I have been dying to get my hands on a steam cleaner. What better way to clean the house without chemicals? I had watched (an embarrassingly large number of times) the infomercial for the Shark steam pocket. I read reviews online which were mixed – so I checked into other steam cleaners, some of which had better reviews. But when it came down to it, I was at Costco this weekend and they had the Shark. I think it was $80ish? So I figured, what the heck? Costco has an amazing return policy so I knew if it was a piece of junk, then I could always return it. I brought it home and couldn’t wait to use it. Much to my husband’s eye-rolling, I pulled it out at 9pm on Saturday night after I finally had a minute to check it out.

I got all the zillions of pieces out and quickly read the quick start guide. Then I got going on our bathroom sink – and my first reaction was.. “eh”. It was OK. Definitely NOT like what I saw on the infomercial (I know, how SHOCKING!).  We have hard water here so we get calcification on the faucets. I was really hoping that this would soften that – but not so much. However, I did notice that it loosened it enough for me to scrape it off more effectively than I’ve been able to do in the past. So that’s not bad, I guess?

It did an amazing job on the toilets which was a bonus. Suffice it to say, I live with 3 males (…) so the toilets can be, um, disgusting. Cleaning with the Shark,I didn’t actually have to touch anything (yea!) and was able to sanitize and clean the outside of the toilet and around the bottom easily. What they don’t show on TV, though, is that you usually have to wipe up after steaming. But still, overall, I was happy with the toilet cleaning bit.

Cleaning the showers was more “eh”. It does make the chrome sparkle which is nice. But there’s still a lot of elbow grease needed to get rid of soap scum etc. I guess I was wishfully thinking that this would be some miracle tool that would make cleaning fun (I know, I must have been watching the infomercial after that second glass of wine…).

So here’s my boiled-down (so to speak) assessment:

The good:

• Relatively easy to use (some flaws, see bel0w)
• Chemical-free
• Works great on chrome, toilets, getting dirt from nooks & crannies and tiny places
• Excellent at getting rid of greasy grime in the kitchen (stove top, microwave, toaster oven)
• It comes with a canvas bag that you can easily store everything in
• It is very portable – the cord is super long

The “not what I’d hoped for”:

• Didn’t get rid of hard water stains without a lot of elbow-grease
• Didn’t do any better than scrubbing with Bon Ami on getting rid of burnt-on mess on the stove top
• A little messier than I had thought – can leave a lot of water behind that you have to wipe up
• Not sure that using the attachments with the cloth steam pockets is actually disinfecting anything – it doesn’t seem hot enough. The cloth pockets seem to trap and cool the steam? I need to investigate more.
• It is hard to press the steam button with one hand and scrub with another if you need to hold onto smaller items. In general this isn’t a problem but cleaning the teapot was tricky.

So I guess if I was giving it a rating using a 5 star scale, I would give it a 2 1/2 stars rating. I suspect I’ll keep it because it is handy for certain jobs. But definitely not the revolutionary tool I was dreaming of…