiber cleaning tools and so much more. You can visit us at makerscle.com or makerscle.ca. You can see everything that we sell. You can join the email list. Lots of fun things to do over there. To know how to get rid of it, we have to know what it is in the first place. And soap scum is a little malange, a combination of soap residue, body oils, dead skin cells, and hard water minerals that all kind of soup together while you’re bathing and cling to the walls of your bathing facility. Whether it’s a standup bath or a fully enclosed shower like I have behind me, when water splashes, it clings to the surface. And then when water dries, the residue that’s left behind is soap scum. Now, what does it look like? It’s kind of grayish, a little bit brown, and it feels textured, almost rubbery or sandy. So, if you run your hand along a surface and it doesn’t feel smooth or exactly as it was intended to feel the day that your shower was installed, that is a sign of soap scum. In fact, many years ago in my cleaning business, I had a blind client who gave me one of the most valuable pieces of insight I’ve ever garnered from a client in the cleaning industry. And that was, she said, I always know when things are clean by feeling. And the truth is, if you run your hand across any surface in a bathroom and it feels perfectly smooth and uniform, there is no soap scum. But without even looking, I can feel a tile or a piece of glass and I can tell immediately if there’s soap scum. So, it’s a full sensory experience. There are plenty of products available on the market that will gladly remove your soap scum for you, but you can accomplish the same results by making your own product at home for pennies. So, if I’m going to tell you what works in this case, I’m going to tell you to use a DIY solution. Now, these DIY recipes I’m taking from my ebook, 50 DIY cleaners. I’ve got a link for you down below in case you’re interested. But here are the recipes. Now, the first one is kind of where you would start, especially if you have a glass shower, and that’s because it doesn’t include any baking soda, which does provide a little bit of extra abrasion. When you’re cleaning soap scum, you want to make sure that you’re using both the right tools and the right products so that you’re accomplishing the task but without causing damage to any of the surfaces. Which is why we want to find a tool that won’t scratch and we want to make sure we’re using a product that won’t scratch either. And on that note, you also want to make sure that you’re using a product that is safe for the surfaces. So in my case, I’ve got a glass shower and ceramic tiles. I can gladly use vinegar on that with no worries. But if I had a natural stone shower, I would not be using vinegar in that case because acid can ruin natural stone. The first recipe I’ll share with you is the dish soap and vinegar soap scum buster. It’s simply equal parts white vinegar and dish soap. You’re going to mix that together in a spray bottle and you will apply it to the surface. Again, both glass and tile. Now, I would recommend starting with the walls first, cleaning those, and then finishing with the floor because if you spray everything at once, it’s going to be slippery because of that soap. So, start from the top, work your way to the bottom. Now, you want to make sure that you’re using a tool that will balance getting the soap scum off without scratching the surface. As with any tool and product, you always want to start low and level up only as needed. So, in this case, I’m using a scrub cloth. This is by Makers Clean. I’ve got a link for you down below. So, I have this slightly abrasive side here, but I know that it is non-scratching. Once the product has been sprayed on, I let it sit for a minute or two. That way, it can really kind of do its work. And once that’s done, I’ll start scrubbing using an S pattern with the scrubby side. Upon completion of that, I will feel with my hand just to make sure that the surface is indeed smooth underneath all the soapy stuff. If and only if it is smooth and soap scum free, I will rinse. If not, I will continue to scrub or let the product sit for an additional couple of minutes and then reapproach it by scrubbing and then rinse. We only want to clean and rinse once. Otherwise, we’re wasting our time. Depending on where you live, you might have hard water. And if you do, you might notice that your shower, particularly if you have a glass panel, gets really spotty. If that’s the case, you can swap out your regular white vinegar for extra strength vinegar, which is anywhere from 6 to 10% acidic acid. You would want to make sure that you’re gloving up and protecting your eyes and ventilating because that stuff is strong. And in other cases, sometimes people will just spray the vinegar straight on, let it sit, kind of give it a bit of a scrub to loosen it up. Kind of think about like what the dentist does when they’re blasting gunk off your teeth. They kind of loosen things up first. That’s what you could do there. And then you could apply the recipe of the combined dish soap and vinegar to tackle it. Now, if you wanted to level up, you could swap out your vinegar for baking soda. And you can create a soap scum removal paste. So, you’re just using equal parts baking soda and dish soap here. You’re going to get kind of like a drippy pudding. You’re going to apply it with your sponge using the S pattern. And you’re going to work again section by section. Let it sit for a minute or two and then scrub and give it a good rinse. Now, of course, with glass, we always want to be careful when we’re using abrasive products. So, you might want to test this on a hidden area first. I’m always nervous about using baking soda on glass. I mean, I haven’t really noticed any scratching, but I am always hesitant. So, I want to make sure that you check. And I will caution you here, please don’t use an eraser sponge on your glass. I know it’s tempting, but you do not want to deal with the aftermath of that. It’s definitely worth taking preventative measures to avoid having to do the heavy lifting. And while I just explained to you how to get rid of soap scum, if I can prevent it, I’m going to prevent it. So, here’s what you want to do. Rule number one is to turn on your fan during a shower and for at least 30 minutes after or open a window. And the reason this is so important is because soap scum dries onto your walls. So when you’re ventilating, you’re helping to prevent that moisture from lingering around. This has more to do with kind of like mold and mildew buildup, but trust me, it goes a long way in the soap scum thing as well. Now, the second thing you want to do is use a squeegee after you shower or bathe. The walls and the floor of your bathing unit should be bone dry. Now, this is important because frankly, if there’s nothing on the wall, then soap scum can’t form. So, as annoying as it is, we have a squeegee sitting at the corner of our shower over there. We don’t have any fancy hanging unit for it or anything. It’s just an inexpensive, good quality squeegee. And it is the rule in this house that if you shower, you squeegee afterward. It takes under 30 seconds to do. You get quick. It’s like a good workout. And our shower, we’ve had it for 4 years now, and it looks brand new. We never have to scrub it. Something else you can do is use a daily shower spray. Assuming that you shower daily, every other day shower spray. Regardless, after you shower, you can simply spritz down this mixture onto your shower walls, and it kind of prevents any of that hard water, oily, grimy buildup from sticking to the surface. Now, I would say the results of squeegeeing are superior to that of spraying this daily shower spray. But if you know thyself and you know I am not going to be squeegeeing, this would be kind of a great alternative that would stretch out the amount of time you’d have to spend scrubbing your soap scum. It wouldn’t form as quickly. And the way to make that is to mix equal parts water and white vinegar and add 20 drops of tea tree essential oil. Leave that spray bottle in the shower. And once you’re done, simply spritz down the walls and the floor and make sure to ventilate. What this does is it kind of helps to prevent any of that hard water and kind of soapy residue from clinging to the walls. Like I said, it works okay. Squeegeeing is better, but it’s definitely worth a go. So, now you know how to get rid of soap scum. It’s a pest, but you can prevent it. And if you’ve got a buildup, there is a solution. It doesn’t cost a lot of money at all, and it works like a charm. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is, and this is a contentious issue, how often do you clean your shower? Let me know in the comments down below. I think it really depends on how often you’re using the shower and how many people are using the shower along with the products that are being used as well as the preventative maintenance that occurs in the shower. So, I’m curious, what goes on in your bathroom with regards to the shower? Let me know in the comments down below. Not sure if you know this or not, but we have an amazing newsletter. It’s a great way to stay connected to us here at Clean MySpace, and I review some cleaning tips and products and tools in this newsletter every single week. You can get it in your inbox. There’s a link to it down below. If you want to know even more amazing ways to keep your home clean, you’re going to love this video. It is pro cleaning secrets that change everything, and you can click it and watch it right over there. If you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time.