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These homemade toilet cleaning bombs use the power of citric acid to clean your toilet.
All you need is a few other ingredients and a silicone mold to form these little tablets.
Here is how you can make them at home too.
Homemade Toilet Cleaning Bombs
You can check out our instagram video here. Be sure to follow us on IG for fun videos and tips
Ingredients:
- 2 cups baking soda
- 1/2 cup citric acid
- 2 tbsp dish soap
- Optional: 30-40 drops of essential oil for scent
- Silicone mold
Directions:
- In a bowl, mix the baking soda and citric acid until combined.
- Next, drizzle in the dish soap.
- Using a spoon or gloved hands, gentle mix until the consistency is similar to cookie dough. You want it to be moldable. If your mixture seems a little dry for some reason, add in another drizzle of dish soap.
- Now you can add in your essential oil and do one final, gentle mix.
- Press mixture into the silicone molds and allow it to dry overnight.
- Once dry, take the toilet bombs out and add to a container preferably one with a lid.
Shop The Ingredients In Our Amazon List:
To make it easier, I made an amazon list just for these toilet bombs. You can shop all the ingredients here.
How To Use These DIY Toilet Cleaning Bombs:
Once a week, add a toilet bomb to the toilet. Let it fizz and react, then sit for about 5 minutes. Clean the toilet with a toilet brush making sure to get this solution all over the toilet bowl.
I like to use these in between regular toilet cleaning with our DIY toilet bowl cleaner.
How Do These Simple Homemade Toilet Cleaning Bombs Work?
This mixture is so simple to make, but the science is very cool!
If you remember, we have talked about using an acid + a base for cleaning many times on Chemistry Cachet. One of the most common acid and base reactions is using baking soda and vinegar. It is a very misused solution, but it has benefits. You can read more about using vinegar and baking soda in this post.
Citric Acid + Baking Soda
When you combine citric acid plus baking soda, then add it to water, the reaction produces carbon dioxide and a salt.
The benefit of this is when they react together to form the carbon dioxide, you get a solution that breaks up grime and stains.
Since citric acid is a powder and so is baking soda, this makes it a great option for creating bombs that will fizz in water. This is also how many homemade bath bombs are made.
A similar reaction is when we used baking soda, then applied vinegar for our homemade carpet cleaner.
You can learn more about how citric acid works in this blog post. You can get more information about baking soda in this post.
So, you can mix up an acid and a base?
When you mix a powdered base with a powdered acid, they won’t react until they are mixed in water. This is what makes these a great option for making tablets. If you mix a liquid acid, like vinegar, with a powdered base, like baking soda, it will react right away. You would never want to bottle vinegar and baking soda because the only benefits of using them together is the reaction itself. This is why in the carpet cleaner we mentioned above, they are applied in separate steps.
Dish Soap
The dish soap in this works as a binder to make the toilet bombs moldable, but it is also a surfactant. When the bombs hit the water, react and fizz, it releases the dish soap which will give you some scrubbing power. As you know, I prefer Dawn for DIY cleaners because the cleaning power is better than most others I have tested. But for this recipe, you can use any dish soap you like. The main reaction is the citric acid and baking soda mixture for cleaning.
Essential Oil
I always use the Purify essential oil for cleaning toilets because it smells really fresh. It can help with odors too! You can use another strong essential oil in this recipe if you have one on hand.
More Toilet Cleaning Tips
We shared a blog post with all of our favorite toilet cleaning hacks in this post.
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Aussie Jo says
Damn sounds like a bloody good idea, I think my daughter would like this information
Alexis says
They work so well!
Sheri says
BUT, does these sanitize the toilet bowl?
And if yes, what makes it sanitize the bowl?
Alexis says
No, disinfecting is a separate step. We recommend using pure 70% rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide or Force of Nature. Here are more toilet cleaning hacks to learn more.
Abby says
I’m reading all your cleaning articles with interest! Does having baking soda in the mix affect the citric acid’s ability to remove/prevent limescale under the water line? Thank you
Alexis says
The baking soda and the citric acid have to react together to form carbon dioxide which breaks up all the hard water, stains, etc. The reaction is the most important part of this recipe. Due to the ratios though, it doesn’t completely “cancel” out the citric acid’s benefits 🙂