First statement is that this is not about cleaning a bathroom but about cleaning a shower room. I am using bathroom in the American sense, where only the super-rich have baths. In our Chambre d’Hote we have a shower room with each bedroom, the following lesson is how to clean one.

When I started in the chambre d’hote business I had had no experience whatsoever of cleaning bathrooms or bedrooms , fortunately I had married well.
My wife earned some crusts cleaning bedrooms in the Lancaster Gate Hotel in London during her student days and, when we both worked in Anjou in the seventies in the Chateau de Teildras she had also worked at the bedrooms there.
It was there that she discovered that in this seemingly shabby old manor house Madame La Comtesse had extremely high standards of both hygiene and appearance. The taps, for instance, had to be cleaned, dried and then polished before any guests were allowed in.

One of my Madame’s first statements when we opened Le Presbytere was to declare her own mission ststement for the cleaning, she believed that : Every guest should feel that they were the very first person to use their bathroom.
Normalement the division of labour divides fairly between me doing the cooking and the downstairs and Madame the cleaning of the bedrooms but every so often the balance changes , as at the moment when there are four bedrooms to get ready but no-one to feed , and so I get co-opted as cleaning assistant.

Now Madame, who has a fairly low opinion of my cleaning abilities, took me through the exact method of cleaning a bathroom before she let me try one and she then examined it minutely after I had finished.
Strictly in the interests of science I am going to let you into the method I have to employ.

I head for the bathroom with a bucket containing a 2 large cleaning cloths and three other drying ones, a green scrubby sponge, several old toothbrushes to search out hidden dirt, and two different sorts of cleaning product, one made with raspberry vinegar which is anti limescale and one made with Eau de Javel which is a fairly powerful bleach.

First job is to thoroughly Hoover the bathroom, including the shower.
Next object of my attention is the toilet which is thoroughly scoured with the scrubby and the Eau de Javel. Then it is rinsed all over with washcloth#1, dried with washcloth#2 and then the chrome bits polished with drycloth#1.
Next to be tackled is the shower, now perhaps I should digress at this moment and talk about the cleaning uniform.

Basically the very best uniform for cleaning bathrooms is none at all, do it naked . Cleaning of the shower always involves me in at least one soaking when I hit my butt off the tap and drown myself.
However if, like me you suffer from the terror of being surprised cleaning in the nude, the second best option is to do the job in discardable clothes. I have destroyed far to many “good” clothes with bleach to risk them.
I do the job in an ancient tee shirt and an equally ancient pyjama bottom.

Back to the shower.
Out now comes the anti limescale product.
This is sprayed all over the inside of the shower, then out comes wet cloth#3 and the shower is washed all over. The shower comes, at this stage, into its own as it is used to rinse itself thoroughly. Then out come drycloth #2 (now damp cloth ) and all the surfaces are dried. Then enter drycloth #3 and the chrome bits, the soap racks and the showerdoors are dried and polished.
Last job in the shower is to kneel outside and perform all these ablutions on the floor.
Then the exact same set of washing protocols are practised on the sink.
Then it is just a matter of cleaning off the wall tiles, the mirror and the towel rails before a final wash of the floor and then one just has to wait for Madame’s final inspection to discover if it could be declared guest ready.
( And I bet you all thought I was having a great time out here )