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Two Things no Home Should be without – Baking Soda and Vinegar

© Peggy Hoehne

There are two items every home should automatically keep on its shelf, baking soda and vinegar. These two items have dozens (if not hundreds) of uses on their own and when you use them together there are even more ways they will be the most used items on your kitchen shelves.

Some quick summer tips:

To relieve sunburn:
There are several variations of this usage -
• Put vinegar in a spray bottle and spray on sunburn. It soothes for quite some time.
• Use half water and half vinegar to saturated towels and put them on the sunburned area. It may not smell great, but will take out the burning. This may be used overnight. Do this several times and it gives you a nice tan.
• Use a vinegar soaked paper towel; apply to burn.
• Mix a paste of baking soda and apple cider vinegar and apply.

Vinegar

Vinegar has health benefits; it's a neutralizer, a cleaner, and a medicine, among other things.

Some suggest Apple Cider Vinegar should be used for anything personal, both inside and outside the body as White Distilled Vinegar may rob your body of essential minerals; others express different opinions. White vinegar is best for cleaning.

The Great Outdoors -
• Add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to a quart of drinking water to deal with heat stress and to repel mosquitoes.
• Use vinegar as an antiseptic for abrasions, to reduce itch from poison ivy or mosquito bites, and to help rehydrate sunburned skin.
• Use vinegar on wasp/yellow jacket stings. Soak a cotton ball in cider vinegar and hold to the sore spot (can tape it on with bandage tape). Within a few minutes the pain stops. Can be used bee stings too if you get the stinger out.
• Treat jellyfish stings with a dousing of white vinegar.
• Use 1/2 tsp white distilled vinegar to 1 tbsp rubbing alcohol to prevent swimmers ear.

Cleaning -
• Stain removal - for stains caused by grass, coffee, tea, fruits and berries; soak clothing in full strength vinegar. (Test for colorfastness first).
• Use a combination of baking soda, lemon juice and vinegar to deodorize the garbage disposal. The lemon makes it smell good and the baking soda and vinegar cleans and sanitizes.
• Use a one part water, one part vinegar, mixture to take pet odors out of carpets. Find the spot, and saturate it with about 1 1/2 times the original volume. Let set for awhile then blot up. Repeat if your cloth is very dirty after blotting. You might want to turn on a fan and open a window, especially for large spots.