Online there have been a lot of post lately about being frugal and more "green". One of these posts mentioned making your own cleaning solutions. (Unfortunately, even after much backtracking through my computer's history I can not find the original post.)
The thought of a cheaper alternative that would work for cleaning, help kill mold and bacteria, etc. intrigued me. Vinegar can do all that? I had to try it out and see for myself.
Now mind you I am just in the testing phase. For my first go-round I decided to mix half white vinegar with half tap water to make the all-purpose cleaner. Then I went outside and tackled cleaning the car. Believe you me, it needed it bad. I used it on the windows and it seemed to work well. The true window test will be tomorrow while driving as it is then that I will see any streaks, etc. Kind of hard to tell if you have streaky windows in the near dark.
It did work wonders on the rubber floor mats. You know, the kind with all the crevices that take forever to try and clean out by hand, and they still have gummy stuff stuck in them? I just sprayed them down, let them sit for a little bit and rinsed them off with the hose. Gunk be gone!
The vinegar even removed a mark on the passenger door that we have been trying to get rid of for a while. A conventional cleaner would not remove it, but this solution did. (See the before and after photos below.)
The girls helped me clean out the car and they both complained of the strong smell. At first the smell was overwhelming to me as well, but as I cleaned I got used to it. The smell is supposed to dissipate with time, but most of the people who said so used it in a more open space (a house) and said that within 20 minutes it was gone. I will see in the morning if the car smells like vinegar inside or not.
Now I do not think that I would use the vinegar & water solution to regularly clean my car as there was a note about it dulling plastics, etc. I can imagine that a vinyl interior would not fare well with a constant acidic cleaner being used on it. It would be a good cleaner for occasionally use on tough dirt on the interior.
I am going to try it out on the bathrooms next and see what it can do there. I'll report in with my findings then. If it works out well, I will be quite happy to have a more cost effective cleaner for much, much less than the conventional counterpart.
In the mean time, does anyone have any homemade cleaning solutions that work for you? I am really interested in a detergent that will work with a dishwasher and another for laundry that would work in an HE machine.
