Cleaning your house without products

Household Uses for Vinegar

 
Alice Marini
By Alice Marini. Updated: September 5, 2024
Household Uses for Vinegar

Did you know vinegar has countless household uses? Our grandmothers used vinegar for just about everything. The fact that we now have multipurpose cleaners does not mean we shouldn´t learn how to use vinegar to clean, in laundry, on hair etc. Why? Because vinegar is an environmental friendly, cheap product, and is also also safe for us and our children to breath and touch. Keep in mind that, when we talk about vinegar we mean white wine vinegar, which is a much more powerful ingredient than other types of vinegar.

So, let´s discover the common household uses for vinegar together!

You may also be interested in: Can I Use Vinegar to Clean Marble Floors?

Steps to follow:

1

How to use vinegar to clean: you can use white vinegar as a multi-purpose cleaner. Just mix equal parts of vinegar and water and put in a spray bottle.

You can use the mix to:

  • Clean the fridge.
  • Clean stoves, kitchen tables and other greasy parts of your kitchen. White vinegar works very well as a natural, homemade degreaser.
  • Clean ceramic and porcelain tiles in the kitchen and bathroom. They will be bright and shiny again
  • Clean sinks: white vinegar gets rid of germs and bad odors, and make you sink shine
Household Uses for Vinegar - Step 1
2

How to use vinegar for brightening: you can use the same mix of half water, half white vinegar to:

  • Clean your windows.
  • Brighten kitchenware, especially teacups.
  • Make your wood shine. Apply the mix on wood with a wipe, or just use the vinegar mix as a floor cleaner to make your parquet shine.
  • Make your silver shine by soaking your silver in the aforementioned mix of water and vinegar for a couple of hours. Drain with a dry cloth.
  • Polish your metal items with vinegar using a soft cloth, it will make them shine!
  • Soak your cutlery in the water and vinegar mix. Then dry them with a clean cloth. That´s the way high end restaurants make their cutlery shine.
Household Uses for Vinegar - Step 2
3

How to use vinegar for fabrics: you can use pure white vinegar to get rid of stains and bad odors. Let´s see how:

  • Vinegar to remove stains on carpets: whether it is urine or wine, you can spray some pure white vinegar on the area, let it act for 10 minutes, then sponge with water. Vinegar is anti-bacterial and deodorant. You can also use it to get rid of Ribena stains on carpets.
  • Get rid of wine stains from clothes by spraying vinegar directly on the stain and rubbing it.
  • How to use vinegar in laundry: add half glass of vinegar to your wash cycle. It will kill bacteria, bad odors, soften your clothes. That way you will use vinegar instead of fabric softener.
  • Vinegar leather cleaner: wipe some pure white vinegar on leather shoes and bags to make them shine again.
  • Vinegar for cloth diapers: add half a glass of white vinegar when you wash babies´cloth diapers.
Household Uses for Vinegar - Step 3
4

White vinegar odor removal: vinegar is very powerful in eliminating odors. You will need to fill a spray bottle with vinegar. You can use it to:

  • Remove odors in the kitchen and the house by spraying white vinegar on tiles and walls, especially after deep frying.
  • Spray vinegar on fabrics, carpets and clothes to get rid of bad odors
  • A more powerful way to make a white vinegar work as an odor removal is by boiling a cup of water with half a cup of vinegar for as long as there is liquid. The steam will remove smoke, food and other odors from your house naturally.
5

Vinegar bathroom cleaner: you can use pure white vinegar, or add a teaspoon of baking soda to make it even stronger.

  • You can kill germs by spraying vinegar and baking soda on the sink and tub, and then rub it.
  • You can clean a toilet by pouring a cup of vinegar in it, brushing it with a toilet brush. Leave it overnight. It will remove stains and bad odors.
  • You can remove and prevent limescale with vinegar by mixing it with baking soda and rubbing the bathroom surfaces with the mixture
  • Vinegar drain cleaning: you can unclog bathroom drains by pouring the vinegar and baking soda mixture in. That way you won´t risk of getting burnt by chemical drain cleaners.
6

Vinegar for mineral and lime deposits: vinegar is very powerful in preventing and eliminating mineral deposits buildups.

  • How to use vinegar in dishwasher: add a cup of vinegar into your dishwasher cycle to clean any residue. You can also add half a lemon and let it act.
  • Vinegar kettle descaler: to clean the kettle from mineral deposits without using chemicals, fill it with vinegar, let it boil and then leave the vinegar in for 24 hours.
  • Rub metal cookware, including metal pans, with white vinegar to get rid of deposits.
  • use white vinegar to remove odors and clean mineral deposits from your washing machine. Simply add a cup of vinegar to an empty cycle and let it run at the maximum temperature
  • Scrub the oven with vinegar and baking soda to eliminate residue buildups.
  • Vinegar iron cleaning: fill your steam iron with vinegar , put it upright and let it steam for 5 minutes to remove mineral deposits.
Household Uses for Vinegar - Step 6
7

Vinegar beauty treatments: there are a few vinegar beauty tricks we want to teach you.

  • Brush your teeth with vinegar from time to time, You will get whiter teeth and better breath.
  • Wipe your nails with vinegar after applying a nail polish. It will make the polish last longer.
  • Vinegar dandruff remedy: gently massage your scalp with vinegar for 10 minutes once a week. It will make your scalp heal quickly.

You might also be interested in how to clean with lemon.

8

Those are just a few household uses for vinegar. You can experiment many more uses such as cleaning a coffee maker with vinegar or use vinegar on hair to make them shine. Let us know your tips on household uses for vinegar!

Household Uses for Vinegar - Step 8

If you want to read similar articles to Household Uses for Vinegar, we recommend you visit our Home cleaning category.

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Household Uses for Vinegar