I Tried Everything to Fix the Brown Stains in My Toilet — Then I Finally Found a Solution!

Before my daughter was born, just over three years ago, I bought a new toilet. I loved how pristine it was, and I hoped that the newness would keep it looking sparkling. But between a new baby and a pandemic, I didn’t clean it as often as I might have in other circumstances. Beyond that, we live in an area with notoriously hard water. Before I knew it, I had a few of those brownish stains in the very bottom of my toilet, which suddenly didn’t seem so new anymore. 

Those brown stains are usually the result of hard water, or water with a high mineral content (usually calcium and magnesium). Over time, hard water leads to mineral buildup, also known as limescale, which is a sort of off-white color. But when it’s combined with dirt and bacteria, it can turn brown and lead to stubborn stains.

I tried regular cleaning, which didn’t work. I bought one of those flexible toilet scrubbers that can get in much further than traditional brushes. (And while I do recommend getting one, a special scrubber along did not do the trick.) I learned that bleach wasn’t the answer — it would just mask the stains. I tried baking soda, vinegar, and baking soda with vinegar. I tried dish soap. Laundry soap. A pumice stone. In short, I tried just about anything someone on the internet recommended.

The stains got bigger and spots appeared in other areas and I began to despair. Until I came across a woman from Australia who had dumped a whole package of citric acid into her toilet, left it overnight, and woke to find a perfectly clean bowl. With a healthy dose of skepticism, I decided to give it a try.

I knew it mostly as an additive in food, but I learned that it’s a very concentrated form of the cleaning power in lemons and limes. My mom was the one who pointed me to the bulk section of our local grocery store, and you can also often find it in the canning section. Or you can buy citric acid online by the pound.

Citric acid works by forming a chelate — basically a fancy word for compound — with the magnesium and calcium in hard water. Said differently, by binding to the metal ions, citric acid softens water and both prevents and helps break down limescale.

• Make sure you allow yourself enough time. One of the most important ingredients, I learned, was time, so I waited to start my project until my husband had left for work and I could have 7 or 8 guaranteed hours where I knew the solution could sit and work its magic undisturbed.
• Manually flush your toilet with water. Before I started with the citric acid, I tried a YouTube trick to empty out the bowl. I poured a large amount of water into the toilet quickly, leaving me with a small amount of water that covered the stains I was trying to target. 
• Add warm water and citric acid and let sit. Several people suggested using warm water (not hot, so as not to accidentally crack the porcelain bowl), so I added just a little warm water to my toilet bowl, eyeballed some citric acid, and stirred it into the bowl with my brush. 
• Wait… then scrub. That evening, I returned to give it a scrub with the brush. My brown mineral deposits were not totally gone, but most of them were, and the others had shrunk.
• Repeat as needed. Before bed, I stirred some more citric acid in and left it overnight, since I’d read that sometimes an additional application might be needed, especially for particularly stubborn stains. The next morning, I waited as long as I could before pulling my brush out again. I was happy to find that the spots of brown I’d noticed after the first cleaning now lifted off easily and was both satisfied and completely disgusted when an entire brown ring from the entrance to the u-bend came free. I flushed my toilet and was so gratified to see it as pearly white as when I bought it. 

My water is still hard, and now I have a three-year-old, so my toilet still doesn’t stay as sparkling as I’d like, but I’ve added citric acid and baking soda to my regular routine. I leave them to sit for a bit before scrubbing and it doesn’t take much time or elbow grease, and I don’t need much at all for results.

I still eyeball it most days, but for maintenance, I use about a teaspoon each of baking soda and citric acid, and when I wanted a deeper clean, with the initial stubborn mineral deposits, I used about three tablespoons. 

I hadn’t realized how much my stained toilet bothered me until it was restored. Now, I can free up that brain space, and the cupboard space I used for all the remedies I tried, which failed. Sometimes it really is the little things that make the biggest difference in our everyday lives.