Both of the big-name brand, chemical-based toilet bowl cleaners stowed under my bathroom sink carry stern warnings, including such excerpts as: “Causes eye irritation … if in eyes flush with water for 15 minutes … if swallowed drink large amounts of water and call physician or poison control center immediately … do not use or mix with other household chemicals as hazardous gases may result.” With the WMD-like ingredients that must be in there, one label’s claim that the product “kills 99.9 percent of household germs” made me wonder how that last 0.1 percent could possibly survive!

 

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Restore Toilet Bowl Cleaner’s label says all its ingredients are biodegradable or break down into harmless natural elements. It claims it is non-toxic and free of abrasives, plastic thickeners, ammonia, chlorine, phosphates, pine oil or strong acids. And yet Restore performed every bit as well on my home’s two bowls as the other products — and had a light citrus aroma to boot. 

However, since neither of my bowls had the serious rust stains or residues you’d get from hard water, I gave the three products to a friend’s daughter, who is a college student and said the commode in her vintage apartment had these types of stains. She reported that the chemical-based cleaners performed slightly better on these types of stains than Restore, but said that when Restore was left in contact with the stains for a more extended period, its performance was on par with the others: all three brands removed hard water residue well (the calcium-like buildup on the sides of the bowl). Although none of the products removed 100 percent of the faint but tough rust stains she had in her toilet bowl, the chemical-based cleaners did a better job of minimizing them. She did, however, express some concern about using the chemical cleaners after reading the list of ingredients on their labels.

Pricing:
Restore Toilet Bowl Cleaner	32 oz.	$6.95
	64 oz.	$10.95
Brand A	26 oz.	$3.09
	36 oz.	$4.29
Brand B	24 oz.	$2.35

              
                       

               
                    

                

About Tom McNulty, author of Clean Like a Man

Tom McNulty is the author of Clean Like a Man — Housekeeping for Men (and the Women Who Love Them). It’s filled with dozens of tips, tricks and MANdatory advice to streamline housecleaning. Published by Random House/Three Rivers Press, available in bookstores and on Amazon.com. Visit www.cleanlikeaman.com for even more manly cleaning advice.