Why You Shouldn't Clean with Baking Soda & Vinegar

2/6/2018 (Permalink)

Vinegar + Baking Soda = The Ultimate Cleanser?

If you are like me, I tend to look at product labels, and look for the safest product for my family. Sometimes that means that I use natural cleaning methods in my home. One I never doubted from the ever-popular Pinterest post, was using a mixture of vinegar and baking soda. I assumed the bubbly mixture was doing the hard work and cleaning the tough stuff. Then I started doing some more digging and learned about this not-so-dynamic duo.

I’ll condense what I learned to save you some time and money. Baking soda is a weak base and vinegar is acidic and when you put them together you end up with mostly water and sodium acetate (salt). Really, it’s mostly just water. Plus, vinegar and baking soda are not surfactants, so they do not help carry oil and grease away. It is probably one of the most ineffective cleaning solutions you could use.

Hot water would be a better cleaning method, especially for oil and grease. Add a touch of a mild detergent and that hot water will get enough of a kick to power through the hard stuff.

So, save the baking soda for cookies (or to put out your next fire if you don’t have a proper fire extinguisher) and save the vinegar for your next salad.