Tips & Tricks Tuesday / Vinegar!

Hi everyone! I'm temporarily blogging in my old space until I set up a new blog in a few weeks. Pardon the dust!

I’m excited about Meagan’s link up, because I’m always looking for nuggets to put to good use. I am obsessed with things like “5 New Uses for safety pins” in Real Simple or any creative Pinterest recipe. 

Today, I wanted to share my love affair with…vinegar! Yes, vinegar. It’s revolutionized the way I clean my home. I have a gut feeling that most of us don’t clean the way our moms used to. I do it as little as possible and only when company’s coming – amiright?

When I got pregnant with my now-14 month old, I started researching “green” cleaners. Like all first-time moms, I was paranoid about bringing unnecessary, harmful chemicals into our house. However, most of the “safe” ones are rather expensive, and I found that I needed one formula for my bathroom tile, one for my tub, a different one for my kitchen counters, etc.

That’s why I was happy to discover that plain old white VINEGAR is a wonderful all-purpose cleaner that I can use in all rooms, all surfaces. AND it’s much safer than even the green cleaners out there. I bought a gallon of vinegar at Target for a measly $2.39 and a nice 32 oz. Rubbermaid spray bottle at our local hardware store. I filled the bottle with 75% vinegar, 25% water. I use it all day, every day – it’s especially good for quickly cleaning my son’s high chair after each meal. A few spritzes, a cloth, and I’m done.

Here are other great uses for vinegar:

• Set out a small glass bowl of vinegar in a room that needs deodorizing. It will pull the nasty smells right out of the air. I do this in my son’s bathroom where we keep the Diaper Champ (i.e. diaper genie)
• Use as a rinse aid in your dishwasher! It will help clean the gunk off your dishes in lieu of Electrosol tabs
• Kills and repels ants that find their way into your house in the summer
• Perfect for killing bacteria on kitchen cutting boards (especially butcher block)
• Clean your kids toys and anything they chew on
• Combine with baking soda to clean faucets and other fixtures

    I know there are many more uses for vinegar (just google it!) but these are the ways I've used it!

    What are your favorite cleaning products?

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