Myth or Miracle Cleaner Series: Clean Your Bath Tub with Vinegar

Hello, my name is Sara. And I am a Pinterest addict.

Pinterest lists tons of cleaning shortcuts and homemade remedies: dozen uses for vinegar, clean your kitchen with baking soda, etc. I've often wondered if these DIY cleaning methods work, if they are better than store-bought cleaner, and if it's worth the extra effort for a little savings in money.

One of my goals here on Tried & Twisted is to test out new projects and to share if it's worth your time and effort. This month's series is all about DIY cleaning methods.

The first challenge for my Spring Cleaning series: Homemade Bath Tub Cleaner!

You may have seen a graphic floating around on Pinterest promising dramatic results by a simple cleaning method of combining vinegar and dish soap. Just spray on, spray off, no scrubbing, and the shower is instantly clean. It will even take soap scum off of shower doors, so it claims. Let's see how that theory works out in practice.

Supplies:
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup dish soap
Spray bottle
Sponge/wash cloth

Step 1. The original directions say to heat 1/2 cup of white vinegar in microwave for 90 seconds and pour into a spray bottle. I presume it needed to be hot to blend the vinegar with the soap, but it was also hot enough to MELT my plastic spray bottle.

Heat the vinegar before mixing with the dish soap, but watch the heat!

You could heat the vinegar for 30 seconds at a time and use a very sturdy spray bottle. However, the vinegar and soap seemed to mix fairly well at room temperature and didn't really seem to affect the effectiveness, so new direction...

New Step 1. Just pour your vinegar direction into the spray bottle.

See, sometimes I can keep it nice and simple at Tried & Twisted!

Step 2. Add 1/2 cup of Blue Dawn Dish Soap to the bottle and shake gently to mix.

For the bargain hunters out there, don't worry. It doesn't have to be Dawn name-brand. It doesn't even have to be blue. Any dish soap will work fine for the same results.

Step 3. Spray mixture evenly onto shower and tub surface. I sprayed it onto the shower curtain too for the full experiment.

As for "evenly", well, that didn't go quite as planned. Even though the spray bottle was set to mist, the solution tended to run on the walls and create streaks. Then at the bottom of the bottle, the soap got a little sudsy, so pink foam sprayed all over the walls like I was in Ghostbusters or something. So, it did not spray on so evenly, but at least the mixture was on the walls, so...success?

Did I mention it smells like vinegar?

Step 4. Wipe solution off the and rinse.

A little easier said than done. Because the solution streaked, it only cleaned in streaks. Plus the dirt and soap scum didn't just rinse away. Expect to scrub for several minutes in order to really work the solution into the walls.

Since the solution doesn't just wipe away, scrubbing the shower curtain proved to be a bit challenging and it was hard to avoid some soap suds deposits.

Overall, the process wasn't quite as effortless as advertised, but who can argue when you get results?

Look at that white shine! This mix worked really well at removing dirt, soap scum, and even some stains. Granted, some set stains still remained. For example, the stain circling the ledge on the right of this picture is still there, but the vinegar/dish soap mixture did succeed at lightening it, which is more than most commercial cleaners have been able to do.

Rating of difficulty: 1 out of 5. This is a homemade cleaning remedy that I would recommend. You don't have to grate soap or mix 10 different ingredients together. It's only two ingredients, shake lightly, and spray away.

Cheap: Vinegar and dish soap are cheap commodities that you probably already have around the house, and they can serve many purposes, like cleaning dishes or spicing up your next stir fry meal. If you buy in bulk or buy bargain brands, you can save even more money over a commercial bath tub cleaner.

Green? This homemade cleaner can't exactly be called all-natural because dish soap does have chemicals in it. Every dish soap cleaner is a bit different, so if being environmentally friendly is important to you, buy green dish soap for this mixture.

Now, I want to hear from you! I have an opening for a mystery spot in the Myth or Miracle Cleaner series, so put suggests below or in my original post. If you've heard of an unusual homemade remedy for cleaning, I want to hear about it!

Linking at: 
Natasha in Oz, Mums Make Lists (1 & 2), The Pin Junkie,Watch Out Martha,The Dedicated House,