I heard from Julie Andrews that soy sauce is pretty good at removing stains.

We get a brief ant problem in early to mid summer and I was always afraid my animals would get into the ant traps and get sick. I googled natural ant traps and many people suggested using plain powdered cinnamon. I sprinkled it by all window ledges and doors, and no ants! Apparently it irritates their little ant feet...

Put a mug of fresh ground coffee in the fridge to soak up all the stink.

[www.ihatebillboards.com]

Wait, don't baking soda and vinegar explode when mixed, a la the volcano experiment?

I use baking soda and vinegar first for slow drains. It usually does the trick.

@wellfleet: Essential oil of peppermint works well, too. It needn't be the expensive kind in little bottles. You can find 4-ounce bottles inexpensively if you search for a few minutes online. I HATE ants, but this has always worked for me.

I sort of miss that arsenic/sugar paint, though. Nothing like killing the little bastards. They no longer sell it, and I have cats now, so it's just as well.

If you have stainless steel appliances, there is no need to buy stainless steel "protectorants" to keep fingerprints off. After washing the appliance, rub some olive oil on the steel surfaces. Gently wipe off the excess, and repeat this every few days or as needed. This keeps grubby fingerprints off of your fridge and other stainless steel kitchen friends!

@wenhaver: They foam. You need kind-of a lot of them to get any good reaction.

But it's a great way to clear minor slow drains and to freshen your sinks (esp. the disposal sink) -- dump in a bunch of baking soda, chase with a bunch of vinegar, watch cool volcano action.

Does anyone know an inexpensive, effective, natural method for getting rid of cat urine stink (that does not involve getting rid of cats or doing bad things to them)? I love my kitties, but face it, they're animals and they do animal things like get overexcited when they see outside cats through the window by the front door.

@Lyndsay Peters: Vegetable oils leave a sticky film after a while, especially on appliances that are heated. If you're going to scrub your appliances with something every few days, it might as well be with something that actually cleans them.

Vinegar in your washing machine will remove tons and tons of odors (and, no, the vinegar odor doesn't stay on the clothes ... they usually come out of the wash without any lingering vinegar odor from the work of the rinse cycle, but line or dryer drying removes any of the rest).

Vinegar is particularly excellent at removing urine odor -- for those of you with peeing babies and/or pets. (You can also use it to directly clean a urine stain on carpet.) I usually wash whatever's been peed on in a normal wash cycle with 1 cup of vinegar, make sure it got the pee, then wash it again (typically in a full load of whatever I'm washing) with normal detergent. You can add vinegar to a normal detergent wash cycle, too. (But we had a diabetic cat with a serious bladder problem so I was a little overzealous with the washing. If it's just a baby who's leaked, it goes in with normal detergent and some vinegar all at once.)

Allegedly vinegar in your darks load (with regular detergent) will help keep them darker longer. I did this religiously with my black jeans in high school, but I can't say for sure if this works or not -- never did a controlled test. :)

I was just researching this a.m. and learned I can put vinegar in my "rinse aid" spot in my dishwasher -- we have very hard water, lots of spots. Much cheaper than the "jet dry" type stuff. Since I haven't tried it yet, I can just HOPE it works, but I don't see why it wouldn't.

For those of you with hard water like mine, a vinegar rinse will remove the hard water stains. I typically rinse my knives and wine glasses in vinegar (then rinse in cool water and dry quickly) before dinner parties, since those are where the hard water stains are the worse. (Toss the knives in a shallow pan with vinegar and wipe them down 10 minutes later -- spots gone.)

@wellfleet: I've heard cloves work too.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Microfiber cloths are pretty magic on stainless steel, I've found.

VINEGAR IS NOT A CLEANSER. Just because it is cheap does not make it a miracle chemical. There's a reason you don't see commercial cleaners using buckets of vinegar. If it were so great and inexpensive don't you think they'd be the first ones all over it?

Instead of reprinting the same tired old stuff you can find in 1960s-era copies of Family Circle, Consumerist ought to be telling people to go to stores that sell to the industry. Smart & Final, Costco, or janitorial supply stores. They sell stuff in bulk so it's really cheap, and it WORKS.

When I worked in a stained glass window studio for a year or so, customers would always ask me if there was a special cleaner for them. I wondered how many believed me when we told them we usually just used dry paper towels in the production room. If there were mineral spots on the glass from water splashing, we sprayed a little plain water on the paper towel first and then polished up with the dry paper towel.

If your stained glass window or door gets especially oily, for example if your pizza-eating offspring decide to make greasy fingerprints on it, sprinkle a little baby powder (talc or cornstarch based, doesn't matter) on a new, soft, shoe brush and brush the oily marks away. Don't overuse the powder or you'll just make more mess to clean up. Finish up with (you guessed it) dry paper towels.

Also, ants wont cross a chalk line.

We had the dog's bowls outside during the summer and the ants kept invading, I took my niece's sidewalk chalk and drew a circle around the bowls. The ants would walk right up to the line and turn around. It's the weirdest thing.

Cleaning? What this 'cleaning' you speak of?

Vinegar is also good for cleaning out your body in small amounts. Its kinda gross to drink it straight though. Actually I hate anything with vinegar.

Another good tip though is to let orange peel sit near your heater or ontop of your fireplace. It really does make an nice orange freshness to the room. My grandmother does this, and its a great free deodizer left over from that delicious orange.

Where can I buy washing soda?

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Vinegar! See below.

If they've peed on something you can machine wash, machine wash it with 1 cup white vinegar, then rewash with a normal load in detergent. If you can remove and wash (like a throw rug), a vinegar soak in the bathtub followed by thorough rinsing will usually do the trick.

If it's a large cushion or a permanent carpet or (god forbid) a mattress, SATURATE the area with vinegar, wait 30 seconds, and blot like crazy (wear shoes, step on it on an old towel). Blot up as much as you can, then saturate with quite a bit of water and repeat the blotting. You may do the water trick a couple times. It may take a day or so for the vinegar smell to evaporate.

If the urine soaks through to your carpet pad or subflooring, you're kinda screwed. There's not much that can be done. But if you're quick at the stains, they're pretty easy to treat with vinegar.

If there's lingering odor, try any of the various "pet odor" carpet cleaners. Or rent a Rug Doctor or hire Stanley Steemer to come steam that area ... they have enzymatic pet odor things. But if it's in the padding or subflooring, this will only reduce but not eliminate the odor.

We also tended to sun-dry things that had been peed on when it was possible, because the sun is the most effective germ-and-odor killer. But that's not necessary. (We'd throw them over our yew bushes to dry since we don't have a clothesline and everything would smell like sunshine AND pine fresh! Our neighbors thought we were weird.)

We had a diabetic cat with serious bladder problems (he died in the fall), so I got a LOT of urine-stain-cleaning practice. There's one patch of carpet I just have to tear out, though, despite my best efforts.

@mythago: Sure they work. They work to put money into the companies that sell them. That's what they're for.

Around here, the house cleaners all use this dollar store all-purpose cleaner called, IIRC, Fabuloso. I asked a maid once if she wanted me to supply her with a better product to use, and she told me, "This IS the better product." Hmm.

@Eyebrows McGee: Awesome, thank you.

@mythago: "They sell stuff in bulk so it's really cheap, and it WORKS. "

And kills you. Have you read the MSDSs on those things???

@missdona: Some bugs have problems with talc and fuller's earth and things like that because the crystals are so rough (if you're bug-sized) that it literally tears the bug apart. Maybe that's the ants' issue with chalk?

I'm so trying the chalk thing this summer.

@Eyebrows McGee: Don't overdo the vinegar on flatware, and never use it on silver plate. My fiance, god bless him, heard vinegar would take the spots off flatware, so he dumped the whole drawerfull into a stock pot, covered them with vinegar and BOILED them. I wound up with a whole new set.

@EdithHeadsChignon: Pool supply houses have it, if nobody else does. It's also called "soda ash." Anything that says it's "sodium carbonate" is what you want.

@mythago: Did you not see, "cleaning greenly" in the title? The thing is, while vinegar is cheaper for us to buy, its not as cheap as the ingredients for chemical cleaners, hence why it isn't used. Vinegar is used for a lot of stuff, and its safe to use, doesn't let colors run, all because of its inherent chemical makeup. Industrial cleaners cannot be ingested, sniffed, or even placed on skin, while vinegar can. Which wins here?

@Lyndsay Peters: Olive oil does go rancid. If you're cleaning it every few day, you should be fine, but you're much better off using something like mineral oil.

relating to the pet urine issue, apple cider vinegar is the better kind to use. cat urine is full of oils, which are hard to remove from fabrics, but the vinegar chemically reacts to turn the urine oils to salts, which are then easily water soluble. and the apple cider vinegar does this better than white vinegar. good luck!

@Eyebrows McGee: It seems to be the reason why we used to use boric acid to kill roaches. Someone told me it cuts the chitin shell and the bugs dry up. Not sure it that's true, but it appears to work like the powders do for ants.

@b612markt:

I've done the Real Simple (the magazine folks) shiny sink thing once a month in my kitchen forever - and the method works well in tubs and smaller sinks as well. Basically, you fill up your sink with hot water, throw in a cup of bleach and walk away for an hour.

Come back, rinse and do a quick scour with baking soda (baking soda is great for any quick scour). If you have a stainless steel sink, you'll be amazed at how much cleaner it looks after this. Basically, you'll be rid of any lingering stains, scum or various ickies you have left behind without having to do a hard-core scrubs or super-expensive cleaner that promise to do the same.

Never forget the power of that cheap gallon of bleach - and some do come in better smelling versions nowadays.

@OmarMarr: How would the vinegar do this? Vinegar is an acid. The chemical that turns oil into a salt (soap, which is chemically a salt) is sodium hydroxide, or lye, one of the most alkaline chemicals known.

Did you talk to a chemist about any of these?

Baking soda is a good cleaner, and vinegar is a good cleaner; but an equal mixture of both in hot water leaves you with nothing but water and carbon dioxide gas. The soda is a base and the vinegar is an acid, and they simply neutralize each other. (As it turns out, hot water cleans fairly well, too, which may explain why any of you thought this mixture had any cleaning power at all.) My guess is, though, that there's far more baking soda in a Tb of baking soda than there is vinegar in a Tb of vinegar, since the vinegar is already mostly water. Ditch the vinegar; just make a solution of baking soda in hot water.

Cream of tartar is an acidic salt, so it's no surprise that it takes the spots off your aluminum pans - it's taking a fair bit of the aluminum away, too. So don't do it often.

3 Tb of vinegar in a quart of water isn't enough to be very effective at anything given that household white vinegar is only 3% vinegar or so.

You don't add minerals to water to make it soft - minerals in your water is what makes it hard. Detergents and shampoos usually have an amount of a chelating agent like EDTA that traps these minerals and improves the action of the soap or detergent they've been mixed in. Adding baking soda, which contains sodium ions, just introduces extra metal ions into the solution and "uses up" a portion of the EDTA that is already in your detergent. Use washing soda instead, because it will bind with magnesium and calcium ions in your water.

Most of this list seems to be based on not knowing the difference between cream of tartar, baking soda, and washing soda. Did Consumer Reports even talk to a chemist? I'm surprised it doesn't say something like "save time around the house and clean in one step instead of two by mixing bleach and ammonia!"

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Did you put soy sauce on your comment?

Follow-up to #1: Or get rid of the dog and get a cat instead.

@Con Seannery wants the azure F back!: It was all that was left after I applied the "if you can't say something nice" principle.

I'll take an alternate route here and recommend a steam-mop. I've been using it for 6 months and my non-carpet floors always look fantastic with just a cup of water and very little effort.

I use baking soda for pretty much everything, cleaning out the coffee pot, scrubbing the sink, tub, stove and toilet. It's cheaper than comet and I don't have to worry about the cat and dog licking any residue. A 4 pound bag is about 3 dollars at costco and lasts forever.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: LOL. Nope, got silver polish for the silver and I can't imagine BOILING them!

Usually I use a water/vinegar mix in a shallow pan for a few minutes on the stainless steel. Vinegar-soaked cloth for the wine glasses.

@crashfrog: You say that like chlorine gas is a bad thing!

Baking soda left on a damp, smelly carpet overnight will absorb the odor and moisture, and then you can just vacuum it up. I think it works for upholstery too.

I worked in a repertory theatre once, and to deodorize the costume pieces that couldn't be washed, we used a mix of one part water to one part super-cheap vodka, with a few drops of lavender essential oil. The vodka evaporates without leaving an alcohol smell behind, and takes the worst of the odor with it. A good substitute for Febreze, you can put in whatever perfume or scent you like, and if you have a Brita pitcher you can filter the rest of it and render it marginally drinkable.

You can also use regular rubbing alcohol for getting rid of urine smells. Mix a little witch hazel into it and it smells better and is calming for your cat!

@crashfrog Good points, however for the sake of being nitpicky, baking soda+water =sodium acetate (in addition to CO2+water).

@crashfog: Baking soda and vinegar is great for all sorts of things. You don't mix it in the bucket, you sprinkle the baking soda on the dirty area then mop with the vinegar solution.

The vinegar and baking soda reaction is amazing -- try it on grout, its a miracle.

@mythago: Your just wasting your money and inhaling toxic stew. You do not need industrial chemicals to clean your house. I swear this has been so ingrained into people's brains it is like a scene out of The Matrix. You do not need all that expensive chemical stuff to clean your house.

@mythago: "If it were so great and inexpensive don't you think they'd be the first ones all over it?"

LOL No, because they'd have a hard time selling a dollar's worth of vinegar for $6 at the grocery store. However, for that same $6 it's not so hard to sell a dollar's worth of chemicals that people can't mix together in their kitchen. Then they can spend that extra $5 on buying TV commercials to tell you how great it is.

I have gradually been eliminating store bought cleaners for the past year. Vinegar and baking soda will clean just about everything. I keep a bottle of 50-50 distilled water and vinegar in a spray bottle. I use washable microfiber rags from the auto dept. at Target instead of paper towels. It cleans as good as any all purpose cleaner. I use vinegar in the rinse aid compartments of our dish-drawer dishwasher. No more water spots and things get cleaner. Baking soda and vinegar along with a scrub brush gets all the crud off the bath tub. The vinegar & water with a microfiber does a great job on glass. You can get 2 gallons of vinegar at Sam's or Costco for about $3 and a huge bag of baking soda for under $5.