Baking Soda and Vinegar Are Good for Cleaning, but Not Together
From viral hacks to your grandma, someone or something at some point told you to clean your dishes with baking soda and vinegar. I even advised you to clean with baking soda and vinegar. Yesterday, unfortunately, I learned that this approach is not all it is cracked up to be. Let’s discuss.
Why You Shouldn’t Mix Baking Soda and Vinegar for Cleaning
The good news is that this mixture is not toxic or dangerous. You won’t get poisoned over time if you mix vinegar and baking soda to create a bubbly paste that you can rub on your walls, countertops, or tiles. The bad news is that it doesn’t do much.
You see, yesterday I wrote about the best methods for removing water stains from white walls . As I expected, I had better results cleaning the water stain with a mixture of lemon juice, baking soda, and vinegar than I did when I simply cleaned it with soap and water. The famous combination won again – or so I thought.
However, the reason it was so much more effective is because the true cleaning power most likely came from the lemon juice at best and the sheer moisture of the solution at worst, rather than from the baking soda and vinegar. In fact, the two products cancel each other out, according to some cleaning websites I’ve read and Reddit threads I’ve looked at.
Baking soda is a base, vinegar is an acid, and when bases and acids come together, they neutralize each other . The result is water, carbon dioxide (which comes out as a fizz), and a salt called sodium acetate. Vinegar and baking soda react with each other , not with the dirty surface, so this combination usually doesn’t clean any better than water. You’re really just wetting and (hopefully) scrubbing rather than scrubbing. If that’s all you want to do, fine. If you really want to clean yourself, you’ll need soap or something to make a difference.
What to use instead of vinegar and baking soda
Above all, don’t overlook the power of bubbles. The classic trick of pouring baking soda down the drain and then adding vinegar, for example, results in a lot of them, and while it doesn’t really do much to combat actual clogs deep in the pipes, it may push some dirt closer. at least to the surface.
Second, vinegar and baking soda have their uses in your cleaning arsenal. Think of it like an amicable divorce: they work better separately, but both are still good on their own. Vinegar’s mild acidity can sometimes remove dirt from surfaces when you’re not ready to tackle larger products like, say, muriatic acid-based toilet cleaner.
Baking soda makes a great scrub because of its rough, gritty texture, and it’s also a solid odor eliminator, which is why you probably already have an open box in the back of your refrigerator.
If you want to replace what you thought was the cleaning action of baking soda and vinegar mixtures, simply choose a regular cleaner. I’ve had great results with the double strength formulas of Fabuloso and Pine Sol , and they’re not very expensive. If you like the feeling of scrubbing those abrasive, gritty bubbles off surfaces, consider using simple soap and water on a sponge or, if the material can handle it, steel wool.