Everything Under My Sink. 4 Items. That's All I've Needed for 40 Years

My name is Darlene Hollis. I cooked in a school kitchen in Henderson County for thirty-five years, feeding four hundred children a day, and the county never once bought us nineteen kinds of spray. You have a bottle for glass, a bottle for granite, a bottle for stainless, a foam for the tub, a gel for the toilet, and something purple for the shower that promised you'd never scrub again. Most of them are half full. You are not fighting nineteen kinds of dirt. You are paying by the surface for a problem that sorts by chemistry. There are three kinds of dirty in a house. Grease, mineral, and germs. Grease from cooking and hands. Mineral from hard water — that white film, that soap scum, the same haze on your drinking glasses. Germs where raw meat or sickness has been. Soap chases grease, because every bit of it has one end that grabs oil and one that grabs water. Vinegar chases mineral, because that film is alkaline and vinegar is a mild acid. Baking soda is the opposite — mild alkali, soft grit, gentle enough not to scratch and rough enough to lift. Bleach chases what you can't see. So you quit buying by the room and start buying by the dirt. Vinegar, soda, dish soap, bleach, and two dollar-store spray bottles with the labels written on in marker. Under fifteen dollars, and the vinegar and soda last me the better part of a year. You are not doing without a thing. You are keeping a short shelf. In this video I show you the four things and what each one is actually for, the exact half-and-half vinegar mix, the public-health bleach dilutions for food surfaces and for the toilet, how to lift a burnt pan with soda and ten minutes of simmering, how a half cup of vinegar in the rinse cycle fixes stiff sour towels, the weekly kettle down the kitchen drain, and the three jobs a box of soda has in my house before it's allowed to be done. I also tell you where it falls short. Soda will not strip oven glass the way the harsh stuff does, vinegar has no business on natural stone, and if you're expecting a scent of the month, this isn't it. --- WHAT YOU WILL NEED A gallon of plain white vinegar — a little over three dollars A four-pound box of baking soda — about a dollar and a half A bottle of plain dish soap — around two dollars A small jug of plain unscented bleach — around three dollars Two empty spray bottles — a dollar and a quarter apiece, and a marker to label them Clean cotton rags and a bucket A WORD OF CAUTION Never mix bleach with vinegar, or with anything but plain water. Together they make chlorine gas, and that is a hospital visit, not a cough. Separate bottles, marked bottles, never the same bucket. Keep vinegar off marble, granite, and any natural stone — acid etches it, so those counters get soap and water only. And bleach weakens sitting in the jug; after about a year it's mostly salty water, so buy the small one. If you found this useful, subscribe. I put up the plain old ways of keeping a house every day. #frugalliving #oldways #cleaningtips #homemaking #bakingsoda #vinegarcleaning #southernwisdom #depressionera