10 VINEGAR Hacks That WORK And 3 That Will RUIN Things
Elias Yoder
7,423 views
π Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach:
https://eliasyoder.com
There is a bottle in your cupboard that costs about two dollars and will do ten jobs you are presently buying ten products for. And it will wreck three things in your house so thoroughly that no amount of money puts them back.
Both are true for the same reason, and it is one plain fact nobody bothers to tell you.
Vinegar is a weak acid, and an acid does essentially one job in a house. It takes apart anything made of lime. That is the crust in your kettle, the film on the shower door, the ring round the tap. All mineral, all left behind by hard water.
Now hold on to that. Your marble counter is lime. Your limestone sill is lime. The grout between your tiles and the mortar between your bricks are lime. That bottle cannot tell the difference between the scale on your kettle and the top of your counter, and it will not try.
My grandfather taught me this with two stones and one bottle, and he let me ruin something to do it. He showed me how to take the grey film off the milk cans with warm vinegar, and I thought I had the answer to everything. Next morning I poured a good deal of it into the old stone sink by the pump and left it while I worked. When I came back the stain was gone and so was the surface. He came and looked at it and asked me what the sink was made of, and I did not know. I had never once thought about what a thing was made of before I put something on it.
The ten that work:
Scale in a kettle, a coffee maker or a steam iron, and how many rinse cycles you actually need A shower head running thin and crooked, bagged overnight Hard water spots on glass, chrome and taps, and why a ten year old shower screen often is not damaged at all Soap scum, which is not soap any more and will not wash off like soap Towels gone stiff and grey, and why it is detergent rather than dirt Sticky residue from labels and tape A pot with something burned into it, and which metals this must never be done on Smells in a bin, a drain or a cutting board, and why acid neutralises them rather than covering them A seized nut, and a paintbrush gone hard The everyday spray bottle, and what it is not
Said plainly: that spray is not a disinfectant. It cuts grease and takes off mineral and makes a surface clean to look at, which is not the same as safe, so it does not go on a board that has had raw meat on it.
The three it will ruin:
Natural stone. Marble, limestone and travertine etch, and etching is not a stain. The acid dissolves the surface and leaves it dull and rough, permanently, in under a minute. Cleaning will not lift it and polishing will not bring it back. There is no end of advice telling people to clean everything with vinegar, and somebody wipes a marble counter daily for a year and cannot understand why it has gone lifeless.
Grout and mortar, which are lime too, and quietly soften and crumble out of the joints over a few years of regular use.
Rubber seals, gaskets and hoses. Acid perishes rubber, which is the ring round a washing machine door and the seals inside a dishwasher, and several makers tell you plainly not to.
Three more rules: never let vinegar meet bleach, because acid and bleach make chlorine gas and a shut bathroom puts people in hospital every year. Baking soda and vinegar cancel each other out, so the famous fizz leaves you with salty water. And give it time, because nearly everybody sprays and wipes immediately when what it needs is minutes.
Tonight, go and find out what your kitchen counter is actually made of. Not what it looks like. What it is.
Tell me in the comments what county you are in and how old your house is. And tell me this: what is your counter made of, and did you know before tonight?
Next time we do the same with plain baking soda, which works from the opposite end and fixes a completely different set of problems.
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.
#EliasYoder #Vinegar #CleaningHacks #HouseholdTips #Limescale #HardWater #HomeRepair #Frugal #OldWays #DIY #NoChemicals #Descaling #SelfReliance #KitchenTips #LifeHacks
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Please brother, I need an angel.
10 VINEGAR Hacks That WORK And 3 That Will RUIN Things
Elias Yoder
7,423 views
π Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach:
https://eliasyoder.com
There is a bottle in your cupboard that costs about two dollars and will do ten jobs you are presently buying ten products for. And it will wreck three things in your house so thoroughly that no amount of money puts them back.
Both are true for the same reason, and it is one plain fact nobody bothers to tell you.
Vinegar is a weak acid, and an acid does essentially one job in a house. It takes apart anything made of lime. That is the crust in your kettle, the film on the shower door, the ring round the tap. All mineral, all left behind by hard water.
Now hold on to that. Your marble counter is lime. Your limestone sill is lime. The grout between your tiles and the mortar between your bricks are lime. That bottle cannot tell the difference between the scale on your kettle and the top of your counter, and it will not try.
My grandfather taught me this with two stones and one bottle, and he let me ruin something to do it. He showed me how to take the grey film off the milk cans with warm vinegar, and I thought I had the answer to everything. Next morning I poured a good deal of it into the old stone sink by the pump and left it while I worked. When I came back the stain was gone and so was the surface. He came and looked at it and asked me what the sink was made of, and I did not know. I had never once thought about what a thing was made of before I put something on it.
The ten that work:
Scale in a kettle, a coffee maker or a steam iron, and how many rinse cycles you actually need A shower head running thin and crooked, bagged overnight Hard water spots on glass, chrome and taps, and why a ten year old shower screen often is not damaged at all Soap scum, which is not soap any more and will not wash off like soap Towels gone stiff and grey, and why it is detergent rather than dirt Sticky residue from labels and tape A pot with something burned into it, and which metals this must never be done on Smells in a bin, a drain or a cutting board, and why acid neutralises them rather than covering them A seized nut, and a paintbrush gone hard The everyday spray bottle, and what it is not
Said plainly: that spray is not a disinfectant. It cuts grease and takes off mineral and makes a surface clean to look at, which is not the same as safe, so it does not go on a board that has had raw meat on it.
The three it will ruin:
Natural stone. Marble, limestone and travertine etch, and etching is not a stain. The acid dissolves the surface and leaves it dull and rough, permanently, in under a minute. Cleaning will not lift it and polishing will not bring it back. There is no end of advice telling people to clean everything with vinegar, and somebody wipes a marble counter daily for a year and cannot understand why it has gone lifeless.
Grout and mortar, which are lime too, and quietly soften and crumble out of the joints over a few years of regular use.
Rubber seals, gaskets and hoses. Acid perishes rubber, which is the ring round a washing machine door and the seals inside a dishwasher, and several makers tell you plainly not to.
Three more rules: never let vinegar meet bleach, because acid and bleach make chlorine gas and a shut bathroom puts people in hospital every year. Baking soda and vinegar cancel each other out, so the famous fizz leaves you with salty water. And give it time, because nearly everybody sprays and wipes immediately when what it needs is minutes.
Tonight, go and find out what your kitchen counter is actually made of. Not what it looks like. What it is.
Tell me in the comments what county you are in and how old your house is. And tell me this: what is your counter made of, and did you know before tonight?
Next time we do the same with plain baking soda, which works from the opposite end and fixes a completely different set of problems.
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.
#EliasYoder #Vinegar #CleaningHacks #HouseholdTips #Limescale #HardWater #HomeRepair #Frugal #OldWays #DIY #NoChemicals #Descaling #SelfReliance #KitchenTips #LifeHacks