A Word About Vinegar and Cleaning

Over the centuries, vinegar has been used for countless purposes: making pickles, killing weeds, cleaning coffee makers, polishing armor, and dressing salads. It's also an ancient folk remedy, touted to relieve just about any ailment you can think of. 

As far as using it for cleaning, one only has to type in the word vinegar and cleaning to come up with countless web pages providing recipes of all sorts that claim to work miracles on any task you can think of. One of the many comments I get whenever I talk to people that use vinegar to clean is that they are very happy using Vinegar on just about everything in their home, how natural the product is, and how well they work. Yes, these things are almost natural to a certain extent, as they do not pollute the environment. Provided that they are in their natural form.

But is Vinegar safe? Perhaps it might be safe for us, but we have to remember one thing about vinegar: It is an acid. When combined with baking soda (a base), it makes for a great cleaner on pots that have caked-on burned nastiness. The only problem with vinegar is that it is not necessarily a good thing for all plant life. Also, Baking Soda mixed with Vinegar will produce a gas (which can be harmless to a certain degree.)

Almost every living thing has a certain acid-base balance. We can refer to this as pH levels. If you take something that is of a higher pH level, it most likely will break up some proteins and more. The only problem is that it makes its way back to the earth as an acid. This being one of the primary reasons why it is not recommended to use as a cleaner on wood floors. (for more information see: wood floor care)

Another thing to consider is that when you put vinegar on your skin, you've already introduced a change in your skin's acid chemistry. Should this get into your bloodstream, it can do some wonders for purifying, but it can also work against you in the digestive tract. People experience things like heartburn or other uncomfortable scenarios with a different acid mix. So vinegar can be an inconvenience for health reasons. For one thing, Vinegar has an ugly smell and it's advisable that you don't take a huge whiff of it! Secondly, the pH balance. Our skin and blood is not the same pH balance as of vinegar. In the long run, Vinegar may end up becoming a carcinogen if mixed with the wrong chemical elements.

So should you use vinegar to clean? Sure, why not? It really is a good disinfectant, however, our own cleaning tests show that it's not so good with cleaning things like oil spills, or even the oil that comes from your hair and skin such as that on your floors. It's also not much better than warm water for cleaning dirt. So, is vinegar the best and safest cleaning product you can find? We're not entirely convinced.