Cheap Household Cleansers You Might Try
You don't have to pay through the nose for expensive chemical cleansers, when you can get cheap household cleansers at the dollar store
Cleaning is a category where you can really save some cash, if you're willing to back away from the expensive options and consider a few cheap household cleansers instead. Most of these are items you already have in your home... but you may never have thought of them in this capacity.
In this article, we'll take a look at a few of the more common possibilities.
Vinegar, Again
This isn't the first time we've discussed vinegar here, because it really is a versatile chemical (believe it or not, it's natural, dilute acetic acid). Aside from its uses as a sunburn cure, when mixed with table salt, for example, vinegar makes a good, mildly abrasive surface cleanser.
Mix it a little with baking soda on a sponge, and you've got a nice deodorizing scrub for kitchen and bathroom surfaces, including toilet bowls. A half-cup of vinegar in a pail of hot water is great for washing windows. Pour it into a spray bottle, and it makes a nifty mirror cleaner.
Oddly enough, boiling a couple of teaspoons of vinegar in a pot of water will help dispel cooking odors almost as well as baking soda can. And if you live in an area with hard water, on occasion you should run a few cups of vinegar through your coffeemaker to break down and neutralize calcium deposits.
Salt and Toothpaste
Speaking of table salt, try it as an oven cleaner. Dampen the grungy areas and pour on some salt while the oven's still warm, then let it cool down before scraping off the grime. You can also pour salt onto greasy spots in the house and the garage to soak up the grease and keep it from staining.
As for toothpaste, it's surprisingly helpful at removing wax crayon markings from smooth surfaces, including the floor, the table, and the wall. Just dab a little toothpaste on a clean cloth and rub the marks away. Sadly, this doesn't work so well on wallpaper, so your budding artist's work will have to stay.
Other Oddities
Do you have scratches on your furniture? Well, you don't have to waste money on an expensive chemical option. Just rub a mixture of lemon juice and vegetable oil on the scratches, and they'll soon disappear.
And who needs laundry starch? Dissolve a teaspoon of cornstarch in two cups of cold water, load it into a labeled spray bottle, and you're good to go. Use it as you would any other spray-on starch.
Get my point? Most of these cheap household cleansers are easy to use and as close as your kitchen cabinet -- and they'll save you a bundle in the long run.