We Tested It: Cleaning With Baking Soda
However reluctantly, I have timidly stepped into the world of "natural products". I still like fast food and aerosol cheeses, but as I get older, I am finding myself somewhat more apt to buy "organic" foods and a lot more likely to be unreasonably impressed by products with fewer than five
Posted — UpdatedBaking soda really only has two easy non-baking uses, and those are cleaning and deodorizing. As for deodorizing, baking soda works really well. I am constantly chopping garlic and onions, and even after washing my cutting boards with soap and water, they seem to retain at least a little odor. Baking soda took care of that in just a couple of minutes. I sprinkled some baking soda on the cutting board, rinsed it off shortly after, and it was entirely odor free. I could go on listing other things you could remove odor from with baking soda – I could probably even make it to 51. Your kitchen drain! Your freezer! But, you get it. It takes the smell out of things. Use it on whatever. We don't' need to fetishize it. (Fun Fact: you can find no Google link relating directly to a baking soda fetish.)
As for baking soda's cleaning/scrubbing uses, I had mixed results. First, I tried using baking soda to scrub my bathtub because I was long overdue for a bathtub cleaning. Really, really long overdue. I was as overdue for the bathtub cleaning as I am ashamed that I let it get to this point.
It worked out reasonably well. I don't know if there's anything about the chemical makeup of baking soda that made it effective. It seemed to work about as well as any abrasive powder would. Sand I'm pretty sure would have just as efficiently scrubbed away the scum. But, I live in a tilted apartment that causes shower water to pool right in front of the drain and leave a stain. The baking soda did not at all help remove that stain.
I had to resort to Comet to fix that.
I mixed six parts baking soda with one part hydrogen peroxide.
I then put some on my toothbrush and went for it.
It was horrifying. It was truly terrible. It tasted like I poured a salty poison over a 9-volt battery and then licked it. Actually, that's not quite vivid enough. Let's try again. It tasted like the melting face of a troll. I immediately spit it out and brushed my teeth with real toothpaste.
So, to review, baking soda worked really well as a deodorizer, kind of well as a bathtub cleanser, and really unpleasantly as a tooth cleaner. It's certainly worth having around, but it's not something I plan on using regularly in place of "real" cleaning products or toothpaste.