White distilled vinegar, who knew?

Tags

chemical free, cleaning, household chores, postaday2013, stainless steel, tips, white wine vinegar

I have posted a few pictures of my kitchen and I am fairly sure that my stove has been featured in those photographs. I have a fairly large stove, all stainless steel, I love it, it’s industrial and serves me so very well whatever I choose to cook. Anyone who has stainless steel anything, however, will tell you about the fingertips, the smudges, the way grease seems to find its way to it and linger.

I have tried over the years, so many different brands that were specifically formulated for stainless steel and I had never found a brand that quite lived up to their claims. I have been on the web looking for alternative ways to clean stainless steel and I did find one “green” site that suggested warm soapy water but that seemed to easy and also I kept thinking that the stainless steel would get water spots. So I resigned myself to the commercial products.

Last year when our Rex was getting incontinent, I googled to see what could be used as an alternative to the carpet cleaners because the commercial brands weren’t working in getting rid of the ammonia odor and what I learned was that white distilled vinegar was perfect because it dissolved the nitrogen bonds in the urine that produce the ammonia like smell. I soaked the carpet with warm water and white distilled vinegar, scrubbed it and sucked it back up with my carpet cleaner and it was as good as new.

Ever since then, I have been turning to white distilled vinegar for more and more of my cleaning duties and stainless steel has been the latest recipient of the white distilled vinegar treatment. It works like a charm, all I did was apply the vinegar directly to my microfiber cloth and wipe down my stove and the viola, the grease and the smudges were gone.

I have been converted to the efficacy and the efficiency of white distilled vinegar. According to the website, it is good for cleaning windows, dishwashers, getting rid of mold and mildew and cleaning everything else except for marble. Why pay for those chemical laden commercials cleaners when you can get something non-toxic and cheap that works even better?

Charitable

You’ve inherited $5 million, with instructions that you must give it all away — but you can choose any organizations you like to be the beneficiaries. Where does the money go?

First off, nice whetting someone's appetite for wealth and caviar dreams, only to be told that it is all going away to charity. Fine.

Truth be told, five million won't go as far as I'd like to eradicate disease and hunger; there are too many places affected with both scourges.

When I think of Africa, I would love to see all wars ended but money won't do that. I would have to find an organization that would teach the locals how to practice agriculture and water management in a ecologically sustainable way without any of the Big agricultural companies involved, that means Monsanto is out. I know that Warren Buffet's son does work in this field in Central America, so he would be one of many persons of interest that I would be in contact with and perhaps he would steer me in the right direction.

If my work were successful in Africa, I would be looking to expand that work to other parts of the world but tailor it to suit their eco-systems. No sense in wasting resources trying to force food stuffs that wouldn't naturally take hold in that specific place.

On the disease front, I think that I would go immediately to the United Nations and see what organizations are doing what regarding polio, malaria, cholera and HIV/AIDS and lend a hand there.

As I said five million only goes so far but if that money could jump start a new method of dealing with these problems, I would go to bed at night feeling pretty good about the world and the future.