How to clean a forgotten sink

I regularly spray down my counters and tables at home, but I neglect to clean one pretty germ infested place- the sink. So the dirt and germs build up until the one day I finally realize it needs help.

Luckily, cleaning is simple.

I used three things:
1. Vinegar Spray
2. Baking Soda
3. A paper towel (I know, I am terrible for killing trees!)

First, bathroom sink:

Looks white to the unsuspecting eye, but just look at how much dirt comes off with just a papertowel!

Start by sprinkling baking soda over everything.

Then, spray the baking soda with vinegar.

Create mini-explosions in your sink! Well, more like fizzle-splosions. Fizplosion? Okay, I’ll stop.

Then wipe. Usually, the fizzle-power of the baking soda and vinegar is good enough to get dirt off without too much elbow grease.

Five minutes later, your sink is nice and clean again!

 

Now to tackle the even more embarrassingly dirty kitchen sink with the same method.

Baking soda.

Vinegar.

Wipe.

Magic!

Disinfecting Cleaning Spray

Having a good cleaner for your kitchen counters is incredibly important. Most counters have seen everything from raw chicken, to moldy and forgotten food, to cat paws after they’ve been playing with mice outside. Obviously, it’s necessary to wash counters down regularly to kill off bad bacteria before handling food on them.

But there’s the key- you eventually want to handle food on them. Food you also would like to eat. Why would you clean counters you plan on eating from with anything that is toxic if you eat it?

Lysol, and other disinfectant sprays, are incredibly toxic, not only to eat, but to breath, and even to touch. Sure, the little bit you use to spray down your counters won’t kill you, but regular usage of all of those products will add up. And for what? When you can make an equally as effective spray that is non-toxic, cheaper, and smells better.

You will need:
1. White vinegar. White vinegar kills 99% of bacteria, 82% of mold, and 80% of viruses (according to the internet).
2. Optional. Citrus peels. Putting citrus peels in the vinegar not only makes it smell better, but it increases the antibacterial properties. Lemon peels are particularly known to be antimicrobial.
3. Optional. Essential oils. I did not use essential oils, but several have been shown to be good at killing germs as well as helping the smell. Be careful when including essential oils when you have pets or children, because often they can be toxic to eat. Please do your research!

Simple Vinegar Spray Directions:
1. Put white vinegar into a spray bottle. Halfway is standard, but if you want to be very clean, fill the bottle up completely (or whatever amount between 50 and 100% you are comfortable with).
2. Fill the remainder of the bottle with water.
3. Spray what needs to be cleaned.

The vinegar smell usually evaporates pretty quickly and, in all honesty, I think white vinegar smells better than Lysol. But, for those of you who would rather your kitchen didn’t smell like vinegar, there’s a (slightly) more complicated solution.

Citrus Vinegar Spray Directions:
1. Next time you make lemonade, or eat an orange, or make an alcoholic beverage with fresh citrus (preferably with gin), or squeeze a lemon to whiten your whites, save the peels in a jar.
2. Cover the peels with vinegar.
3. If your jar has a metal top, make sure to protect it with parchment paper.
4. Let the peels infuse into the vinegar for at least 2 weeks.
5. In two weeks (or more, longer you let it infuse the stronger it will smell), follow directions for the “Simple Vinegar Spray”.

Here are some images of me demonstrating this (incredibly complicated) procedure.

1. Fill jars up with citrus peels

2. Remember, vinegar will rust a regular mason jar lid if directly in contact.

3. A few weeks later, take the jars out of the cool, dark place you had been keeping them.

4. Then pour the vinegar into a bottle! (Strain out the peels and pulp).

5. Add water.

6. And voila!

Strawberry Scented Air Freshener Spray

There’s one thing I really hate to smell in the bathroom. That’s right, chemicals. I hate to go into the bathroom and take a great big breath of chemicals into my lungs. But, unfortunately for anyone who needs to use the bathroom in my apartment, that means there is no Lysol spray to help cover up certain other undesirable bathroom smells.

I do want people to feel at home in my apartment and, you know, want to come back. So I decided to try to make my own air freshener spray.

It’s strawberry season here in Southern California! Which means a pound of fresh strawberries can be found for $1.50. It also means that this girl buys 4 pounds of strawberries, planning on washing and freezing them all for future smoothies, and then forgets them in the fridge until a quarter of them are overripe. Well, all is not lost with strawberries too ripe to eat. Instead, I cut them up, put them in a jar, covered them with vinegar, and let them sit under the sink for two days.

After 2 days, I strained out the strawberries and put the (now rose-colored) vinegar into a spray bottle.

Then, I filled the rest of the bottle up with water and shook. Because I planned to keep the air freshener in the bathroom, I wanted a lot of smell fighting power, so I filled the bottle up mostly with vinegar. If you plan to use this spray liberally around the house, I would cut down the amount of vinegar in the spray a bit (so not to be overwhelming).

And that’s it! Strawberry-soaked vinegar + water + spray bottle = air freshener.

Does it work? Well, short answer, yes.

Long answer, it will smell like vinegar, still. Some fixes to this would be to let the strawberries soak for longer and use more water than vinegar (I just got overly excited). However, even after 2 days you can tell that it’s supposed to smell like strawberries. Also, the vinegar will get rid of that other smell that seems to always find its way into the bathroom. I like to spray one squirt directly into the toilet right after I flush and then one more into the air. I wouldn’t suggest using this spray in addition to a scented candle, somehow in my experience the smells did not mix and it made the spray smell even more like vinegar.

Finally, this should go without saying, but the spray is red. Very red. This isn’t a problem if you are just spraying it into the air (or one spray into the toilet) because the spray disperses into the air. However, if you’re looking to use it as a replacement for Febreez on clothing…well, you will soon have red clothing. I would assume this is obvious, but just in case there are any college kids reading who don’t like to do laundry…

I would also suggest trying this with citrus-or other fruit-soaked vinegar. If you do, let me know how it works!