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You have both of them under your sink right now. A bottle of white vinegar and a box of baking soda. And most people own both, use both, and reach for the wrong one more than half the time.

They are not two versions of the same thing. They are opposites. Chemical opposites, one at each end, and each is very good at a job the other cannot touch at all.

Vinegar is an acid, and an acid takes apart minerals. The crust in a kettle, the film on a shower door, the ring round a tap. Baking soda is an alkali, and it goes after the other end entirely: grease, acid, and smells.

So there is one question that sorts any job in your house. Is this trouble a mineral, or is it a grease or a smell?

My grandmother taught me the difference in about a minute, after letting me waste twenty. I was twelve, she was out, and there were two jobs at her sink: a milk crock gone sour, and a kettle with white crust up the inside. I poured vinegar in the crock and scrubbed a good long while, and when I put my nose to it, it smelled of sour milk and vinegar together, which is worse than sour milk alone. She came in, waited until I had finished, took the crock, put a spoonful of soda in it with warm water and swilled it round, and the smell was gone before she set it down. Then she picked up the kettle I had not touched, and poured the vinegar into that.

What we go through:

The acid and alkali line, and why a trouble at one end is undone by something from the other The full vinegar list: scale, shower heads, hard water spots, soap scum, stiff towels, seized nuts The full soda list: smells, grease, burnt pans, cup stains, wall marks, and anything acidic that has been spilled Why vinegar wants time and soda wants a little water and some work Why mixing them together destroys both, and what the famous fizz actually is The one way to use them together that does work, one after the other, rinsed between Silver, foil and hot water, and why it beats polish on a thin plated piece Baking soda, washing soda and baking powder, which are three different articles Soda in the wash for hard water, and why it lets you use less detergent Why an open dish beats the box in the fridge, and why soda removes a smell rather than covering it

The plain limits on both. Soda will not touch limescale, because scale wants an acid. Vinegar will not shift grease and it etches natural stone permanently. Neither one is a disinfectant, so a board that has had raw meat on it wants hot water, soap and a proper sanitiser. And each is dangerous exactly where the other is useless.

Said plainly: the body uses of baking soda are not my business and not this video. If somebody in your house has that trouble, that is a question for a pharmacist.

There is no scheme in any of this. There is a bottle on a shelf for every job on both lists, six or seven dollars apiece, and most of them are one of these two with a colour and a scent added. It is only that nobody makes a living telling you the answer is two plain articles and one sentence about which is which.

Tonight, take everything out from under your sink onto the floor and sort it into two heaps: the ones for a smell or a grease, and the ones for scale and hard water. You will find you own six bottles doing two jobs.

Tell me in the comments how many bottles came out from under that sink. And if you have told me your county before, tell me instead whether your water is hard or soft.

Next time we go after the pipe running out of your house underground with a cap on the end of it, which most people have never found.

I gathered the whole of it into a book at eliasyoder dot com.

The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.

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