My plastic drinking glasses became all cloudy when I made my own dishwashing detergent (similiar recipe to yours..it’s the baking soda), so I stopped using it. I tried using vinegar to get them shining again but I ended up throwing them out. so I agree with the other poster, try it before making a lot of it.

Most of the other things on your list I do with great success.

I see that you are well trained in the art of vinegar and baking soda. :)

This is a good list. Using these ingredients not only save money but are a lot healthier… which will also save money.

A plumber told me about the vinegar/baking soda for pipes, and recommended that I use it at least 1x/month. I clean my lampwork beads and mandrels in the sink, and if I was so dissatisfied with a bead that I just let it air cool, it cracks into sharp shards as I remove it from the mandrel, so strainers are a good thing — and necessary if you have cast-iron pipes.

A friend who cleans houses showed me that vinegar works beautifully in a carpet steam cleaner as an anti-sudser; throw in a cup instead of buying the expensive stuff! You can also use a combo of Eletrasol (she recommended that specifically) and a powdered bleach (1/2 cup each) instead of steam machine soap, too. It works a treat! But please beware of two things. One: TEST the diluted mix on your carpet first. When I had carpet I never had it affect the colour, but that is truly a YMMV issue. Two (BIG BIG BIG issue): Remember the problems, like toxic fumes, caused by mixing bleach and ammonia? Pet urine = high ammonia content. DO NOT use this particular mix on a carpet that has had any recent (or even old and poorly treated) urine spots. A different friend used this mix on his basement carpet, where his elderly incontinent cat had stayed — it was hours before he could get back into the house. Luckily he, and the cat, were both fine (and he was a *chemist*, too! I teased him about that for months The carpet was clean, though!)

Regarding old T-Shirts–it flabbergasts me that people DON’T cut up old holey T-shirts for rags! Towels, too. In my house I have several towel sets. One is the set for my bath, plus a couple nice ones for the guest bath. The next = stained or overly worn ones that I use for the dogs. When you foster Golden Retrievers, you have a lot of slobber in summer and wet muddy paws in spring. When the towels get too old for *that*, I rip them up and use them for cleaning rags. There’s a separate pile for the very worst rags I use with things I don’t want to mix with my foods: acids like Sparex, for buffing Renaissance Wax on metals, for soldering flux, and things of that nature.

Finally, the majority of the doctors in the hospital division where my sister works use hydrogen peroxide on their counters. Spray on, wipe up, spray vinegar, wipe up. The smell does not linger, and your counters are clean. If it is good enough for them it is good enough for me!

Great idea on the mason jars! I used them for drinking glasses but they would be perfect for leftovers, you can see them! I think I will go to that consignment shop and buy those 2 boxes!

Question on the laundry detergent: Mine always comes out semi-solid. Do I need to add more water next time? I’m using one of those huge white buckets with a lid that I get from the bakery that held jelly filling.

Thanks Trent, this was a very helpful post.

one I recently started doing was to use smaller trash cans around my house and to line them with the millions of plastic bags that I end up with after grocery shopping. No more need for buying garbage bags.

Love all the ones mentioned, though

Great suggestions!

The neck hole is the opening of the bag (you can tear out the neck seam to make the hole bigger), and the handles are the “shoulders.” I’m going to try this on some t-shirts that I got for free, but can’t wear.

Anyway, thanks Deb for the feedback.

2. Vinegar as window cleaner – when the Windex spray nozzle breaks, I don’t recommend getting the cheapest spray bottle you can find—they can break right away.

3. Drain cleaner – In my house, what clogs the drains is hair: a few long hairs (mine) mixed with a bunch of short hairs (trimmed from a beard that’s not mine). What works best is to prevent the clog by having strainers in the drain. In my bathroom sink, the plug is attached, so I can’t use a strainer. (TMI warning) I periodically just poke a Q-tip down into the spaces and pull up the globs of hair.

@Jane and EGD, do your glass containers stack well (or at all)? That’s my favorite thing about the plastic containers—so many can fit on a shelf (neatly).

On food storage: my favorite solution is Mason jars, which cost less than a dollar new. Spring for the $5 canning funnel: it will make it easy to fill them with everything from powdered sugar to stew. (I also use them for homemade laundry detergent; the wide mouth pint glasses make especially good drinking glasses too.)

Cleaner
Household ammonia is a solution of NH3 in water used as a general purpose cleaner for many surfaces. Because ammonia results in a relatively streak-free shine, one of its most common uses is to clean glass, porcelain and stainless steel. It is also frequently used for cleaning ovens and soaking items to loosen baked-on or caked-on grime. Household ammonia ranges in concentration from 5 to 10 weight percent ammonia.

Also, Ammonia has been proposed as a practical alternative to fossil fuel for internal combustion engines.[33] The calorific value of ammonia is 22.5 MJ/kg (9690 BTU/lb) which is about half that of diesel. In a normal engine, in which the water vapor is not condensed, the calorific value of ammonia will be about 21% less than this figure. It can be used in existing engines with only minor modifications to carburetors/injectors.

And no, you absolutely, positively should NOT EVER use paper towels in the toilet. Toilet paper is formulated to dissolve and not clog. Paper towels are not. Somewhere down the sewer line those paper towels will create a blockage, and the further down the sewer line, the more expensive it will be to clear it. Don’t put facial tissues down the toilet, either. They will do the same clogging.