Three Things to Avoid Cleaning With Vinegar

Cleaning With Vinegar Don’ts

Vinegar has long been hailed as an all-natural, all-safe solution for household cleaning. True, this chemical-free and inexpensive option are safer for you and your family than store-bought chemicals. It won’t do any damage if consumed, after all. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it safe or even effective for cleaning all types of messes. From your friends here at Kinetico San Antonio, here is a list of items that you should NOT be using vinegar to clean.

Your Iron

A good steam iron can last several years if well maintained. While regular cleaning should be a part of your maintenance (especially if you don’t have a water softener in your home), vinegar should not. Its acidic properties are known to damage the inner mechanics of an iron and can cut an expensive iron’s lifespan short. If your home has hard water, make sure to fill your steam iron with distilled water.

Will Vinegar Damage Chrome Bathroom Finishes?

Pinterest, cleaning blogs and eco-friendly forums are abuzz with a chemical-free method for stripping away the white, crusty buildup that plagues shower heads and faucets in hard water homes. The idea is a simple one – fill a plastic bag with white vinegar, position it to where the shower head is submerged in the vinegar, and secure it with a rubber band or hair tie to soak overnight.

For faucets, they say to dip paper towels in white vinegar and wrap the towels, paper mache-style, around the faucet to soak. So will vinegar damage chrome? The idea is sound, but the duration is not. Even soaking your shower head or faucets for more than 15 minutes puts their finish at risk. Vinegar may be a mild acid, but it’s an acid nonetheless. Prolonged exposure to vinegar will damage chrome finishes by eating the finish right off of your fixtures.

For the ultimate protection against limescale and hard water buildup, invest in a quality water softener for your home. To safely clean your fixtures now, visit the website of your fixture manufacturer for fixture-specific cleaning instructions.

Marble Countertops

Erosion is really only a good look for The Grand Canyon and Big Bend National Park. It definitely has no place in your expensive marble countertops. Simply put, the old vinegar and water cleaning combo will eat away the surface marble and leave you with a rough, stain-like appearance. This can only be fixed with careful sanding and polishing. Do yourself a favor, and keep vinegar away from your marble!