Going Green with Heinz Vinegar

Our family has been making the switch over to a completely green cleaning regiment.  I was excited to learn that Heinz now makes cleaning vinegar.  You can have a completely clean house without the use of chemicals with just a few things you can find right in your pantry.  Vinegar is the staple with some extra cleaning help from baking soda, dawn, and salt; throw in a micro fiber cloth and you are all set.  It is the perfect cleaning solution as it is completely biodegradable,  non toxic, gentle on your skin, streak free and not to mention economical and a huge time saver. 

Full-Strength Vinegar

Spray Bottle + Vinegar

Use a micro fiber and a misting of vinegar to shine fixtures, clean surfaces, and mirrors.

 Coat your oven door with a generous amount of vinegar and let sit for at least 15 minutes.  Wipe off grease and stains with a microfiber cloth.  

Pour a cup of vinegar directly in your dishwasher basin.  Run a normal cycle, wipe with a microfiber cloth.  The vinegar and hot water will work to remove food scum and soap residue.  To keep your dishwasher looking clean add a couple tablespoons each wash cycle directly to the basin and only use a couple tablespoons of detergent, no need to fill the dispenser.

There are two methods I use to get a clean microwave.  For small cleanups I spray the vinegar directly to the inside of the microwave and run it for about a minute, wipe it down with a microfiber cloth.  For deep cleaning fill a plastic microwave-safe dish with pure vinegar and run for 5 minutes (until vinegar boils).  Tough messes will wipe right off with a micro fiber cloth.

Pure Vinegar with abrasive agent like salt or baking soda

For tough cooked on stains like my crock pot below, pour a bit of vinegar and sprinkle in salt (I used Kosher).  Let the vinegar do its work breaking up the food for a few minutes.  Using a microfiber cloth scrub the surface, rinse, and dry.  This method took very little elbow grease and removed stains soaking before had not.  

 

Add 1/2 c. baking soda to a bag filled with 1 c. vinegar.  Tie around your shower head and let sit for at least 1 hour.  Remove bag, then run your shower head to remove hard water build up.  Mine could’ve sat longer as it didn’t remove everything and I had to do some scrubbing this time.  

 Soap Scum Miracle revised

2 parts vinegar warmed

1 part Dawn

spray bottle

-add the warm vinegar to the spray bottle with dawn.  Shake the bottle to incorporate the two.

 I love this cleaner as it’s non-toxic and will remove tough stains and soap scum with little to no scrubbing.  WARNING: this stuff is sudsy (I changed the formula this time from my previous method.  I received the same results with much less bubbles).

Here is my before picture. Coat your surface with a layer of the cleaner.  The blue color of the Dawn makes it easy to see where you’ve already sprayed.  Allow the cleaner to sit from 1 hour to overnight depending on how bad your soap scum is.

For the purpose of this post I only waited 1 hour.  I was able to remove most of the soap scum, my tub basin was left pearly white, and my fixtures were shining.  I need to let it sit overnight to remove some really tough soap runoff that has built up over the years.