Vinegar: Nature's Solution for Cleaning Your Home

Do you have small children? Are you concerned about having harsh chemical products around them, or having them get the residue on them when you use Lysol or other antibacterials to clean their toys and around the house? Or maybe like me are you are afraid to use the store bought antibacterial cleansers such as Lysol and Mr. Clean because of what you've heard about how such products can make bacteria more resistant. Whatever your reasons for not wanting to use commercial antibacterial cleansers, the fact is you don't have to. There is a natural cleanser that you can use for everything from cleaning your bathroom, and kitchen, to mopping your no wax floors with. That natural cleanser is vinegar. That's right vinegar.

Sometimes more powerful doesn't cut it as has been thought for the past 50 years or so when it came to chemical antibacterial cleansers. In fact it's been proven that such cleansers make bacteria stronger and more resistant. So, maybe it's time to go back to a mainstay, one that our grandmother's used to clean their kitchens, bathrooms and no wax floors to name a few. Vinegar can also be used to clean up carpet stains, take rust off of cast iron pots and pans, clean jewelry (not pearls or opals though), and as a rinse to take off soap residue from dishes and your hands just to name a few.

Vinegar in a straight 5% solution kills 82% of molds, 99% of bacteria, and 80% of viruses. I'm sure some of you are thinking, "but that's still 10% of viruses, and 8% of molds around my home," and this may be true. However, the fact of the matter is if we were to eliminate all bacteria, molds and viruses then there would be no way for our bodies to build up a resistance should we accidentally come into contact with one of these. So, it's actually a good thing to have a bit of these around naturally, and the truth is there is no way to create a 100% sterile environment unless maybe you work in a lab where such an environment can be created artificially.

So, how can you use vinegar to clean? Easily. For cleaning your bathroom, including all the fixtures, the toilet and the shower curtain, pour undiluted 5% white vinegar into a clean spray bottle (it's better not to use one that had a bleach product in it because this can create a poisonous gas) and then spray the solution wherever you want to clean. Let it sit for a few minutes and then wipe down with a wet sponge. Spraying it on your shower curtain will keep mold and mildew from growing there as well as clean it. This same solution will work well in your kitchen too! Vinegar will clean the grease off of your burners, the guck in the oven, and if you use a wooden cutting board, any bacteria that may be there as well. Have an ant problem in your kitchen? Clean your counters with a mixed solution of water and vinegar, it will drive the ants away.

Some other tips for using vinegar as a cleanser are to keep your no wax floors clean and shiny, and wash windows. For your floors just add ½ cup of vinegar to every gallon of water and mop them with this solution. Need to clean your windows but don't like the ammonia smell from Windex and other such window cleaners? Mix ¼ cup of vinegar to a quart of water and wash your windows with it. You can even put it in a clean spray bottle and just spray and wipe.

Finally, have you ever seen those commercials where the mom or daycare teacher is spraying the kids' toys with Lysol in order to prevent the kids from passing colds and such to each other via the toys? Yikes! Every time I see that commercial I cringe. Would you really want your child handling these items after having been sprayed with this heavy duty antibacterial? I wouldn't, and there's no reason you should have to. Instead, use that spray bottle of straight 5% vinegar and spray and wipe their toys with a wet sponge. There is no danger of a child getting chemical residue on their hands from a toy that has been cleaned with a solution of vinegar, and even if there was a little vinegar left behind it won't hurt them if they get a bit on their hands or in their mouth, such as Lysol, or bleach would.

There is a further added benefit to using vinegar as your cleanser of choice: it's very inexpensive. You can purchase a gallon of 5% white vinegar for a little over $2.00 in any grocery store. I suggest purchasing new spray bottles that haven't been used before for anything so you won't accidentally mix a bleach product with your vinegar which creates a poisonous gas. New, clean spray bottles generally cost no more than a little over a $1.00, and you probably only need 1 or 2. So let's see that's a total of about $4.00 for probably a month or more of cleaning. This is only at the beginning. Once you have the spray bottles then it is just a matter of purchasing the gallon of vinegar every month or so.

The beauty of using vinegar as your cleanser of choice is that it can be used to clean so many areas of your home, thereby eliminating the need to have different cleansers for different things in most cases. Think about it. You probably buy Windex for your windows, some sort of bleach or other antibacterial cleanser for your bathroom, Mop and Glow or some other product for your floors and so on. By using vinegar to take care of most of your cleaning needs, you not only save money, but by not using the heavy duty cleansers you help with not making the bacteria so resistant than we have to keep formulating stronger and stronger cleansers. This is a win-win situation!