A few weeks ago we were at Target and stumbled upon this:
Now this appealed to me in a number of ways.
- It is gadgety in nature.
- It hangs (nod to Andy V. and Jon M.).
- It simultaneouly appeals to both my desire for cleanliness and my laziness in regards to doing work to achieve said cleanliness.
You know those products you can buy that you spray after you shower that prevent residue from accumulating? This is basically that packaged with a little battery-operated rotating sprayer that hangs from your shower head. There are two bottles of cleaning solution included with it. You pop in one bottle of cleaner and the included AA batteries and hang it from your shower head. When you are done with your shower, you press the Blue button and the unit beeps for 15 seconds, giving you ample time to get out of the shower and perhaps have a “Lost”-like moment where you contemplate if pressing the button really does anything (note: you do not have to press the button every 108 minutes). After 15 seconds, a nozzle thing rotates around and sprays your shower with showercleanery goodness. You can certainly hear the sound of something happening but if you have your doubts, you can do like I did and stand on your toilet and watch the thing go to work. It’s not exactly the Fountains of Bellagio, but it’s kind of fun to watch once or twice.
Yeah, you could just buy one of those shower cleaners in a spray bottle and spray it around after your shower, but my experience was that I would buy those and then use them two or three times and then forget about them. For some reason, we enjoy pressing the Blue button and we’ve been doing it for two weeks, so this is clearly superior. Interestingly enough, and I am not making this up, one of the things in our shower that is getting cleaned is a bottle of one of those primitive manual shower cleaners, an irony that was lost on me until my wife pointed it out to me five minutes ago. What’s more they have a web site (http://www.automaticshowercleaner.com) and we all know that any product that has a web site has got to be a pretty respectable product.
OK — so —– does it work?
There are so many newly invented cleaning gadgets these days, it’s really quite amazing. You have the Swiffer, the Roomba, a whole raft of Mr. Clean products. I am quite enamored of the very clever Mr. Clean car washing device. A handheld nozzle that attaches to the garden hose, it squirts the soap on. You wash once, dislodging the dirt, then use the nozzle to rinse with filtered water. Now the interesting part: You don’t dry the car. The water is clean enough that it leave almost no spotting.
And yes, it works. Pretty sweet.
I just had to read this posts because me and my girlfriend laugh everytime we see the commercial for Automatic shower cleaner. She always wondered how you avoided getting sprayed. I don’t think she knew that it had a button. Since it says “automatic” I think she assumed it just started randomly.
Good to know that it actually works. I think your reasons for its appeal are great. Especially “It simultaneouly appeals to both my desire for cleanliness and my laziness in regards to doing work to achieve said cleanliness.”
I laughed at the idea of being sprayed too. Over all I think this is a great product. And yes it works. I hope I’ll never have to clean my shower again. And think of the possibilities of a spin off product line. For instance, toilet bowl cleaners, window cleaners, sink cleaners… The list goes on and on.
I am a big fan of the automatic shower cleaner, but I have discovered a flaw in the design. The battery cover is not tight enough and occasionally water will leak into the battery house and short-circuit the batteries. This sucks because you have to replace the batteries more frequently.
I bought this because hard to clean shower. Started using when dirty cause it said that it would clean it when dirty, well after a month still not clean. So did a thorough cleaning got it sqeeky clean and shiny, and figured that the shower cleaner would keep it that way. Well it did not. In the same shape as it was when we first bought it. So no the product does not work.
@ Darlene:
You’re the first person I’ve found who is dissatisfied with its performance. Granted, without manual intervention the shower isn’t as pristine as showers shown in commercials for any bathroom cleaner on the market, but it does a good job of maintaining an adequate level of cleanliness, thereby enabling me to forgo the ‘deep cleaning’ for a couple months at a time instead of a couple weeks.
I’m curious about your situation, however. Perhaps the source of your shower-cleaning difficulties is your water. I have noticed that depending on where I lived, the water ‘behaved’ differently post-shower. Hard water not only tends to build up lime on the shower walls, but that lime and grime tends to attract shed skin cells, soap residue, and general dust. In cases like those, you’re probably right: This product wouldn’t be up to that significant a challenge.