Image: FaktiYou probably have at least one bottle of vinegar knocking around your kitchen, even if you only ever use it for putting on your fish and chips.
However, more than just adding flavour, vinegar is a hard-working multitasker that can easily tackle any number of annoying tasks in your home. Here are seven of the handiest quick fixes vinegar can work wonders for.
Sanitise your bin: Bins are unpleasant at the best of times, but if yours hasn’t been properly cleaned in a while, chances are it needs sanitising and probably doesn’t smell the best either. After rinsing it with water, use a brush to scrub the inside with a half-and-half mixture of white vinegar and water. Rinse again with water and leave it to dry.
Dissolve Rust: Cleaning things like shears, scissors and knives that are dirty or sticky with water doesn’t work very well and can often just lead to rusting. White vinegar will clean up sticky blades far easier than water, but if yours have already rusted, pour white vinegar on the blade, then sprinkle coarse salt on it and rub with a cork. Rinse it with water and make sure you dry it thoroughly to prevent further rusting.
Image: DecoistUnclog your showerhead: If your showerhead isn’t performing properly, it might be clogged. The easiest way to unclog is to fill a plastic bag with white vinegar and put the showerhead into the bag. Secure the bag with a rubber band so you don’t end up with vinegar everywhere, and leave overnight. Scrub it with a toothbrush the next day, rinse and enjoy more powerful showers.
Remove hard water stains: Those marks that show up on glasses after a while are a nightmare. They’re from washing in hard water, causing calcium and magnesium build up on your glassware. If you use a clean cloth to rub each piece with distilled white vinegar, it should remove the stains and spruce them up.
Image: GettyShine up silver: Silver can easily look tarnished and scratched, but its sparkle can easily be brought right back up. Using a cotton cloth gently buff with vinegar, then rinse and admire the shine.
Kill your weeds: After the summer, weeds seem abundant and often chemical weed killers seem to do little to keep them down. Dousing them in vinegar will shrivel them within a couple of days, though more resilient ones may need a second going over later in the week.
Keep your brights, bright: Colours can dull in the wash, but vinegar is a time-honoured solution to keeping your colours bright. Pre-rinse your clothes in a solution of distilled white vinegar and cold water, using 38ml of vinegar for every litre of water. Soak for 15 minutes before washing and drying as you ordinarily would.
