Baking Soda and Vinegar?

I see so many DIY recipes where people mix baking soda and vinegar together.

flour-powder-wheat-jar

The main value of this is the immediate reaction.  It lifts and breaks up dirt!  But after the “fizzy-lifting,” what you have leftover is just salt water. (Chemically speaking, “salt” extends beyond table salt.)

The salt created by mixing vinegar and baking soda is the very one that makes those salt and vinegar flavored chips so delicious.  Yum! It also has the mild ability to suspend hard water deposits, which is only useful if you have hard water and then, only if you have another CLEANING agent in the mix.  Remember: Just under 1/2T baking soda turns 1 quart of vinegar to chip-flavored salt water. 

1.  Vinegar solutions in no way benefit from the addition of Baking Soda

Vinegar is an acid cleaner.  It suspends hard water particles without the soda.  It suspends hard water particles better than the salt made from mixing baking soda and vinegar.  There’s no need to add soda to your vinegar bottle unless you just want to neutralize the cleaning power and make yourself work harder.  If you want to clean with acid, do it.  Don’t toss in the soda.

2.  Soda solutions benefit from vinegar.

Soda cleaners are base cleaners.  They don’t suspend hard water particles on their own.  Adding a bit of vinegar to the mix, gives you the cleaning power of baking soda with the suspension power of vinegar salt.

If you have hard water and you want to make sure that any deposits you generate stay suspended while you clean, you can put that “power” of vinegar salt in a baking soda spray bottle or in your laundry or in your dishwasher.  But, there’s no point unless you have hard water.  The resulting chip flavoring doesn’t actually CLEAN anything.  It just helps prevent redepositing.  And don’t forget that you have a limited time to use the solution. Baking soda and vinegar solutions lose power over time.

If you can wait until AFTER the cleaning process, a vinegar rinse alone is stronger.  However, some folks have such hard water that a rinse isn’t enough.  They need the particles suspended the whole time!

Baking Soda/Vinegar Cleaning Solution for Hard Water

1 cup store-bought vinegar (%5 acetic acid)

1 T baking soda

Mix in a LARGE pot.  After it finishes foaming, there will still be lots of unreacted baking soda in the bottom (takes a gallon of vinegar to neutralize all that baking soda, you just reacted about 1/8 T of it)  Pour in bottle.  It will lose power over time.

3.  This Doesn’t Directly Translate to Laundry.

Baking soda and vinegar have no business together in the laundry machine. Washing soda is much more powerful.  However, the reaction we’ve been discussing is similar. As already mentioned, base cleaners DO benefit from having acid in them. Laundry is mega-base cleaning.  So, vinegar does help your hard water particles suspend during the cleaning process.

For each load of laundry (traditional ~40 gal machine) you need about 2 cups of vinegar per 10ppm of hardness to keep it all suspended in the wash water. Our water is 17.9ppm.  We would need almost four cups of store-bought vinegar per load.  In contrast, 1tsp of dry citric acid also takes care of it.  I get Lemi Shine for $5 (~73 tsp/can).  You’ll have to decide which is more cost effective.

But, don’t forget that you have to multiply your washing soda if you do this or it all gets neutralized and there’s nothing in there to get things clean.  Hard water particles will be suspended, but dirt stays put.  For each cup of vinegar or 1/4 tsp of citric acid you add to the wash, toss in an extra  1 tsp of washing soda.

If you can get away with just using it as a rinse and not mixing the soda and acid at all, then don’t adjust the washing soda.

Conclusion

  • Vinegar and baking soda have a “fizzy lifting” reaction that is totally useful in some cases. (Drains, for example.)
  • If you’re going to clean with acid, do it.  Don’t add the baking soda.
  • If you’re going to clean with bases, rinsing with an acid helps get rid of hard water deposits.
  • If you’re going to clean with a base and you water is super-hard, use it in the wash cycle too, but up the soda.