At the heart of Maid to Clean’s business is our commitment to green cleaning. Wherever possible, we use simple, natural products to leave your house fresh and clean.
Which is why one of our favorite things to clean with is baking soda! It’s one hundred percent natural, made out of a single ingredient, and non-toxic to your whole family, including your pets.
But how can this simple powder, something you’ve probably not thought a lot about, clean your home effectively?
What is baking soda?
First off, let’s look at what baking soda is.
Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, has been around for millions of years. It’s made when salt lakes evaporate, creating deposits of trona. This is a type of rock that can be processed into sodium carbonate, which can then be processed into baking soda.
This simple, natural ingredient may just look like white powder, but it has a ton of uses.
You may know it best from baking. It’s frequently used as a leavening agent in baked goods. Before the mid-1800s, when baking soda became commercially available, breads and cakes had to be risen with yeast and could take hours to rise. Baked treats had to be planned out far ahead of time.
Today, all thanks to baking soda and baking powder, you can easily make and bake cookies, cakes, and breads in under an hour without having to leave them to rise.
Another way you might know about the wonders of baking soda is from making volcano experiments in grade school. When combined with white vinegar (one of our other favorites!), baking soda fizzes and expands rapidly.
But why does this happen? It’s because baking soda is basic (the opposite of acidic), and vinegar is acidic. When you put a base and an acid together, they react and fizz until the pH value is neutralized. This fizzing can help clean up messes and make them easier to wipe up.
Read on to learn some ways that we use baking soda to clean your home, as well as ways you can use it yourself!
Help unclog and freshen drains
With the help of hot water and white vinegar, we employ the same science that makes up your grade school volcano. By putting both down a drain – and taking care, since this is still technically an explosive reaction – it will fizz and help clean up clogged spots.
Baking soda can also help freshen up your drains, even if they aren’t clogged. As deodorizers, baking soda and vinegar can help eliminate any odors that have accumulated over time.
In many cases, using baking soda and vinegar is just as effective as a drain cleaner, but without putting nasty chemicals down your drain.
Remember that anything that gets put down the drain will eventually reach a water source. Commercial drain cleaners and other cleaning products, are full of chemicals that can be toxic to humans and animals. For this reason, it’s a lot better for the environment to use natural, harmless cleaning products.
Scour surfaces in your home and remove stains
Baking soda makes for a great scouring agent. It’s only slightly abrasive, so it will clean but not scratch most surfaces. Mix it with a bit of water and it’s effective at removing stains on anything from your kitchen sink to your shower floor.
In your own day-to-day life, try using it to remove food that’s stuck on your dishes. Just sprinkle some baking soda on the dish, add some water, and let it soak for 10-20 minutes. The food should be a lot easier to get off.
Just be careful if you’re trying to clean aluminum cookware. While you can certainly scrub them clean with the help of baking soda, be sure to rinse them right away. Letting it sit for too long can cause your aluminum pots and pans to oxidize.
Remove mildew from your shower
Baking soda is also great at getting mildew and soap scum off of shower tiles. Just like any other stain, it comes right off, leaving your grout and tiles looking bright, shiny, and new.
Commercial cleaning products, from mildew removers to scouring agents, are actually a fairly unregulated market. Many brand-name products are made up of dozens of different chemicals, and companies aren’t required to label what’s in them, besides a warning label and the number for poison control. Yikes.
That’s why we prefer to use baking soda and other natural products – for the health and safety of you, your family, and our cleaning team.
Give your fridge, laundry, and just about anything a clean scent
You’ve probably heard of putting a box of baking soda in the back of the fridge. Well, that’s because it works! It’s an inexpensive, quick way to remove lingering food smells, plus you won’t be spraying chemicals around your food.
Remember to change out the box periodically so that it keeps on being effective.
Baking soda will also give a clean scent to your clothes, as well as brighten and refresh their colors. Just add half a cup to your usual amount of detergent of your next load of laundry. Your clothes will smell fresh and clean, but without any chemicals or artificial scents that are found in other products.
Other smelly surfaces can also be solved with baking soda. Just sprinkle a bit on surfaces like pet beds and shoes, let it sit, and vacuum it up to eliminate odors.
At Maid to Clean, we don’t just call ourselves a green cleaning company for nothing. It’s in everything we do. We believe that being green at all levels of our service can help make the world – and your home – a cleaner, safer place.