The Truth About Cleaning Hacks

After cleaning professionally for over 20 years, I’m the first person who would love to cut corners and find ways to clean faster and more thoroughly.  But the truth about cleaning hacks is that so many are either ineffective, wasteful or dangerous...to you and the surfaces you’re cleaning.  

For the record, I think there are a lot of great ones out there, and I have many that I use and teach in my cleaning course.  But the majority of them are just plain silly.  

In fact there is one product in particular that I see hyped all the time as the ultimate hack in cleaning, and that’s white distilled vinegar.  Some cleaners say you should use it for everything…from your toilet bowl brush to hardwood floors to marble countertops.  

But here is the truth about vinegar… while it ‘can’ kill up to 80% of germs, it requires 30 minutes of dwell time to get to that 80%!  So simply applying vinegar to a surface for a few seconds or even minutes for the purpose of disinfecting, means it’s basically doing nothing.  It might smell and look good, but that surface isn’t any safer than before.  

Even when used to its fullest potential, it cannot kill salmonella, e. coli, flu like viruses like COVID-19, or even mold and mold spores.  What vinegar CAN do is help you wipe away grease, grime and hard water stains.  And since you can also put it on your salads, that does make it a green cleaning product.  

But it won’t do anything useful for that toilet brush...over time it can strip the finish off of wood floors, even when diluted with water...and it can etch marble surfaces to the point that a professional would need to be called in to restore them, which could cost thousands of dollars.  

So do I use vinegar in cleaning?  Everyday.  But in the end it’s about knowing where and when to use what products...that is the key to cleaning safely, properly and effectively.  

So the next time you see a cleaning hack ask yourself 4 basic questions… 

1) What was this product actually designed for? 

2) What are the hazards of using it outside of that design? 

3) How long does it need to sit or dwell to do its job? 

4) And what does proven science say? 

For more information be sure to check out my full online cleaning course.

Happy cleaning!