CLEANING WITH VINEGAR: Everything You Need to Know (Save $$$)

you've seen people talk about the wonders of cleaning with vinegar you would think vinegar is like the Messiah people talk about it they swear by it they worship it but can it clean everything that people really say it can well in this video we're going to talk about the dos and the don'ts of cleaning with vinegar and we're going to decipher what you actually can and cannot be cleaning with it because I hope this doesn't come as a surprise to you there are some things that you're going to see online that simply aren't true and let me just say as a cleaning expert my knowledge evolves I learn new things as time goes by as new research and information comes out and there are things that I've said in the past cuz listen I've been talking about cleaning since 2011 right here so yeah I've said some things about cleaning with vinegar in the past this is going to be the most current version of the information that I have based on my contacts my research and the information that I have come across and if you're like I'd rather clean with cat ear and than vinegar because because I find the smell that offensive I want you to stick around until the end of this video where I'm going to share with you a couple of ways that you can actually make your vinegar smell better what we love vinegar for in cleaning is the fact that it can degase and deodorize what we have to be careful with is also vinegar superpower it's an acid so it can be corrosive that means you have to know what surfaces it is safe for and where you have to say no to the vinegar the first place that I started using vinegar when I started cleaning was to clean windows and mirrors and other types of glass and it is so good at doing this because like I said it is great at cutting grease and it also is known for not leaving streaks behind that's one of the reasons why people love ammonia based glass cleaners but vinegar is just so much cheaper so much easier to come by and it works just as well so I've got a whole bunch of glass cleaning recipes that you can check out out incorporating things like corn starch and essential oils and the right ratios I've got a link down below for you to our 50 DIY cleaners ebook it is awesome but very quickly when I do my glass cleaning I just use equal parts water and white vinegar I spray it on the surface I use a flatweave microfiber cloth I use an S pattern nice groy little s pattern to get rid of the moisture and the product and then I am left with a beautiful streak free shine because people love using vinegar for DIY Cleaning Solutions I will often see people talk about using vinegar on their countertops and based on what I've seen from a lot of Home Rena shows over the past 10 or 15 years people have stone countertops at home and guess what they don't like acids they can start etching if acid is placed on their surface what does that mean it means you kind of see discoloration in the stone it can lead to pitting which is sort of like pock marks in the stone that can eventually lead to cracking or at the very least it just gives you an uneven finish so the idea here is you want actually want to stay away from vinegar when it comes to cleaning stone countertops how about using vinegar to deodorize your drains well they can be quite smelly and people suggest that you can boil up some vinegar and dump it down your kitchen or bathroom drain to help break down any of the smelly buildup that's causing that odor to emanate from your sink so this is what I've done in the past I've put a cup of baking soda into the drain of kind of you know shaken it pushed it down let it sit there because baking soda is a good deodorizer and then I would take boiling vinegar so I'd boil it in the kettle get a little Kettle cleaning in while you're at it and then pour that down the drain and what that does is it causes that lovely daycare science experiment that all the children enjoy which is the big volcano from the reaction of the vinegar and the baking soda so this is one of the only times where I think mixing vinegar and baking soda makes sense um and it does help but I'm going to say it helps to an extent so if you have like an ongoing issue and your drain is smelly it's probably indicative that's probably a symptom that there's a larger issue that you need to deal with you might need to use a proper store bought product you might need to call in a plumber to help you figure out what's going on but for general drain maintenance like a nice thing to do once a month every 3 months something along those lines that feels safe to me now I've also seen people say you shouldn't be pouring boiling hot anything down the drain if you have plastic pipes so if you feel uncomfortable with this please check with your friendly local plumber quick side shot on mixing vinegar and baking soda for a long time a lot of us in the cleaning space talked about mixing vinegar and baking soda and what a great cleaning product that was however when the chemistry behind it is better understood and forgive me I left my chemistry degree in grade 11 uh what we did learn is that actually mixing vinegar and baking soda neutralizes the two and you get in essence diluted salt water so really it is not doing anything for you from a cleaning standpoint if you do want the benefits of cleaning with both vinegar and baking soda my recommendation is to clean in tandem so start with one clean that off and then finish with the neck so that you can get both benefits just without neutralizing or canceling out what you can gain now how about cleaning stainless steel appliances vinegar is quite good at cleaning stainless steel appliances specifically in getting rid of those fingerprints this is the application that I use I would mix equal parts water and vinegar and just so you know that is the standard way that I clean with vinegar there are certain applications where I want to use it straight don't worry I'll cover that but for most of the average cleaning that we're going to do in a house we're going to mix it so you've got that equal parts vinegar in water you're going to I'm looking at my fridge while I'm talking to you you're going to spray it on the fridge or the appliance you're going to let it sitp for a sec and then you're going to get yourself a flatweave microfiber cloth in essence you're going to treat the stainless seal the same way that you would treat glass or a window we're using flatweave because we don't want to scratch our stainless steel we're just going to use the S pattern and work our way down if you need to you've got an area with concentrated fingerprints say around the handles you can stick your finger over the cloth and kind of focus on that one little area and then you should have a beautiful streak free finish we've talked about cleaning the exterior of our appliances now when it comes to the interior of your refrigerator you might notice that it's picked up some smells over time that's because the inside of your fridge is made from plastic and plastic like our skin is porous so it can absorb odors this is a perfect application for vinegar which is a known deodorizer so there are a couple of different ways that you can work vinegar into your cleaning routine for the fridge here so if you're cleaning out your fridge you can remove all of the items remove the shelves remove the drawers and you can use a mixture of a little bit of dish soap say a tablespoon of dish soap a cup of vinegar and a cup of water and use that to spray everything down when you're doing your cleaning in the sink you're going to scrub that and rinse well but then when it comes to the inside of your refrigerator like the plastic lining what I would recommend after you've cleaned the interior so let's say you've used a little bit of soap and water just to get rid of any of the marks or buildup that you see there if you want to really give that extra deodorizing punch just take a bowl of vinegar or a spray bottle and if you're using a bowl dip a cloth in there and wipe down the inside with plain WIP vinegar if you're using a spray bottle Spritz it down let it sit for a couple of minutes and then you can do a rinsing wipe to remove any excess you might be worried about the vinegar smell that will go away and what vinegars do doing is it's neutralizing the odor that the plastic has absorbed vinegar is such a good descaler and what I love about descaling kettles and coffee makers is that it's such a lazy job like it really speaks to me um because it's high impact and very low effort so if you look inside your coffee maker or your Kettle and you're seeing that kind of white crusty buildup that is lime scale so here's how you're going to fix it let's talk about the kettle you're going to open it up and just pour vinegar up to the max fill line then you're going to boil your Kettle and you're just going to do literally anything else once it's boiled you're going to dump it out give your Kettle a rinse you might want to boil it up once more just to get rid of that vinegar flavor because you certainly don't want vinegar orl gray and move on with your life done easy and the inside of the kettle will look great now let's talk about your coffee maker whether it's a drip coffee maker or one of the fancy uh Nespresso curig type situations you can do do the same thing regardless you're going to fill the reservoir with white vinegar then you're going to put a cup under where the cup would normally go you're just going to hit run and you're going to run through a few vinegar Cycles then you're going to dump out the reservoir you're going to give it a good cleaning with soapy water make sure it's nice and clean you're going to fill it with water and then you're going to run through a few water only Cycles this is going to get rid of that vinegar flavor so again you don't have vinegar French roast tomorrow morning for breakfast water hardness will depend on where you live and where your water supply is coming from and the way you know you have hard water is how quickly you get that hard water buildup in your bathroom and your kitchen it'll also be indicative if you have hard water if you're looking in your toilet and you see kind of those brown or rust colored stains that appear pretty quickly that are really stubborn and really hard to get rid of so let's talk specifically about using white vinegar to remove hard water water stains does it work the answer is yes however you have to stay on top of it and it does require a little bit of effort to get the job done so if we're looking at faucets or taps areas around Taps where you have hard water buildup there are a couple of different ways that you can approach getting rid of that buildup the easiest way is to take a bag fill it about halfway with white vinegar tie it off with an elastic band under your faucet so that it can kind to soak and let all of that crusty hard water come off while it's soaking you can do this for showerheads as well when it comes to your toilets if you're noticing that you have kind of those brown or rust colored stains from hard water you can get rid of excess water in the toilet by pushing it down the shoot with your toilet bowl brush and then applying vinegar in a spray and dousing it repeatedly you can also fill the bowl with vinegar and kind of let it sit this might be a time where you want to bring in extra strength vinegar or cleaning vinegar which has a higher percentage of acidic acid anywhere between 6 and 10% if you have matte black finishes in your bathroom which we do vinegar and water is safe to use the idea here is you don't want to use anything abrasive that can scratch the mat now if you feel uncomfortable with this at all feel free to check with your manufacturer but that's what we do and it is fine a lot of the times I will see information surface and I'm just like no you are making people work harder than they need to because you are not recommending what's really going to get the job done right the first time with the least amount of effort so a couple of examples here would be using vinegar to get rid of pet stains uh no you'd have to use a lot of vinegar and there's no guarantee that it's going to remove the odor or the stain what you want to use to remove pet stains is an enzyme-based pet stain remover why enzymes because enzymes that have been developed specifically to remove pet stains and odors will find and attack the very odor-causing proteins and molecules and whatever else exists in the pet stain attack them and get rid of them vinegar simply cannot do that the second case where we see this is when people recommend using vinegar in the laundry room and you know what I was guilty of doing this for a long time when I spent some time at the PNG headquarters learning about laundry detergents and Downey Rin and refresh which is like a Holy Grail laundry product I learned specifically that when you're adding vinegar to your laundry you have to add it at the right time which is at the rinse phase during your wash cycle so what are you going to do open your machine and add it in if you have a top load sure but if you have a front load you really can't do that and you might say oh I'll put it into my fabric softener compartment well guess what your fabric softener compartment can't hold five cups of white vinegar which is exactly how much you would need to accomplish what dowy rinse and refresh can do in about a cap full so this is not a commercial for dowy rinse and refresh but I am saying that when I learn new information I get it out to you I disseminate it but I can't go back and correct like all the 800 or thousand old videos that I have I'm just telling you what I've learned and what's new so please stop using vinegar to soften up your laundry and deodorize it and switch to a citric acid-based product that can do the same thing but actually do it and do it effectively can you use vinegar to clean your floors this is a little bit of a yes and a little bit of a no any guesses well let me tell you you can use vinegar in a bucket or spray bottle mixed with water if you're in a bucket please use hot water it's so much more effective and about a pinky nails size squirt of dish soap okay less is more when mopping the floor if you put too much soap your floors are going to be sticky you can use this to mop your tile lenium and vinyl floors it's going to work like a charm it cuts grease it deodorizes voila now the type of floors that you don't want to use vinegar on would be hardwood and natural stone hardwood floors have specific finishes or Coatings and you just don't want to mess with that so that's why I stay away from vinegar on hardwood floors really I just stick to water and a little bit of dish soap and call it a day for stone floors the reason you want to stay away from vinegar is because vinegar is an acid and it can cause etching on the floors and you've spent a lot of money on those floors you do not want to see etching so please find an appropriate cleaner and stay away from the vinegar now I know cuz every time we do a video about vinegar we get the comment section filling up with people who say but I hate the smell of vinegar I want to clean with it but it makes me gag what do I do okay so first of all listen we've all been through coid you might have a mask lying around you can throw the mask on okay that's number one number two you can turn on an air purifier and open a window just let it air out the smell of vinegar will dissipate it'll just take a bit of time but you can also scent your vinegar to help it kind of smell better I'm not going to say that it's going to smell like a perfume that you want to wear but I am going to say that it's going to make it a little bit more tolerable so number one is an easy hack you can just fill your spray bottle or your container with vinegar that you're going to be using for cleaning and you can add 10 or 20 drops of your favorite essential oil to the vinegar ones that work really well are peppermint and orange okay you can kind of shake that up and use it now again it's really going to mask the smell it's not going to totally get rid of it it's going to kind of smell like orange scented vinegar but it definitely does the trick the second thing you can do is kind of create like let's be honest it's like moonshine okay so here's what you're going to do you're going to grab a mason jar you're going to peel some citrus fruit orange lemons limes whatever you got you're going to throw the peels into the jar and then you're going to fill it with vinegar screw the lid on let it sit in a dark area like under your kitchen sink for 3 weeks or so then you're going to get out a mesh strainer you're going to dump the vinegar back into the jar and you're going to toss those peels that vinegar is now scented okay so you're going to have citrus scented vinegar it is very potent it is very powerful and you can use it in your cleaning recipes whether you want to dilute it or use it straight now that you're a bit of a vinegar expert and you know how to decipher what you see online from Truth Versus clickbait I want to know in the comments down below what cleaning misinformation have you seen online have you Googled something and your gut just tells you absolutely not what is the Wild and wacky that you have seen out there let me know in the comments down below thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: Clean My Space

Views: 88,074

Keywords: VINAGAR, VINIGER, CLENING, CLEANMYSPACE, MELISSAMAKER, HELPCLEANING

Id: gdNNkYGDu3Y

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 10 2023