I am a mother to four children, the older three are boys. I promise I’ve spent hours, maybe even years dedicated to potty training and yet, they still seem to pee on everything. We have 4 bathrooms in our house and half of those have been destroyed by urine (one of which is a guest bathroom and I am constantly apologizing to anyone who may need to use it). I’ve also tried to teach them to clean up their own mess but let’s be honest they are 13, 9 and 8, the toilet brush becomes a weapon and they use whatever sponge they can find (which ends up being the sponge I do the dishes with)…so there is that.
It’s spring and I have decided enough is enough, this smell has to go! So, I took to the internet to find out how others have tackled this issue, sorry Google you are going to have to take a back seat, Pinterest you are up to bat! Here are four different methods to cleaning the smell of urine out of your bathroom, I’ve tried them all and ranked them 1-5 based on their effectiveness!
Method 1 
I tried this first method on my boys bathroom. I’m not going to lie, I cussed…a LOT. How is it humanly possible to be this gross? I almost just started their bathroom on fire and called it a day. However, I wanted to see if this could really work, in a real life scenario.
Ingredients
•Baking Soda
•Lemon Juice {fresh is better}
•Cleaning vinegar
•Damp rag
Instructions:
Step 1: Mix a paste of baking soda and lemon juice. If you don’t have lemon juice you can use water but lemon juice is a great disinfectant and great for removing odors. The consistency of the paste should be about that of pancake mix.
Step 2: Spread the paste all along the bottom of the toilet, the toilet seat, and any other area that gets a lot of over spray. (**This was not explained clearly. Spread with what? An icing knife? I used my hands like it was mud, that method seemed to work ok.) Let it set for about 10 minutes.
Step 3: When the timer expires spray the dried paste with white vinegar and let it fizzle. Once it is done fizzing (should only be about a minute), wipe it up with a damp cloth. (**After spraying with Vinegar it didn’t fizz, so I may have done something wrong.)
Outcome:
It’s non-toxic, however, bleach would have made me feel better. It definitely cleaned the urine off of the toilet, I am still uncertain if it will kill the smell long term. Link to original Pinterest post: http://askannamoseley.com/2012/02/getting-rid-of-that-boy-smell-in-the-bathroom/
Method 2 
I tried this method on the guest bathroom my kids ALSO destroyed with their urine.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup baking soda
1/4 cup vinegar
1 T dish soap or baby wash
1/2 c. Borax (I strangely had this on hand from the time I wanted to make my own laundry detergent. That lasted a week.)
2 gallons hot water
Instructions:
Step 1: Mix baking soda, vinegar, Borax and water together. (**This reminded me of middle school science class)
Step 2: Add the dish soap at the end so that the mixture won’t be too sudsy.
Step 3: Mop floor.
Outcome: This would be an option I would use for maintenance to clean the floor after you have successfully removed the urine smell. You would have to wash the floor by hand to get the area around the toilette clean. This wouldn’t be something that I use on the actual toilet or the walls. Good news though, my bucket broke while washing the floor and I flooded my bathroom and kitchen, so all my floors are now clean. Link to original Pinterest post:http://frugalfun4boys.com/2010/09/02/homemade-cleaner-that-neutralizes-boy-bathroom-stink/
Method 3 
Not only did I get to test this method on human urine but dog urine as well because, the day I tried this method my dog peed all over my master bathroom. YAY ME!
Ingredients:
Baking Soda
Hot Water
Vinegar
Instructions:
Step 1: Make a paste of baking soda and hot water. Using a scrub brush apply it liberally to the floor and leave it sit for 5 minutes or so.
Step 2: Mop floor to remove baking soda paste and then wash the floor with a mixture of white vinegar and hot water.
Step 3: Cry and repeat step 2 until the baking soda is gone.
Outcome: DO NOT USE THIS METHOD UNLESS YOU LLLOOOOOVVEE WASHING YOUR FLOOR! For the love of everything that is HOLY the Baking Soda was ground into the grout so much that I had to wash the floor three times to remove all of it (and I’m certain it’s not all gone yet). It caused more work then I signed up for! If you enjoy your sanity do not use this method. Link to original Pinterest post: http://fourplusanangel.com/2012/08/potty-talk/
Method 4 
I went back and sprayed this in the boys’ bathroom just in case.
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Step 1: Spray toilet and anywhere urine has sprayed. Let sit for 10 minutes.
Step 2: Wipe up with a damp cloth. (**I let it sit for 30 minutes because…boys.)
Outcome: Hello miracle in a bottle, once I used this an angel got it’s wings! This actually works and you can use it on basically everything. This is not kid safe, so keep out of reach of children. I am convinced it’s made with magic and the tears of moms who have to clean bathrooms. I will be purchasing more of these!
Conclusion: I will be the first person to admit cleaning is not something I am good at nor do I like to do it. Out of all of these methods, 4 works the best (in my opinion). Needless to say, after this experiment I am searching for a good house cleaner who specializes in cleaning bathrooms.
