Back in July, I was on a roll with "Easy, Illustrated Instructions" and asked for some suggestions for what I should write about next. Alisha suggested I write about removing the ring around a toilet bowl.

It turns out, the answer is simple: Use a pumice stick.

Pumice sticks are chunks of volcanic stone that are used as abrasives for feet and bathroom fixtures. I had an unused pumice stone intended for feet, but it worked fine for my purposes. These cost about $3 on Amazon.

Using a pumice stone is like sanding a block of wood. Progress is pretty slow, but you should be able to tell that it is working to remove the stain.

Pumice stones seem to be the hardest thing you can scrape your porcelain with without scratching it.

Wear gloves and scoop some water out of the toilet so that you don't have to work in the water, then scrape, scrape, scrape.

The ring is pretty easy to remove. Stains under the rim are harder because they are tucked into a corner.

As you scrape, the pumice stone will disintegrate into a gray paste.

Thoroughly cleaning the toilet used half of my pumice stone and took almost 30 minutes.

But the results were extremely satisfying. It looked great!

The pumice stone also worked wonders in the bathroom sink.

The hard water mark near the drain cleaned up in about 5 minutes. The minerals near the faucet were tougher to remove because the pumice block couldn't fit into that tight space.