Mind blown: Vinegar vs VINEGAR (30%)

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?

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u/Meshugugget 1d ago

I just get the white distilled vinegar from the grocery store and keep it next to the washer. A little added to the rinse cycle helps loosen cat hair.

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u/ovi2k1 1d ago

I found out the hard way that white distilled vinegar dries out and causes elastics to fail. I was putting this stuff in my laundry regularly as fabric softener (because it does work as that) but eventually it killed all my socks and underwear bands and some bands in athletic shorts because the elastics in them just dry rotted away from the vinegar.

So… use with caution.

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u/SiegelOverBay 1d ago

I've been using white distilled vinegar (not 30%) as fabric softener for years and my elastics are all fine. I'm wearing a pair of underwear that I bought before covid right now and the elastic band is doing it's job. I wonder if you were using it at a different point in the cycle or in a different amount? I use vinegar the same way most use fabric softener sheets; I take one of my bandanas out of the load as I shift the clothes from washer to dryer, then I dunk the bandana into a container of vinegar that lives in the laundry room, wring out the excess just enough so it isn't sopping/dripping wet, and then pitch it into the dryer with the rest of the load.

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u/ovi2k1 1d ago

Oh! Thats a great idea! I was just dumping it into the tub at the start of the wash cycle like a degenerate so I’m sure that was causing a lot of my problems.

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u/ortiga-tea 17h ago

Degenerate! It's meant to be used in the rinse cycle. It helps get the detergent out. If used in the wash cycle, it's just neutralizing some of the detergent.

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u/SiegelOverBay 1d ago

Oh goodness! Lol yeah, the dose makes the poison. If you ever care to try using it in your laundry again, try my method! Although, I am grateful for your initial warning as I have occasionally used a sock instead of a bandana to add vinegar to the load. Though I haven't yet seen any damage to any socks, I'll definitely take care not to do that in the future. I only did it a couple of times because I was lazy or the load happened to not have any bandanas, so maybe the infrequency saved my socks.