I love Vinegar!
Okay, yeah. I’ve heard of “Works for me Wednesday”, also known as WFMW around the blogosphere, but it’s not something I’ve ever felt compelled to participate in. Until the other day. I was trying to find some decent crockpot recipes, and I just happened to find this recipe for crockpot Dijon chicken, posted by the delightful Domestic Chicky, and I figured, it’s probably pretty tasty. I met Deanna in person at the Sony Mommy Blogger Event, and I have faith in her recipe pickin’. So then I clicked through to some other WFMW blog entries, and realized, OMG. There are a lot of smart cookies out there sharing some great ideas – why haven’t I gotten in on this sooner? I thought to myself, surely I have LOADS of ideas to share. Pure gems. Right? I’m a mommy of five. Raising two sets of twins. Parent of a teenager. Advocate for my special needs child. Kickass wife. I have wisdom to share. I’m certain of it.
Until I sat down to write a post, and realized I don’t have a damned thing to say here. I’m happy, and my family is happy, but we live at the Casa de Chaos, remember? If anyone should be writing “works for me!” it should be my husband. He’s the organization expert. He’s the enginerd who can design and build anything. I sat here and scratched my head for a minute, trying to come up with SOMETHING worthy of a blog post. And then it came to me. VINEGAR. Yep, that’s the sort of thing I get excited about. Writing about the virtues of vinegar. Hey, my younger twins start Kindergarten in July. I’ll try to use that extra free time to get a life. Anyway, here are some things I’ve learned while parenting five children and cleaning up the messes they leave in their wake.
VINEGAR IS AMAZING. You can clean anything with it. It’s cheap as hell. You can buy a whole gallon of it for like two bucks. Here’s what I do with it.
These are my top three uses for vinegar, but this isn’t even all I do with it. I pour it over my kids’ heads in the bath after we go to the pool – it gets that chlorine out really well. I put it in my mop bucket when I clean my kitchen floor. I run it through my coffee maker once in awhile to get rid of that hard water build-up that I mentioned earlier. I’m telling ya, vinegar is magic, and it’s cheap!
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LaLaGirl is the mother of a teenager and two young sets of twins. She's happily married, loves living in Colorado, and writes almost daily about married life, raising multiples, and parenting a child with autism.
I also love vinegar. I use it for all your mentioned cleaning tactics and somehow it miraculously seems to deter the crazy-abundant sugar ants that live in almost every Costa Rican home. The stuff is great!
I love vinegar! I have a book somewhere called “100 uses for vinegar” and heres 100 ideas too http://wideopenwallet.com/2009/01/100-uses-for-vinegar/
I knew about the laundry trick, but not about the drains!! I am so trying this…
Another vinegar trick? Pour some in a small bowl or plate and leave it on the counter if you’re cooking anything stinky (fish, my grandmother’s Indians recipe that involve frying pungent spices) and it keeps the house from smelling. Also wonderful for cleaning floor tile.
I’ll have to try the drain thing. Hubby and I do not see eye to eye on the frequency at the which the gargabe disposal could be run, and the kitchen sink is unhappy after his three weeks home.
I’ll definitely try the shower door thing! Mine are completely clear glass on 2 sides and they are a pain in the ass to clean!
I use vinegar in the rinse cycle of the washing machine, mixed with water to get the shampoo residue off my neck, to get the rice starch off a pan quickly and much more. What a great product.
How do I get over my aversion to the smell? I tried to clean with vinegar once and I thought it reeked. Which is weird because I too LOVE salt and vinegar chips.
I realize I’m really late to comment on this post, but thanks so much for the tip! I recently moved to an area with insanely hard water and my shower doors drive me crazy. But for the first time since I moved in, they’re actually clean!
Whee! I helped somebody! That’s awesome! Glad you can see out of your shower again. Me, too! It’s changed my life!
So, I remembered you had written a post about vinegar and all its uses, and I left a load of laundry to get smelly on accident last night. I quickly searched for your post to find my answer. Thanks Laura! You saved our stinky clothes!
Right on! What timing – we just did the same thing. We went swimming on Monday, washed all our suits and towels that afternoon, and then I threw them in the dryer. Pablo slyly opened the dryer to peek in at some point, and the whole load sat there, completely wet in the dryer, for DAYS! I just re-washed them yesterday!