Does Vinegar Cleaner Work? I Tested It
Does Vinegar Cleaner Work? I Tested It
So I feel like I have been recommended to try vinegar as a natural, non-toxic cleaner about 500 times, but just never seemed to get around to making it. In the sustainability community, vinegar is touted and loved for a whole variety of uses. I already use vinegar as a natural, non-toxic weed killer for my patio every summer, which works great. I also tried vinegar and baking soda as a drain clog opener, with less success. I decided it was time to try making my own homemade vinegar cleaner and see if it actually works.
I found this recipe for lavender-infused vinegar cleaner on Little Green Dot. I’ve had a paper bag full of dry lavender flowers sitting in my basement since last summer, never quite sure what to do with them. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to put the lavender to good use. According to scientific studies, lavender essential oil has some antibacterial qualities.
(Distilled essential oils are much more concentrated than what I am going to be able to get from raw flowers and frankly I doubt I’m getting a whole lot of antimicrobial benefit from adding lavender flowers, but whatever, I figured it would smell nice if nothing else.)
Making Lavender-Infused Vinegar Cleaner
The recipe calls for about 1/4 cup of lavender flowers to soak in a cup of white vinegar. I didn’t measure the amount of flowers I had, it seemed to be slightly less than that, I just used up what I had left over from last summer. The lavender is an optional part of the recipe anyway, so you can add as much or as little as you like. Here’s my jar of vinegar and lavender on the first day of infusion.
I left it in a sunny windowsill to infuse for 10 days. Over that time, it turned a lovely pink/purple color.
After 10 days, I strained off the flowers and added 2 cups of water. (Basically, the recipe is simply two parts water to one part vinegar, so if you wanted to skip the lavender infusing, that’s all you would need to do to make this cleaner.) I poured the whole thing into a spray bottle and tried it out.
Does Vinegar Cleaner Work?
I decided to try something easy first. I used it on my bathroom mirror, which was looking pretty grungy. This cleaner is definitely more watery than window cleaner, and it seemed at first like it was leaving behind wet trails and streakiness. But after running a clean rag over it a few more times, it dried nice and clear and might have even worked slightly better than our usual window cleaner.
Then I decided to try a tougher spot in the sink right around the drain that was getting this scummy stain which I knew would be more challenging. I sprayed some of the cleaner on it, let it sit for a few moments, and then tried to wipe it away. I wasn’t getting rid of it, even after using extra elbow grease. For comparison, I then tried some of that “scrubbing bubbles” type chemical cleaner that we also had under the sink to see if it was simply a really tough stain. I regret to say that the chemical cleaner eliminated the stain relatively easily, so that was disappointing that the vinegar cleaner didn’t work better.
Conclusions on Vinegar Cleaner’s Effectiveness
I would say that the vinegar cleaner does work, but for tougher stains, it will probably require you to work harder than some of the nasty chemical cleaners. I also didn’t notice any nice, lavender-y smell as I had hoped, but that may be because I didn’t use enough, or because the flowers were dried out and a year old. However, I’m still going to use this cleaner and try to eliminate the use of chemical cleaners whenever possible.
!!! Warning about vinegar cleaner !!!
Do not use vinegar cleaner on metal, wood or stone, as it is acidic and may eat away at those types of surfaces. Stick with glass, your refrigerator, hard plastics and ceramics like tubs, toilets, sinks and the like.
What other types of non-toxic swaps for household and/or beauty care products have you tried? Let me know, I’d love to hear about them!
