The Best Vinegar Cleaning Hacks for Your Home

If you could come up with a "wonderful" eco-friendly cleaning product, it would probably end up looking a lot like white vinegar.

Safe, readily available, and very inexpensive, there are perhaps hundreds of uses for vinegar, an acidic liquid originally created from spoiled wine. For some of the vinegar uses listed here, you will need to decide how much you want to dilute the white vinegar.

On hardwood floors, for example, cleaning with vinegar requires a cup diluted with about a gallon of warm water. But to clean moldy tiles and grout, use strong vinegar.

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Vinegar in the dishwasher

There are at least two excellent uses for vinegar in your automatic dishwasher. First of all, it can be used as an inexpensive and effective rinsing agent for cleaning cups, plates, and other dishes.

Second, it can help clean the dishwasher: about once a year (more if you have hard water), pour a cup of white vinegar into an empty dishwasher and leave it on for a short cycle to remove the lemon and soap. Build-up can prevent your dishwasher from running at peak efficiency.

Tile cleaning

Most people acquire bleach when faced with dirty or discolored tile, grout, and caulk. But not only is white vinegar effective for cleaning and whitening tiles and mortar, but it is also safer than chlorine bleach (especially for families in a septic tank, where bleach should never enter).

Just sprinkle strong vinegar in the mortar and seal in the shower or kitchen, let it soak for at least an hour, and then scrub with a brush.

Vinegar and laundry

Vinegar has so many uses related to clothing that it is often stored alongside detergent in eco-friendly laundries.

To remove stains like mustard, ketchup, ketchup, herb, and underarm deodorants, sprinkle a little white vinegar on the stain before washing. Soaking the egg whites in vinegar will help restore their whiteness.

And just like in the dishwasher, vinegar helps break down detergent when added to the rinse cycle, making clothes fresher and more colorful, and removing mold from towels. A cup should do; add less when using a front-loading washer

Hard water stains

If your toilet, bathtub, or sink has hard water limescale, soak or sprinkle vinegar on the sand. It should loosen enough deposits to remove them easily.

And for any appliance or accessory that isn't working properly due to hard water, especially irons, showers, and faucets, soak or spray white vinegar and let the deposits fade away.

Kitchen cleaning

Clean your coffee pot with diluted vinegar about every month. (Remember to run fresh water before making coffee.)

White vinegar and salt can clean stainless steel and sterling silver pans, and plain vinegar sanitizes cutting boards, especially wooden ones. And to clean the microwave, simply put some vinegar in a bowl of water and microwave for a few minutes, so you can easily clean the grunge from inside the microwave.

Finally, if the sink is clogged or smells bad, try pouring 1/4 cup of baking soda into the sink, then add 1 cup of vinegar and cover the drain tightly. The reaction between these two compounds can remove the blockages. You may need two or more applications for difficult clogs.