The Wonders of Vinegar

Vinegar is good for more than just salad dressing!  There was a time (not very long ago) when a bottle of vinegar would sit in my cupboard for months without being touched, but one day I ran out of Pine Sol and I was desperate.

My kitchen floor was filthy.  It was filthy on a level on par with a fast food restaurant's.  There was Spaghetti-Os and Cheerios creating a textured patina by the highchair.  My husband had spilled milk and not cleaned it up (I only noticed it when I spilled some of my coffee and bent to wipe it up.  It had been disguised by my white and black checkerboard flooring.  In other words, it was gross.


I did what I always do when I have a question, I googled it.  I vaguely remembered my grandma talking about how vinegar was the best thing for cleaning, so I typed in "cleaning with vinegar" and got more than three million results.  Yup, that's a three with six zeros and three commas!

I decided to give it a whirl (remember - the floor was almost hazmat).  I filled the sink with hot hot hot water, a bunch of vinegar (I eyeballed it), and a good squeeze of dish detergent and broke out my good ol' trusty mop.  Here's the shocker - my floor got CLEANER than with my Pine Sol, with less scrubbing!  Halleluja, I was a convert!

Once I found out how fantastic vinegar is for floors, I started to branch out.  Here's a list of my top uses for vinegar:

• A laundry additive.  It works like fabric softener.  (And no, my clothes don't smell like salad dressing)
• Keeps cut flowers fresh (2T vinegar and 3T sugar per quart of water)
• Cleaning carpet (hot water and vinegar solution)
• Cleaning pet accidents
• Remove deposits from hard water in coffee pots, vases, fish tanks, etc
• Soothes bee stings
• Stops heartburn (I use apple cider vinegar for this one)

How is it that we automatically assume that we need to buy a separate product for every job around the house?  Our grandmothers kept their houses clean with only a few simple products, and so can we!