5 Ways to Use Vinegar for Household Chores: Personal Experience

When I was growing up, I was blessed, or some may say cursed, with two women in my family that were fanatical about keeping a clean house. So much so that each one managed to scrub the porcelain finish off of their kitchen sinks. They were also very much into using vinegar as a household cleanser. Here’s a quick look at five ways they’d incorporate vinegar into their household chores:

1. Vinegar as Silverware Polish

My grandmother Helen had beautiful, heirloom silverware and serving items made from metals like copper, stainless steel, brass and pewter. She refused to trust the cleaning of those heirloom items to commercial cleansers. Instead, she would use the same method that her mother and grandmother would use. It involved making a paste out of all-purpose flour, iodized salt and white, distilled vinegar. She’d apply the paste to the silverware and let it sit like that for 30 minutes or less. At the end of the 30 minutes, she’d rinse the pieces of silverware off with warm water and then rub each one with a soft, lint free cloth until she could see her reflection in their handles. It was a cleaning method that she passed on to me years later, along with the family silverware.

2. Vinegar as a Radiator Cleaner

The second apartment I ever rented had old fashioned radiators and hard water. The hard water would sometimes cause mineral deposits to form and clog the radiators’ air vents. When that would happen, the radiators would fail to heat up properly and the apartment would turn into a walk-in freezer. Thankfully, my mother had experience cleaning radiator vents and came to the rescue one winter when I couldn’t get the radiators’ air vents unclogged on my own. When I first opened the door and saw her standing there with nothing more than a bottle of vinegar in her hands, I thought that I’d end up spending another night freezing and wrapped up in comforters. Then she showed me just how powerful vinegar can be. We removed the radiators’ air vents and placed them into a medium sized saucepan filled with white vinegar. Then we placed the sauce pan onto the stove and let the vinegar come to a rapid boil. Once it reached a rapid boil, we let it continue like that for 15 minutes. At the end of the 15 minutes we took the air vents out and dried them off. Then we put them back onto the radiators and turned the heat up as high as it could go. Within a few minutes the radiators were working properly and the problem was solved. The bottle of vinegar cost me $4. I know a heating repair man would have cost more than that. All I can say now is, “Thank God for moms and vinegar!”

3. Vinegar as a Cloth Diaper Cleaner

Even though my children were born in the disposable diaper age, my mother and grandmother insisted that I purchase several packs of cloth diapers. They advised me that the cloth diapers were great to have around in an emergency and worked well as burp cloths. Of course, they were proven right on both matters. They were also proven right when it came to their suggestions on how to best clean cloth diapers. They recommended that I soak heavily soiled diapers in a vinegar and water mixture before putting them into the washing machine. Based on my experience, I found that by following their instructions, the amount of staining on the cloth diapers was greatly reduced. My children also had sensitive skin, so cloth diapers soaked in vinegar were less irritating to their skin than household bleach.

4. Vinegar as a Bathroom Mirror Cleaner

My mother also taught me to clean the bathroom mirrors with distilled vinegar, water and crumpled up newspaper. The vinegar and water mixture removed all the dirt and seemed to help reduce the amount of fog that formed on the mirrors after a hot shower. The newspaper worked well because it didn’t leave behind any lint and it was something we had readily available at the house. It also saved on having to buy expensive paper towels and window cleaners.

5. Vinegar as a Wood Restorer

When I was still living at home, I was notorious for leaving wet glasses on my parents’ wooden coffee table. If left too long like that, the wet glass would cause an unsightly white ring to appear onto the coffee table. Instead of screaming at me for damaging the table, my mother taught me how to get rid of the rings myself. She’d get rid of the water marks by applying a mixture of vinegar and olive oil to the wood. She’d also use that same mixture to polish the wood in a pinch if she was out of Pledge or Old English.

Killeen Gonzalez has a history of completing home improvement projects with her family and has traveled extensively.

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