Or is it? What if I told you I was going to save you some money and help clean out all those nasty chemical cleaners from under the sink?
In my ongoing quest to live a little greener, simplify my life, and save some money, I have discovered a plethora of uses for sodium bicarbonate. I can't claim any important discoveries, you can find all this stuff on the web, or in the little book, Baking Soda: Over 500 Fabulous, Fun, and Frugal Uses You've Probably Never Thought Of. It really is a little book. The title barely fits on the cover.
Sure, everyone uses it for cooking, and most folks probably have a box sitting in the fridge. Actually, if you're anything like me, the box in your fridge is probably years old... and it's time for a new one to keep your fridge smelling clean and fresh instead of smelling like the moldy onions my wife insists will keep forever in the fridge.
Moving on. We'll save my wife's magic fridge theory for another day. In addition to those two common uses, is there anyone out there who hasn't at some point turned in the Volcano science project with baking soda and vinegar lava? Awesome stuff. And now we have lava. Oh ye of little faith, I told you this would be riveting, on the edge of your seat stuff!
My path to baking soda bliss actually started with a concern about water. We all have to drink it. And we all have to clean the sinks it comes out of. But when we rinse out our sinks after using our cleaners, where do those chemicals go? And what will those chemicals do to us (and everything else)? After the bare minimum of research, I decided I didn't want to drink any of the methylethylnastycrap I was using to clean my house. When I was living in the city, with a drains to a sewer and water mains from a treatment plant, it was easy to convince myself all that stuff was removed before I was actually drinking the water. But then I have to ask, where does the stuff they remove go? This line of questioning can go on for quite some time and you should keep at it until you have yourself concerned.
Or just consider Trislocan- it's a pretty common antibacterial agent, found in a lot of those antibacterial soaps and cleaners people are nuts for these days. Most folks have loads of it built up in their bodies, babies are born with it, and now its now been found in Dolphins. So, even if you don't want to scare yourself into giving up the methylethylbadstuff under your sink, can you at least think of the dolphins, and all the other critters swimming in the seas your cleaners end up in?
Now, once we moved to the country, I really couldn't fool myself into thinking that treatment plants would clean all that junk out of my water. Because there is no treatment plant here. We live on a big pond, and even though there are no dolphins in residence, my septic system and leach field are on one side of the driveway, and my well is a short skip away on the other side. So, now anything that goes down the drain has a better than excellent chance of eventually ending up in the pond, and the water table, and my well. The well I get my untreated drinking water from. Plus, I like to fish in our pond, and occasionally I even eat some of those fish.
Clearly, a change was needed. I had already switched to 'green' type cleaners, like Simple Green. But even that wasn't so simple. Checking the MSDS, I saw it was mostly water with a little bit of the hard to pronounce tetramethylethylbadstuff. Nothing to call Erin Brockovich about, but I thought I could do better. And, at $12.00 bucks for the mix your own gallon jug, it's not quite as cheap I was hoping for. Especially since it's almost 80% water.
Enter baking soda. Here are just a few of the ways I use it, and the various chemical laden cleaners I've replaced:
1. Oven cleaning: Those spray cans have to be some of the nastiest cleaners going. Just sprinkle baking soda on the bottom and then dampen it with some water from a spray bottle. Then go to bed. In the morning scoop out the grime laden baking soda and rinse.
Easy Off- $5.99 Box of Baking Soda- about a buck
2. Soft Scrub: Just sprinkle on some baking soda and then scrub with a damp sponge or rag instead. You have to scrub anyway (it's called Soft SCRUB) so it's not like you're doing more work. Rinse thoroughly and wipe dry. And you can use it on fiberglass and glossy tile as well.
Soft Scrub- $2.78 Baking Soda- about a buck
3. Carpet Fresh: Some people like those heavy perfume scents I guess. Not me. When we had carpet, I would just sprinkle some baking soda on the carpet to deodorize it. Do it just before bed and let it sit overnight. Then vacuum it up in the morning.
Carpet Fresh- $3.00 Baking Soda- about a buck
4. Odor Eaters: yes, my shoes get stinky. Odor eater shoe powder will work, but so will baking soda sprinkled inside. And while Odor Eater powder will set you back almost six bucks, a box of baking soda can be had for... about a buck.
That should give you a rough idea. Search the web and you'll find tons more. Pretty much anything that needs deodorizing or anything that needs scrubbing can be cleaned with baking soda. It's cheap, it's easy, and it's a hell of a lot less toxic and persistent in the environment and your body. It's certainly less likely to screw up your thyroid and sex hormones. I'll bet the dolphins probably don't like endocrine disruptors either.
A few new things were going to try doing with baking soda:
At the dentist the other day, my hygienist said I should start brushing with baking soda. She said straight up is great, but the taste leaves a bit to be desired. She also suggested just dipping my toothpaste laden brush into some and using it that way. I'll be trying that soon. In the meantime, check your toothpaste- it might have a dose of trislocan since it can fight gingivitis.
And my wife is now on board to go 'No-Poo'. Which means using baking soda and vinegar for shampooing, not an actual ceasing of fecal clearing activity. It sounds like once your scalp and hair adjust to life without chemicals, it will feel and look cleaner, shinier, and healthier than ever before. As soon as the current bottles run dry, we shall see.
Besides saving money, and feeling much better about what goes down my drain (and eventually comes back out the faucet), there is one more benefit to this baking soda bonanza. I don't have to go to the dump/recycling center as often. I never have plastic spray bottles and empty aerosol cans filling up the trash bin. That's nice too.
Oh... and the Dolphins. Who wouldn't want to help save the dolphins?
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