4 Reasons to Stock Up on Baking Soda Today

Sodium bicarbonate – a.k.a. baking soda – is a must-use ingredient when baking goodies as it helps them to rise. But if you thought that that’s all it’s good for, you thought wrong! Many of you may have heard about the various uses of vinegar and lemon in home cleaning, but if you haven’t thrown baking soda into the mix, you’ve been missing out!

Yes, baking soda makes for an awesome ‘secret’ ingredient in various areas of home cleaning and household uses! Well, now that the secret’s out, let’s get right to it! Here’s how you can use baking soda around your home and solve some pretty difficult household problems!

Baking Soda + Laundry Detergent = Brighter, Cleaner Clothes!

Have you been struggling to find that one, amazing product that’s going to make your clothes look cleaner and brighter? The answer to your problem is probably sitting in the back of a shelf in your pantry! Take it out and add about a cup of baking soda (along with your regular detergent) to your next load of laundry and you’ll be amazed at how much cleaner the washed items will appear! Especially for all-white items, they’ll come out whiter and brighter like never before!

Freshen Up Your Dingy Rugs and Carpeting

Caroline, Cleaning Professional at Simply Maid says “Dingy carpeting and rugs make the entire room smell musty and stale which can cause allergies and discomfort to anyone breathing them in. It’s even worse during the monsoon or damper weather as the odors get stronger, leaving homeowners feeling helpless and clueless as to how they can get rid of them.”

While vacuuming your carpeting and rugs regularly is important, you also need to take some measures to freshen them up. Well, surprise, surprise; baking soda is just the way to do that! Depending on the size of your carpets, rugs or floors (if you’ve got carpeting), you may require quite a bit of baking soda for this. Nevertheless, it’s completely worth it! All you need to do is sprinkle baking soda around the carpet/rug and leave it for 1-2 hours so that the powder can absorb the musty smells (it does a brilliant job at that). Thereafter, you’ll need to vacuum up the powder and voila! The dingy odor will have vanished!

Unclog Your Toilet

For this, baking soda and white vinegar make an unmatched partnership! If your toilet gets clogged and a plunger can’t be found, try the following method:

Remove some water until the level is up to three fourth of the bowl (the lesser water in the bowl, the stronger effect the ingredients will have)
Measure one and half cups of baking soda and add it to the water in the toilet bowl
Slowly pour in the white vinegar and watch as the water starts to fizz up. Avoid pouring too much vinegar in one go as it might bubble over; instead, add small amounts every few minutes until the fizz has reached to top of the bowl
Leave it for 45 minutes
In a pot, add half a gallon of water and heat it until small bubble start to form on the base of the pot (the water shouldn’t be boiling hot)
Pour the hot water into the bowl
If the water does not go fully down to its original level, repeat the process and your work should be done

Remove Burnt Stains from Pots ‘n’ Pans

When it comes to burnt or blackened utensils, you have to clean the dish by hand because your dishwasher isn’t going to be of any help. To do this, mix water and baking soda in the burnt utensil to make a paste that covers every inch of the base and allow it to stand for 15 minutes.

By now, the paste will have hardened just a tad bit; this is when you need to add just enough boiling hot water to the utensil so that the burnt area/blackness is submerged. Allow the water to cool down. Next, pour some liquid detergent onto a slightly abrasive scrubber and scrub the burnt areas until it is free of blackness! Baking soda helps in removing black residue from various types of dishware.

Well then, now that you’re in on the secret, be sure to stock up on a few packs of baking soda so that you’ve got your secret ingredient at hand whenever needed!