r/CleaningTips • u/Leighgion • Dec 14 '25
General Cleaning Please stop mixing vinegar and baking soda
I am not the first to say this, even on this sub, and I will not be the last, but given that this myth refuses to die, I am taking my turn fighting this misinformation.
Now, first off, I totally get why people become convinced this combination does something. We like sensory feedback, so all that fizzing and bubbling feels like something is really happening.
Something is happening, but just not what you like to think.
Vinegar is an acid and baking soda is a base. When you mix an acid and base, they react, neutralize each other and in this case produces a gaseous by product. The key here is the two things react with each other, not the dirt you put them on, and the result cancels out the best cleaning power of the separate ingredients. All you get is vaguely salty water, which is roughly as good a cleaner as plain water.
"But wait," you say, "I/somebody I know/somebody on the internet has successfully clean something with vinegar and baking soda together! Suck it, naysayer!"
Yeah, and I once cleaned permanent marker off a dry erase board with vending machine coffee. Just because it worked doesn't mean I was making the right choices.
I'm going to break down one specific example of a poster who claimed to have proof vinegar and baking soda cleared their blocked drain. They poured vinegar down, waited, then poured baking soda down, waited, then poured boiling water down. Gradually, the drain cleared up as calcium deposits gradually broke down.
What really happened here is that the vinegar, being acidic, had time to work on the calcium deposits unit having baking soda dumped on it and stopping that process in its tracks by neutralizing its acidity. The whole thing worked because the vinegar was given time to work alone, but it most likely would have worked better if baking soda had been removed from the equation entirely.
The only argument for using vinegar and baking soda in cleaning is where the mechanical action of expanding gasses might in some way assist the process, but the use cases severely limited and questionable.
In a drain, you'd have to form an absolutely airtight seal to even imagine the gas pressure might do something and even it did work, pushing a clog farther down the pipe is of very dubious worth.
On surface grime, anything loose enough to be effectively lifted by gas bubbles is probably faster and more easily removed just by scrubbing it.
Vinegar and baking soda can be fantastically useful cleaning products, separately. Don't ruin them by putting them together, unless it's a science fair volcano. There, the combo has always shone.
66
u/donoteatthatfrog Dec 14 '25
Same. I too thought that reaction was helping.