Cleaning is never easy. However, you often find yourself buying ten different kinds of cleaners for different parts of your home. That’s why some people choose to search for “home cleaning services near me” and hire professionals to get their homes cleaned. Instead of store-bought cleaners, most of the cleaning work can be done with regular vinegar and baking soda. Let’s check out how you can do that.
The Discussion
1. Clean the drain – Stinky drains are bad for the home. Apart from stinking up the kitchen or bathroom, they also spread all sorts of diseases. Drains stink up when there’s some kind of blockage that prevents food and other types of waste from flowing down. Trapped food or other organic matter then rots in the drain and stinks up everything.
To clean a stinky drain, pour baking soda down the drain and follow it up with an equal amount of vinegar. Let the mixture sit there for a few minutes and soften the blockage by releasing carbon dioxide and using the mild acid and base combo. After a few minutes, flush down everything with hot water and the blockage should clear up along with the stink.
2. Clean the oven – Your oven is a sensitive place where you bake and cook a lot of food. You don’t want to clean it up with toxic chemicals and contaminate the food. That’s where vinegar and baking soda can help. The bubbling action of the mixture is very effective at loosening food debris and stains.
After the mixture bubbles up, it has gentle abrasiveness and can be used to clean up the metal or ceramic interior of the oven without leaving any scratches or marks. Mix half a cup of lemon juice with vinegar and spray the solution inside the oven. Let it sit for about 10 minutes and follow up with a sprinkle of baking soda. Leave it for 10 minutes and wipe everything off with a damp cloth.
3. Remove limescale from faucets – If you live in a place with hard water, you must spend an absurd amount of time cleaning up limescale in several parts of the bathroom. Limescale especially forms on your stainless-steel faucets, showerheads, and hardware. Use the power of baking soda and vinegar to get rid of limescale and other mineral deposits on a budget.
Soak a towel or dishcloth in vinegar and wrap it around the showerhead or faucet you want to clean. Leave the towel there for a couple of hours. Before removing the towel make a paste of baking soda and water and spread that paste over the showerhead or faucet. Proceed to scrub off the mineral deposit with a brush and finish it off by wiping it with a clean and damp cloth. Use a microfiber cloth to not leave any streaks or marks.
4. Remove mildew – If you’ve left damp fabrics in the storage for a long time, they may smell funny due to all that mildew growth. The easiest way of getting rid of that mildew and its funky smell is to throw in the clothes or fabrics inside the washer along with vinegar and baking soda. Baking soda helps to soften the water and neutralize the smell while vinegar acts as a fabric softener.
Load your washing machine with a normal-sized load and add half a cup of baking soda along with the regular powder or liquid detergent. Apart from softening the water and killing the mildew smell, baking soda also makes the detergent more effective. When the load approaches the rinse cycle, add a cup of vinegar and you’ll get clean and odor-free clothes.
5. Remove carpet stains – You’ll be scared reading all the ingredients mentioned on the label of carpet cleaners. They are full of all kinds of nasty chemicals that won’t just clean the carpet but may also damage it and bleach out its color. That’s why it’s always recommended to use a little bit of carpet cleaner in an inconspicuous spot and test its effects. If you’re not into that and want to go greener, vinegar and baking soda have your back.
Put a couple of teaspoons of baking soda in a bowl and add the right amount of vinegar to make it into a thick paste. As the paste starts to bubble, apply it to the stain and rub it into the carpet fibers. Leave the paste overnight to work its magic and remove the dried paste with a vacuum cleaner. If the stain is not completely gone, you need to repeat the entire process and vacuum up some more dried paste the next morning.
6. Clean your toilet – It’s important to note that baking powder and vinegar are good cleaning agents, but not disinfectants. Hence, they can’t kill all the germs in your toilet bowl. For that, you’ll need something more effective like Hydrogen peroxide. However, baking powder and vinegar allow you to loosen all the stubborn stains in the toilet bowl and also bring it back to the pristine white color it used to be.
Those stains are usually deposits of minerals in hard water and the colors are a result of human waste. Spray vinegar inside the toilet bowl and cover it entirely. Sprinkle the same area with baking soda. Be generous with the amount since light sprinkles won’t do the job. If you don’t see bubbles forming on the toilet bowl, spray more vinegar. Once the toilet bowl starts to bubble, wait for around 10 minutes and scrub off everything with a toilet brush. Finally, you can flush it down with hot water.
Conclusion
Vinegar and baking soda are amazing household products that can clean several parts of your home on their own or together. Apart from being cheap, they are also eco-friendly and don’t contain harsh chemicals found in many store-bought cleaners. Even if you hire professionals for cleaning your home by searching for “home cleaning services near me”, ask them to buy green cleaning agents instead of toxic and harmful chemicals.