When we look into our kitchen cabinets we usually find rows of different products that we need for our daily cleaning. To wash the windows, for example, we have a spray bottle full of a familiar blue liquid. For scrubbing the bathroom fixtures there are several products that are a familiar sight. Floor cleaning brings to mind a few products that are mixed with a bucket full of water. Add to these many products an assortment of buckets, containers, brushes, mops, rags, and paper towels and it is easy to see how we can quickly fill all those cabinets.

There are, however, a few products that can cover many cleaning tasks. It would be nice if we could buy only a few things at the store to clean everything, sort of a cleaning panacea. Fortunately, there are products already in your kitchen that can service several tasks. Let’s look at two of these useful products.

First, there resides in almost every household a box of baking soda. Generations of folks before us have always made use of this great substance. How does one keep the refrigerator smelling fresh? Grandma will tell you to keep an open box of baking soda in the back of the bottom shelf. Once there, it absorbs odors all day until we finally have to replace it several months (or years) later. Other uses include brushing your teeth and gargling with baking soda, using a spoonful in a glass of water to quiet an ailing stomach, pouring a cupful into a bucket of water to wash the kitchen floor, scrubbing the bathroom fixtures with baking soda and water. After washing down all the bathroom hard surfaces, it works to clean the toilet as you flush the used mixture. In short, this product cleans wherever it goes. It is a natural substance that can replace many cleaning products that all of us buy every week. We have been sold on the idea that we need a different product to clean each and every thing in our homes. Lucky for us that we can use baking soda for everything from treating simple burns and brushing our teeth to tackling large cleaning jobs like floors and concrete surfaces.

Another wonderful product that we can find in almost every home is vinegar. Most of the time people use vinegar on their salads. It can be mixed with olive oil to make a very healthful salad dressing. Of course it is used in many recipes. In addition to consuming vinegar in our food, we can also use it to clean glass and kitchen appliances. Put a few capfuls in a gallon of water and you can have a glass cleaner for the windows and for the faucets and other hard, shiny surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom. When it is time to clean the coffee pot, vinegar is great for running through the system. Pour in a high concentration of vinegar to water into the water container and run the coffee maker in the usual way (without the coffee). The mixture filters through the pot to clean every area and collects in the glass container. You can see the discolored water. Sometimes you have run several pots of vinegar through the machine depending upon how soiled the machine has become. For really deep cleaning of hard to remove, caked on accumulations of material, soaking the appliance overnight will usually accomplish the mission. Because vinegar is a food substance, there is no danger to the family of consuming harsh chemicals or other harmful substances. Not only are vinegar and baking soda very useful products, but also they are quite inexpensive to buy.