You probably have at least one uses for vinegar around so that you can use it to make marinades and add extra flavour to certain dishes. However, it turns out that uses for vinegar are a great household tool that shouldn’t only be kept in the kitchen.
Many of the best tricks involving vinegar use are ages old and relatively well known. Still, many people simply dismiss them in favour of using chemical agents with brand backing and a promise of effectiveness.
As such, you may never have heard much about these approaches and may never have thought to try them instead of using your usual methods.
In addition to being much more expensive than vinegar on average, the most commonly available chemical products often pose a hazard to your health and the health of your family.
Many of the ingredients are linked to everything from potential respiratory system damage to an increased likelihood of suffering from certain types of cancer.
If you have young children, these products may also leave you feeling concerned about their safety and worrying about keeping toxic chemicals out of reach. Consequently, you have plenty of good reasons to take uses for vinegar more seriously as a cheap, powerful alternative.
The following ten uses for vinegar are as practical as the leading brands in their category and are safer for the user.
As you’ll see, Who can use vinegar to accomplish a wide variety of household cleaning chores, and it’s also handy when it comes to personal care.
1. Hardwood Floor Cleaner
Most people have heard of this trick before, as vinegar is famous for its ability to help you clean common types of stains from your hardwood flooring.
For example, if you have wooden floors, you’re sure to have noticed sticky or dark discolouration leftover from liquid spills, dirty shoes, and messy kids or pets.
However, what isn’t often so well conveyed is that white vinegar and water is truly the best hardwood floor cleaner out there. You won’t find a commercial cleaner that makes such a difference so quickly or gives the type of lasting results that reduce the need for frequent cleaning.
Chemical cleaners can deteriorate wood over time, leaving it showing its age. Plus, these types of cleaners often won’t leave hardwood with a beautiful shine; mopping your floors with vinegar will clean and sanitize the surfaces, as well as restore the beautiful lustre of feet so that they look almost new again.
Some people are hesitant to use any vinegar mixed with cleaning their floors because they don’t like vinegar’s sharp, pungent smell. Still, the scent is less potent when vinegar is mixed with water, and you’ll find that the odour evaporates surprisingly quickly.
As a bonus, a vinegar and water mixture can be used as often as you want without risking damage to the wood, which is not true of most popular cleaning fluids. Vinegar replaces both cleaner and polished, and the results can be dazzling.
2. Ant Deterrent
Ants are common household pests that make their way into your home to find nourishment. You’ll often notice just one or two (which are “scout ants” looking to see if your house is a rich source of potential food), but so many others can quickly follow them that you end up with an ant infestation.
In addition to being unpleasant to deal with, ants can spread disease because they constantly walk through bacteria (e.g. in the garbage and animal waste).
It stands to reason that you’ll want to get rid of the invading ants as quickly and efficiently as possible, but many ant killers contain harsh, poisonous chemicals that no one wants in their home. In particular, if you have a dog or cat, these chemicals can be accidentally ingested and fatal.
Vinegar provides a handy, safe alternative once again. Spraying white uses for vinegar wherever ants congregate in the house will deter them without damaging the area, as they cannot tolerate the odour.
This is an especially great trick if you notice ants coming in from a carpeted room. Regularly mopping with uses for vinegar is also a great preventative measure if you know an area is susceptible to attracting ants.
In addition, it’s also worth considering the use of peppermint oil as a deterrent, as ants can’t stand the smell. Apply some of the oil to cotton balls, and place them near the areas where you suspect ants are prone to enter.
3. Glass and Mirror Cleaner
Glass windows are notorious for becoming stained and streaked. The changing weather influences the outside, while we often unknowingly touch the inside of our windows and leave fingerprints that become glaringly obvious in the sunlight.
The same goes for mirrors, which we can readily touch by accident when fixing our hair or opening glass cabinets.
Who can’t remove these types of marks just by wiping the glass with a tissue or a clean cloth, so it’s off to the store to try and find a useful product that will make your windows and mirrors look clean and clear once again.
Sure, there are plenty of glass cleaners out there, but they face the same problems as the other chemical products we’ve mentioned. It’s particularly worth noting that many of them come in a spray formula that Who can inhale during use.
This is particularly problematic for people living with asthma, who may find that wheezing, chest tightness, or a full-on asthma attack is triggered due to this inhalation. These sprays can also burn the eyes.
We suggest replacing yet another chemical cleaner with uses for vinegar. It is a natural and cheaper alternative.
Glass and mirrors will shine when cleaned with a mix of white vinegar and water, and some people even swear that the results are better than those seen with the average cleaner.
Make sure you polish the glass after using the vinegar treatment, as the more you polish it, the better the mirror or window will look.
4. Laundry Aid
By adding just a tiny amount of vinegar to your laundry, you can improve your wash results in several different significant ways. Firstly, vinegar can help to remove stains on your clothes.
Just as it excels at removing marks from your hardwood flooring, so too is it great at getting grease, dirt, and even grass stains from your favourite shirts and dresses.
In addition, it’s worth noting that many people who use vinegar in their laundry loads have reported that their items stay brighter for longer. This is especially important for white clothing and vibrant, patterned outfits, and you’ll save money in the long term because there will be less need to replace your wardrobe staples regularly.
While there are plenty of chemical products that you can add to your washing cycle to achieve the same results, some may erode clothing quality over time and pose the usual hazards associated with commercial chemicals.
And suppose you need a further reason to start using vinegar when you’re washing your clothes. In that case, there is also evidence that vinegar might be better at deterring lint than most commonly marketed products that claim to do the same.
So, to help you to compare measurements, remember that a cup of bleach in the white load is to a cup of vinegar in the colour load.
When you make this quick and easy change to your laundry routine, fabrics will stay brighter and newer longer, and the need for dryer sheets is wholly eliminated.
5. Hair rinse
Hair rinses help improve the appearance and feel of your hair, especially if you tend to spend a lot of time trying to style and change its natural look. Weeks and months of straightening, curling, and colouring your hair can leave it brittle, dull, and rough to the touch.
In addition, all that shampoo and conditioner you use to keep your hair looking good builds up problematic residue in your hair, making it hard to manage and creating oily roots.
Instead of going to the store to pick up a branded hair rinse that exposes you to all kinds of potentially poisonous ingredients that can seep through the skin, try uses for vinegar as a home remedy. You can choose either white or apple cider vinegar, as both of them are great at rinsing your hair.
Vinegar works by effectively removing residue, especially from shampoo. As a result, you’ll see the shine restored to your hair without the need to use oily hair products.
Try mixing vinegar and water to create this rinse at first to ensure that your skin can tolerate the vinegar. If you don’t have sensitive skin, you can use a pure vinegar rinse, which should wash out with warm water.
If you are particularly susceptible to dandruff or an oily scalp, vinegar will benefit you. Your hair will look cleaner for longer, and you’ll be much less likely to notice embarrassing white flakes of hair on your collar.
6. Before and After Hair Dye
If you’re going to do a good job dying your hair, you are required to avoid washing your hair for at least a full day before the dye is applied. However, another significant step is to rinse the hair with vinegar, which will remove any hair product build-up that could compromise the dye’s result while not compromising the hair’s natural oils.
While you can use the same vinegar rinse mentioned on the previous page to prepare the hair for the application of dye, you can also benefit from using a more complex rinse a few weeks later if you notice the colour of the paint has started to fade.
In particular, adding certain herbs to the rinse is known to help bring out highlights and potentially brighten the color of your hair.
If you’ve dyed your hair a dark brown, black, or purple shade, add fresh rosemary and parsley to your mixture of vinegar and water. Meanwhile, if grey hairs are starting to come through, sage can help to darken these to help them blend in with the rest of your color.
For those with blonde hair or light brown shade, lavender and lemon are adorable additions—equipment thoroughly before starting. Wash in hot, soapy water and rinse well in hot water.
You’ll get the best results if you use the herbs themselves rather than the essential oils. And, of course, the same herbs can help enhance your natural colouring if you haven’t dyed your hair.
7. Killing Houseplant Bugs
It’s beautiful to keep houseplants. They add extra natural beauty to your home and can even help improve the air quality (compensating for some of the biological pollutants that can undermine your health). However, your houseplants aren’t going to last as long or look nearly as good if bugs start to attack them.
Some bugs leave holes in the leaves, while others can kill off your plants altogether or at least leave them severely diminished.
If you realize that your houseplants are suffering because of invading bugs, reach for some vinegar before products are for sale at gardening stores. Gnats especially cannot stand up to uses for vinegar. However, Who will obliterate almost any common houseplant bugs if you spray a one part vinegar and five parts water mixture on the leaves.
Once the bugs are gone, you can dilute this mixture even more and use it the next time you water the plants. This will help prevent bugs from returning, making the plant’s surfaces inhospitable to invaders.
It’s also worth considering the use of other home remedies so that you maximize your chances of keeping your plants in excellent condition. For example, you can create a horticultural oil that clings to the plant and any invading bugs.
Just combine a tablespoon of a mild detergent with around a quart of water, and add this to a spray bottle.
The undersides of the plant’s leaves are perfect places to spray this mixture (and indeed your vinegar treatment), as sneaky bugs like to hide in this area.
8. Coffee Maker Cleaner
Coffee makers save you a lot of money you might have otherwise spent at cafes, but they do get dirty over time. This is especially true if you have a coffee maker with an attachment used to make lattes and don’t remember to wash it after each use.
When you notice that your coffee maker is worse for wear or your drinks aren’t exceptionally tasting the way they used to, there are only a few safe ways to approach the cleaning process.
Uses for vinegar is one of them, and there are a few different ways to use it to keep your coffee maker in excellent condition.
Firstly, soaking your coffee pot in vinegar will effectively dissolve all the built-up residue. This is a much better method than using the dishwasher, known to damage or fracture coffee pots if they’re not well secured. Secondly, when it comes to the coffee maker itself, you can use vinegar every week to clean the inside of it.
Cleaning the coffee maker should not be done with pure vinegar but rather with equal parts white vinegar and water. Allow it to brew until half the chamber is empty, and then turn the coffee maker back off.
After half an hour, turn it back on and brew the rest of the water. The vinegar evaporation will make it otherwise impossible to clean parts of the coffee maker clean, and you can then rinse the machine with clear water.
9. Organic Weed Killer
Like so many of the products discussed on the previous pages, weedkiller is packed full of toxic chemicals that pose a risk to you and your family and the environment.
If you enjoy having neighbouring wildlife visit your garden, they can also end up suffering or dying due to the use of certain kinds of weed killers. Plus, if you like to keep a vegetable garden, you will avoid introducing overly harsh chemicals to the soil.
Luckily, it turns out that uses for vinegar are also a great weed killer. It’s super effective while being much cheaper than other organic weed killers, and accidentally spraying it on plants won’t hurt them at all.
It also takes hold at a fast rate. If you spray pure vinegar onto a weed in the hottest hours of the day, the combination of the vinegar and sun will often cause the weed to turn brown and withered in just a few short hours (or by the following day at the very latest).
Some people also suggest adding about an ounce of dishwashing soap per gallon of vinegar use, as this may give more powerful results. However, note that uses for vinegar is unlikely to go all the way through a weed and destroy the root, unlike most commercial weedkillers.
Some roots may die off naturally after vinegar application, especially if the weed is relatively young. Those that grow back will be weakened by the previous vinegar treatment and may be killed entirely by further application of vinegar.
10. Acid Neutralizer
As hard as we try to keep our carpets and clothing in good condition, accidents happen. Whether you have a baby who is prone to spitting up, a poor pet with an upset stomach, or have an unfortunate long night yourself, the worst sometimes happens, and vomit ends up on the carpet or your favourite shirt. And the high acidity of vomit can remove the color from the fabric, leaving bleached patches behind.
Regardless of the cause, uses for vinegar will neutralize the harmful effects of vomit on carpet or fabric. Find an appropriate mixing bowl, and add two full cups of warm water.
Next, stir in a tablespoon of table salt until it dissolves in the warm water. At this stage, it’s time to add a half-cup of vinegar (preferably white vinegar).
You may create a more powerful cleaner by adding two tablespoons of rubbing alcohol and a tablespoon of dish cleaner. You can apply this mixture to the stained area of the fabric and use a sponge to press it into the vomit. Once the stain is fully covered, you can blot it with a towel. You’ll likely have to repeat this process a few times, but it does get results.
As you can see, vinegar is an incredibly versatile substance that can rescue you from all manner of household problems. It’s cheap, easy to acquire, and (perhaps most importantly) much less dangerous to have around than most chemical household cleaning products.
So, the next time you have a dirty mirror, a garden full of weeds, or an ant infestation, you know where to turn!