Never Use Vinegar on These Household Items

Five minutes online is going to show you seven thousand different ways you can use vinegar to clean your house, and that you totally, absolutely, one hundred percent should do that. The reasons the internet will provide you for using vinegar to clean your entire house top to bottom vary greatly, but the overall point is that you’ll save a ton of money on cleaning products and that you will be more environmentally friendly to your home. You don’t want to clean your house with chemicals that might hurt your family, do you?

In the interest of being totally honest, I don’t use vinegar to clean my house. I use good, old-fashioned cleaning products that have yet to hurt me or my family. However, I know that some people love to use vinegar; and I have no issue with that whatsoever. The only thing I can say about vinegar is that there seems to be a bit of a miscommunication in the art of using it for cleanliness. It is not, after all, so good for every single thing in your home. Go ahead and use it to clean, but be very careful that you are not using vinegar to clean the wrong things. Despite what Pinterest says, vinegar is not meant to clean everything.

Your washing machine

I have seen so many articles online advising people to wash their washing machines with vinegar. While it’s true that your washing machine does need a bit of attention from you in terms of making sure it is clean, you certainly do not want to use vinegar in that baby. Why not? Vinegar is not going to mesh well with the rubber hoses and things inside your washing machine. In fact, it will eat away at them and destroy the machine, which is something I know beyond a shadow of a doubt you cannot live without. Am I right?

Granite (or any other natural stone)

We hosted a dinner party a few weeks ago for some of my husband’s work acquaintances. A glass of red wine was knocked over onto our granite counters in the kitchen, and I quickly grabbed my cleaner and a towel to wipe it up. One of the wives quickly told me that I should be using all natural products to clean my counters, such as vinegar. I told her that it’s not an accurate piece of advice seeing as how vinegar is filled with acid, and acid damages natural stone.

It can leave holes, marks and other indentions in the stone that cause it to become porous and damaged, and it can look awful. She didn’t know. She thought that because vinegar is natural and not a chemical that it can be used on any and everything. It cannot – so don’t use it on anything that is made of natural stone. You will damage it to the point it cannot be repaired.

Electronics

So, I just want to ask you if you really clean your electronics with vinegar? If you do, do you mind me asking you why you do that and what made you begin to use vinegar to clean your electronics? You should not, and the reasons that you might make me very curious. The simple fact of the matter is that you should not use anything that is in any way liquid on your electronics. You need to use specialty electronic products to keep things safe and working appropriately.

Your Iron

My mom always taught me that the best way to clean an iron is with vinegar. Just mix it with water and pour it into the water tank and let it steam until the iron is clean. That advice is awful, but I don’t blame her. She just did what she was taught, which is what I was taught until I was taught otherwise. It turns out that this damages the interior functions in an iron, which can then damage the items you’re ironing. I know you don’t want to use an iron that might damage your clothing, so I thought this one was important.

At the end of the day, vinegar does clean many things. However, it should not clean these things. It also makes me sit back and wonder what is left to clean with vinegar. I’ll stick to my tried-and-true rule of not using anything vinegar-like to clean anything in my house. Without being able to use it on my floors or my countertops, I’m not sure what else is left to do with it; so I’ll just stick to my other chemical-laden products and reap the judgement of others in the process. Take care to be sure you’re not using the inappropriate items in your house while cleaning, and you will be very happy to know you can care for your belongings much longer.

Photo by Getty Images