This
week I thought I would write an article about one of my all time
favorite tools and in my opinion, a highly under rated cleaning
product, the pumice stick. We have used pumice sticks to clean up
some of the worst messes we have ever seen. We do a lot of really
terrible homes in our business and we always use a pumice stone in
these homes.
Pumice Sticks are just like the sound.
It is a stick made of pumice which is lava stone. Some are sold on a
handle and others are just a stone. Pumice works by scouring off
stains. A pumice stone is very abrasive so we only use them in two
places. First, pumice stones are great to remove stains from inside
toilets. We do a lot of real-estate cleans of vacant homes with
terrible hard water stains in the toilets from sitting unused for
months. Often even the strongest toilet bowl cleaner will just turn
the hard water stains blue, making them look even worse. This is
when we whip out the pumice stone. Just rub the stone on the hard
water ring and it quickly disappears. It has not failed me yet. The
other place that pumice stones shine is in ovens. When we do
move-out cleans for apartment complexes the ovens are normally a
disaster and oven cleaner barely touches the stains. Once again use
a pumice stick, with water to lubricate it, and all the blackest
build up will come right off.
Another great benefit of pumice sticks
is they use no chemicals at all. They are 100% green and use nothing
but water. I occasionally have customers that want an oven cleaned
but say we cannot use oven cleaner because they will have a reaction
to it. I let these customers know I can clean their oven with
nothing but water and a pumice stick. These sticks do have some
limits. First they wear down quickly and they can be expensive at $2
- $3 each so I only use them when all else fails. Sometimes you can find them at dollar stores and if so, stock up. The other problem
with pumice sticks is if you use them somewhere they are not designed
for, like in a sink, you can cause a lot of damage. But when used
properly these little sticks will scour away your problem area.
