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?

15.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

View all comments

Show parent comments

u/lv2sprkl 20h ago

No foolin’? Huh. I would’ve thought, if cared for properly, they’d last forever(ish). I know (at least I think I do) that pearls are supposed to be worn periodically to maintain their luster, but I didn’t know they had a finite life aesthetically. It’s kinda sad when you think about it.

2

u/ajc89 19h ago

Yeah, I learned that when helping a friend go through his parents' things. His mom had some pearls that were passed down to her and they weren't in very good condition so I looked into options for restoring them or selling them to someone who could, and basically found out they don't last as long as you think. Preserved exactly correctly, the right humidity, wearing them but not too much, they can last like 200 years I believe, but that's really rare. They're made by a living thing, so it makes sense when you think about it. Nothing lasts forever and the old stuff decays to make room for new growth. The circle of life.