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
It’s somewhat effective at cleaning mildly clogged drains, if one is poured after the other, because the foaming can displace dirt/grime. You can also use vinegar to clean up alkaline battery leakage followed by baking soda to neutralize the residual vinegar
But yeah, any solutions that involve mixing them beforehand are not effective for anything and may actually make things worse depending on the material it’s being used on. The product of baking soda and vinegar is essentially salt water which can accelerate corrosion, so using it on rusted metal for example is a big no-no
I use a moist paste of baking soda on cookware. It works great as a mild abrasive that removes stains but won’t scratch metal or ceramics.
Despite the popularity of these “hacks,” the mixture produces water and salts. That does nothing to clean the home. What cleans the home is the grit of baking soda and the scrubbing you do to be clean up.
https://theconversation.com/vinegar-and-baking-soda-a-cleaning-hack-or-just-a-bunch-of-fizz-225177
They *do* neutralize each other, and those “hacks” *are* mostly nonsense.
At *best* they’re a mild abrasive, and that’s all. But people see all that fizzing and think “look, the bubbles are scrubbing it by themselves!” because even basic chemistry is hard for most folks.
It’s nonsense.
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.
I had a drain once that wouldn’t unclog with regular drain cleaner so I loaded it with baking soda and vinegar. Opened the drain right up.
It’s bullshit, the only cleaning it may theoretically do is that the bubbles “lift” the stain out of your fabric but I really doubt that’s a thing.
What’s more likely is that people see bubbles and think that’s the magic (not the intense scrubbing following after). Honestly it’s just people repeating other people on TikTok nowadays.
It’s always worth remembering the helpful words of John Hartford regarding Baking Soda.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-YhnSVIA8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-YhnSVIA8w)
Everybody who’s saying that they neutralize each other are correct. But they say “there is no cleaning power” and that is incorrect for the simple fact that baking soda is a mild abrasive. Which is why you do get some results but nothing spectacular, but just enough to convince people that it’s effective.
Mix baking soda and water to make a paste. Spread the paste onto the surface and wait for it to dry. To clean it up, get some vinegar in a spray bottle to fizz up the baking soda and wipe it off.
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