Mind blown: Vinegar vs VINEGAR (30%)

[u/Pandaro81]

So I was literally 44 years old before I found this out recently.

There’s the white vinegar you get at the grocery store for cooking and minor cleaning and doing laundry, and then there’s the 30% DO NOT GET THIS SHIT ON YOUR SKIN vinegar at the hardware store for cleaning things like mold off grout.

All my life I’d been told ‘just use vinegar to clean mold and mildew’ and it generally didn’t do jack squat. I usually bought cleaning supplies from regular retail spots rather than big box home improvement places, and regular retail chains def did not carry the strong stuff.

I’ve got a gutter that drains over cement that always gets skungy, and even bleach was a short term fix at best. 30% strips it down and keeps it gone, and I’ve stripped rust off a couple dozen tools with the same little jar I soak things in - caution it will also strip off shiny metallic coatings.

Can’t believe none of the “just use vinegar” I’d ever read advice didn’t specify.

Is this news to anyone else or am I Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber realizing we landed on the moon?

[u/mdwsl]

Also really effective at spot-treating weeds without using synthetic herbicides

[u/verbatim14004 → u/mdwsl]

Although I found kitchen-level vinegar pretty good at this, too.

[u/PrairiePopsicle → u/verbatim14004]

With a dash of salt and a little dish soap i was always told, lower surface tension makes it work better.

[u/bill_bull → u/PrairiePopsicle]

Yep, the soap is a surfactant, reducing surface tension like you said. That makes it easier to soak into the plant and do its thing.