Oh vinegar, the crunchy cleaner’s best friend! Vinegar is so versatile. You can use it on food and fruit without having to worry about toxic residue but it’s strong enough to kill bacteria. While I’d recommend a store bought product for disinfecting big nasty things like salmonella or eColi, vinegar is a fantastic cleaner. Why is that? C’mon nerds, let's do some science!
Let’s start with bathroom cleaning. One of the greatest enemies in the bathroom is hard water deposits, especially out here where we have well water instead of city water. Hard water is “hard” because of its mineral content. When you use water in the shower, bath, or sink, the water evaporates but the “hard” minerals stay there. Over time, you know what it does. That hard white film. It doesn’t look like much at first, but it is a beast to get off. If you have iron in your water, those iron particles get stuck on the minerals from the hard water. And what happens when iron is exposed to oxygen? Yup… that’s how you get that lovely rust color on your tub and on the ring around your toilet. Start with a clean slate. Do what you have to do, CLR or Bar Keeper’s Friend the heck out of it if you have to. Then get a spray bottle that’s 50/50 water and vinegar. After every bath or shower, spray down the shower or tub. Vinegar is acidic, which helps cut through the mineral deposits. It also does science things and breaks the surface tension on water. Surface tension? Water is polar. Water molecules stick together like your thighs on a hot July day. Do a fun thing for me. Grab a penny and drop water on it. Do it one drop, drop, drop at a time and see what happens. Because water is polar you’ll see the water “bubble” over the penny (visual: your muffin top over your pre-pandemic jeans). The surface tension of the water keeps the water in that funky bubble over the penny. Vinegar does science magic and disrupts the surface tension of the water so that it slides right down your shower wall and into the drain, thus decreasing the mineral buildup.
In the kitchen, vinegar is for so much more than pickling all the things. Run vinegar through your coffee maker a few times, followed by water a few times to get out the stink. Boil vinegar in your tea kettle to get out the hard water deposits. My favorite vegetable wash is a sink full of cold water with a few good “glugs” of vinegar dumped in there. No rinsing necessary - it’s the best. If you have a glass top stove, that spray bottle of 50/50 water and vinegar works beautifully for all the splatters that happen. While you’re at it, wipe down your counters.
Vinegar is also great in the laundry room. Ditch that fabric softener. Fabric softener is terrible for your septic system, and in the long run fabric softener gets stuck in your fabric. Imagine putting vaseline or some thick moisturizer on your face tonight. And tomorrow night, and the next night and the next… Morning 1 you’d probably have glowy soft skin, no filter needed. But by next week your pores would be so clogged, you’d be a mess. That’s what fabric softener does to your fabrics! It creates waxy buildup that traps body odor and other icky things. So ditch the (expensive) fabric softener and use a splash or two of plain white vinegar instead. The vinegar helps get rid of those hard water minerals that make clothes scratchy, and its a natural deodorizer. Could vinegar BE any more awesome?! (And if you didn’t say that like Chandler Bing, I’m not even sure why we’re F∙R∙I∙E∙N∙D∙S)
I could go on and on, but I’m at the end of my self-imposed word limit so I’ll call it a day. If you’re not as in love with vinegar as I am, go back to the beginning and start reading this again.
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