The Aussie Cure For Tired Old… Bathtubs!

Short version: Accident leads to astonishing discovery: Aussie shampoo cleaned up stains on our old bathtub that scrubbing never did. Details follow.

---

Our bathtub is old—maybe older than I am. On its floor was (I thought) a permanent layer of dirt, maybe some sort of stain. I tried the usual chemical helps (Bon Ami, X-14®, Formula 409®) including a lot of elbow grease, all to no avail. So I gave up years ago on ever seeing the original finish. But one day, we had a happy accident: somebody stood up a bottle of Aussie shampoo, upside-down, without first securing the lid. It was a big spill.

The bottle was mostly empty, but where the pool of shampoo had been, the stains were gone, like the old gospel song: My stains were washed away / And my night was turned to day (or maybe that was "My sins were…").

In any case, I used a lot more shampoo on the bathtub floor, toward the top and right of the photo you see at right. I tried a couple of other brands, which I won't mention here. The Aussie outperformed them.

Yesterday morning I decided to take care of the remaining 40% or so of the tub. The surface was mostly dry (this is important). I squirted liberally from the giant bottle. The stuff sorta piles up, as you can see in the photo below/left.

I kept squirting, and eventually ended up with a layer over the entire stained region. This requires a dry tub surface, lest the shampoo slide off the stain and toward the drain end of the tub. When I said "liberally" I mean I might have used half the bottle. I uploaded a high-resolution photo of the result (click on the photo below/right).

The shampoo sat for maybe eight hours; after that, it was, well, shiny. I shot a photo where you can see the reflection of the camera:

How did it work? Well, I stepped into the shower (ugh! my feet were dirty!) and rinsed the shampoo away. It took a lot of rinsing, but no scrubbing. Here's what it looked like at the end:
The 50-year-old stains are gone, and the tub looks better than it has in years. I should have cleaned up the footprints before taking the picture. Next time.