Fighting Mildew

The fight against shower mildew is continuous and always a loosing battle. The pesky stuff refuses to be completely eliminated, and if you leave even a speck, it grows back faster! But I've never been quite so annoyed by it as now.

Some smart individual decided that tile looks nice in showers. And somebody else thought that idea was great. Eventually the trend made it to the apartment I'm living in. For some reason, the implications didn't occur to me until after we had rented the unit. Tile is surrounded by grout. Grout in showers grows mildew. Tile surrounds in showers have a lot more grout than plastic surrounds. So what you get? A nice, beautiful, white-tiled surround, with pretty pink and black mildew stained grout.

And it takes hours and hours of old-toothbrush-scrubbing to get it looking even semi-clean. Everywhere else, tile is nice. It's great for floors, for example. It's even okay for kitchen counters. But when it comes to showers, I'll vote for non-renewable, petroleum-based, easy-to-clean plastic surrounds every time.