How do these baking soda/vinegar cleaning hacks work

Question

You often see videos of people using baking soda, vinegar and boiling water to clean stains in the kitchen or the bathroom. From my understanding these ingredients should simply neutralise each other. So how does it help cleaning? Or is it simply a social media myth

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Baking soda is useful for some types of cleaning.

Vinegar is useful for other types of cleaning.  

Mixed together so they fizz,  looks cool and sciency but just produces a mixture of water and sodium acetate salt which has no cleaning power. Plus some residual vinegar or baking soda, depending on the ratio of your mixture. Which might have some residual cleaning power but you’re just wasting the rest.