Cleaning the toilet isn’t particularly fun to begin with (although it’s not nearly as bad as unclogging a clogged toilet!), but scrubbing the “porcelain throne” can feel even more arduous when it doesn’t seem to stay clean for longer than a day or two.
Hard water and mineral buildup is likely to blame for those colored rings and grimy tracks that seem to form in your toilet bowl overnight. Lucky for us, there’s a couple of fixes that address the source of the problem, and you’ll find both outlined in this post.
Note: If your toilet bowl has heavy or stubborn mineral stains, I highly recommend using my method for removing mineral deposits from your toilet bowl first before using either of the tips below. The tips below will help to prevent mineral stains in the future, but aren’t meant as a fix for existing stains.
Why Does My Toilet Get Dirty So Fast?
Hard water isn’t the root cause of those colored mineral deposits in your toilet bowl, or at least not directly. Rather, those deposits are likely a symptom of mineral buildup in and around your toilet’s siphon jets.
Toilet siphon jets, which are located under the rim of your toilet bowl, move clean water from the tank into the bowl when you flush it. But if your toilet siphons are clogged up with mineral buildup, they’ll also push some of it into your toilet bowl every time you flush.
Now that you understand why your toilet gets dirty so fast, let’s get to how to fix it! There are a couple of simple ways to clean mineral buildup out of toilet siphon jets that will help keep your toilet clean longer!
Related: The One Recipe You Need To Keep Your Toilet Clean
How To Clean Your Toilet Siphon Jets: 2 Effective Methods
The are a couple of options for removing mineral buildup from your toilet’s siphon jets. If they aren’t too dirty, the first method makes a quick and easy fix. If your siphon jets are really grimy, you’re better off skipping ahead to the second, more powerful method.
Method #1: Quick Vinegar Soak
You’ll need:
- Toilet brush
- Toilet cleaner
- White vinegar
- Paper towels
- Gloves
Directions:
Grab a few paper towels, soak them in white vinegar, then wring them out a bit so they are wet but not dripping. Pull on some cleaning gloves and tuck the vinegar-soaked paper towels underneath the rim of your toilet bowl, adding more as needed until the area underneath the rim is completely covered.
Leave the toilet undisturbed for a couple of hours to give the vinegar time to work, then remove the paper towels and discard them. Use your toilet brush and preferred toilet cleaner to scrub underneath the rim, then flush the toilet a couple of times to clear out the loosened grime.
Method #2: Overnight Vinegar Soak
If your siphon jets are really grimy, an overnight soak with white vinegar can work wonders. The key is to block off the jets, which traps the vinegar right where all the grime is concentrated. You’ll be amazed at how effective it is!
You’ll need:
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Directions:
Start by cleaning underneath the rim of your toilet with a toilet brush and your preferred toilet bowl cleaner. Flush to rinse, then turn off the water supply to the toilet and flush it again to empty the tank.
Next, block off the siphon jets with a few pieces of duct tape. (Don’t worry — the tape will come off easily later on.)
Pour 1 gallon of white vinegar into your toilet tank, then flush to allow the vinegar to flow down into the blocked siphon jets. Leave the toilet alone overnight.
In the morning, remove the duct tape from the toilet siphons and turn the water supply back on. Flush the toilet once or twice to flush out any remaining vinegar and loosened mineral deposits.
BONUS: Keep Your Toilet Clean Between Cleanings
Once your siphon jets have been cleared of all that gunk and grime, mix up a batch of my fizzy toilet cleaning tabs to keep it clean longer. Just drop one in the toilet and give the bowl a quick scrub to keep it looking (and smelling) fresh and clean!
Get all the details about making toilet cleaning tabs here.
More Toilet Ideas & Solutions
Do you struggle with mineral deposits in your toilet(s)?
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My area has always had excellent water that we can drink from the tap. For about a year, I’ve been seeing rings around the toilets that don’t come off. I tried the duct tape which worked but now it’s ridiculous. I’m in the midst of trying something new with one toilet (it’s fairly new & white so I can see what’s going on). I have to run a humidifier in the winter so I use the ionization balls in it to prevent buildup on the heating element.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.My experiment is tieing a couple of these together with string and dropping them into the tank. It’s too early to tell if this works or not but it’s worth a shot.
How timely! We keep getting black streaks in the toilet lately, even when I know it’s clean. I googled & found it was from mineral deposits. I wondered how to clean the inside of those jets to get rid of the mineral deposits. Now I know. Thanks, Jillee!!
Please log in or create a free account to comment.We actually sometimes get the hard water stains under the faucet for the bathroom sink . Any ideas?
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Same paper towel method works like a charm. I dampen a paper towel with white vinegar, get it placed where I want it around the faucet, between the taps, etc. then pour just enough vinegar to saturate it good. I let it sit several hours, or overnight then wipe dry.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Good to know. We’ll have to try this.
,So you flush, then duct tape, pour in vinegar and flush again? Won’t that blow off the duct tape?
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Right. That’s the first thing I noticed. I think it should be flush first, then apply the tape, but that’s not what her editors wrote.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.My house is 10 years old and the scaly ugly stuff has been building around the syphon jets for that long. I tried everything to get that ugly stuff off….especially because it makes the toilet look dirty! Last night I sprayed vinegar in each jet and then put the paper towels around as described above. I left them overnight. This morning when I removed the paper towels it was like magic! Some light scrubbing with a magic eraser and my toilet looks like new. THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Hooray! :-)
Please log in or create a free account to comment.The “Magic Eraser” product contains an ingredient which scratches surfaces. I would be very careful when using.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.I was horrified to see a limescale ring around the water line in my toilet. A little piece of magic eraser soon rubbed it off and I try to use vinegar or toilet cleaner around the nozzles and pan more often now. As both are acidic, they attack limescale and prevent it building up.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.The “Magic Eraser” product contains an ingredient which scratches surfaces. I would be very careful when using.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Do you need to dry off the area under the rim before applying the duct tape to get it to stick? Seems like it wouldn’t stick well if still wet.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Yeh. I think that would be a good idea. I’m glad you mentioned that.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Yes – I used a paper towel to dry it off before applying the tape :-)
Please log in or create a free account to comment.I will try one or both of these ways to clean the toilets, but With the amount of deposits at the jets and in the bowl, I may need to use a pumice stone to ensure the proper clean I want. Then start a regiment of vinegar in the tank daily. All of the cleaners I have made from your website work fantastic and I will never buy cleaning products again. But this hard water here in AZ is the worst I have ever come across. Within 4 weeks, I had to replace faucet nozzle because of the deposits. Everyone keeps telling me to get a water softener and a reverse osmosis to solve the problem. And that in itself is a problem. All the chemicals and salt isn’t what I want. Thank you for the ideas for getting rid of the mineral deposits. I will let you know how they work.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Good luck Alicia!
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Be careful of daily vinegar in the tank (rather than the bowl). Friend cleaned hers this way then forgot about flushing the tank and left town for the weekend. The vinegar ate the rubber parts and she had to replace. Intermittent as described is good.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Please explain the concern with a reverse osmosis water filter or a water softener.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.The water softener has a tank that the salt goes into, NOT into the water you drink. There is a tank with ceramic beads that the minerals in the water cling to and then they are flushed away during the regeneration cycle. We live on a farm with incredibly hard water and without the water softener, everything is rust colored in about a day, everything that we wash!
Oh, if only this will help my upstairs bathroom! The kids use that one, so not the cleanest ever, haha, but the HIDEOUS black mineral stains are SO GROSS it seems pointless to even bother to clean! It takes a major chunk of time + chemicals to remove the stuff, so how often do you think that happens?! Yuck!
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Thanks for these suggestions!
How often the gunk builds up just depends on your local water!
Please log in or create a free account to comment.Would Hydrogen Peroxide clean the toilet tank work well without damaging the rubber gasket?
Thanks for sharing. I remember seeing this tip years ago. I live in an area with hard water. It was good to see a picture of what those deposits look like.Well definitely try this at home.Our toilets have these deposits that no amount of scrubbing will get rid of.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.A lot of people where I live in MO have water softeners on their water lines.,The girls at work were talking about how before they had the water softeners – that the water in some of their homes was brownish and yucky. Sorry Probably TMI. This was years ago that the girls were talking about it.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.I throw a couple of denture tablets into the tank a d bowl a d let sit for a couple of hours. Always do this as a last step before traveling as well.
Please log in or create a free account to comment.It doesn’t clean the siphon jets, but whenever we go away I add a little bleach to the bowl, NOT the tank, since it can eat the rubber flaps and hoses. Also keeps the ring away.
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