20 Unusual Uses for Vinegar

by Stephanie Rogers
from http://ecosalon.com/

Vinegar as your home’s superhero.

Chances are you’ve got a big bottle of vinegar in your pantry right now and that you only use it as a condiment. Prized for thousands of years, this fermented liquid was discovered by accident when products like wine, beer and cider spoiled, turning them sour. But did you know that vinegar – particularly the distilled white and apple cider varieties – has hundreds of household, beauty, medicinal and even horticultural uses? Here are 20 unusual, thrifty and eco-friendly uses for vinegar that you may not have thought of.

Hair conditioner

Silky, shiny, buildup-free hair using a single cheap, natural product? Sign me up! It may sound odd, but using apple cider vinegar as a rinse after shampooing really does work like a dream. It removes residue from the hair shaft and closes the cuticles. Just add half a tablespoon of vinegar to a cup of water, plus a few drops of essential oil if you like. Pour it on in the shower and then rinse it out. Sure, your hair will smell like salad dressing for a while, but once it’s dry, the smell dissipates.

Weed killer

A few rogue weeds can wreak havoc in an otherwise flawless lawn, vegetable garden or flowerbed and are especially annoying when popping up in the cracks of a sidewalk or driveway. Forget pricey weed killers full of toxic ingredients – household vinegar really does kill unwanted plants; stronger vinegar made for horticultural use, which is 25% acetic acid, works even better.

Underarm stain remover

Unsightly sweat stains can really ruin an otherwise beautiful blouse. Ironically, if you use aluminum-based antiperspirants, they’re even more likely to appear thanks to a reaction between aluminum compounds in these products and salts in your sweat. Spray full-strength white vinegar on the stain before washing and it will disappear.

Fabric softener

Add 1/2 cup of white vinegar to the wash cycle and not only will it prevent lint from clinging to your clothes and keep colors bright, it’ll also remove soap scum from both the clothes you’re washing and the washing machine itself. Vinegar is also recommended in place of dryer sheets – simply add 3/4 cup to your washer during the final rinse cycle.

Sore throat remedy

Many people recommend sipping or gargling with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a cup of warm water to soothe a sore throat. Add a few tablespoons of honey (also a seriously versatile product!) to this mixture in order to make it even more effective, and far more palatable.

Ant deterrent

Got trails of tiny ants weaving their way around your home? These annoying insects aren’t big fans of vinegar, so spraying a 50/50 mixture of white vinegar and water anywhere you have seen them can help encourage them to move out. The vinegar also erases the scent trails that they use to indicate sources of food to their brethren.

Sore muscle soak

Apple cider vinegar helps draw out lactic acid, which accumulates in muscles after exercise, causing that sore feeling. Mix a few tablespoons of vinegar into a cup of water, dip a cloth in the mixture and apply it to sore areas for 20 minutes.

Air freshener

Whether it’s smoke, mildew, pet odor or lingering whiffs of burnt casserole, bad smells can make a home less than welcoming. Store-bought air fresheners just cover up the smell with strong, clearly artificial scents, creating disturbing hybrid smells that only serve to worsen the situation. Acetic acid in vinegar absorbs odors, so spritzing it around the room will neutralize the smells. You can also use it to wipe down surfaces in the room that needs freshening.

Sticker remover

If you’re just getting around to removing that Kerry/Edwards decal from your bumper, or trying to peel a price tag off a new purchase, you’ll never guess what magic ingredient is about to make your life a lot easier. Warm a little bit of white vinegar on the stove top or in the microwave and then dip a rag into it. Hold the rag over the sticker until it’s thoroughly saturated, and it will peel right off without leaving sticky residue behind. This trick also loosens wallpaper adhesive.

Hiccup cure

Most doctors claim that hiccup cures don’t actually work, but tell that to the thousands of people who swear by vinegar as a way to ease these involuntary spasms. It’s not clear how a shot of vinegar would actually help – other than to distract you with its acidic flavor – but next time you’ve got a bout of the hiccups, give it a try.

Clean crusty paintbrushes

So you forgot to clean your paintbrushes last time you used them, and now they’re so stiff and crusty, it seems that you’ll have to throw them away. Not so fast! Fill a saucepan with undiluted white vinegar and bring it to a boil over medium heat. Dip the paintbrushes into the boiling vinegar, one at a time, dragging the bristles along the bottom of the pan. Continue this process until the paint is dissolved.

Dissolve rust

The acetic acid in vinegar reacts with iron oxide to remove rust from small metal items like hinges, nuts and bolts. Simmer them in a saucepan full of vinegar, then rinse well with water to prevent the vinegar from further affecting the metal.

Eliminate stale odors

You know how lunch boxes and other food containers can take on a funny smell after a while? Vinegar can take care of that, too. Either wipe down the surface well with white vinegar or, in severe cases, leave a cloth soaked in vinegar in the container for a few hours to absorb the odors.

Remove mineral deposits

Calcium and lime deposits from hard water don’t just stain coffee makers and bath tubs, they can actually clog shower heads and reduce dishwasher function. Run a mixture of half water, half white vinegar through your coffee machine to remove them. Use straight vinegar as a rinsing agent in your dishwasher to prevent buildup, and wrap a vinegar-soaked cloth around stained faucets until the deposits can be easily scrubbed away. To clean a clogged shower head, remove it from the pipe and place it in a saucepan full of white vinegar. Simmer for just a few minutes, being careful not to allow it to boil, and then wash off the stains.

Neutralize spice in foods

You’ve got a dinner disaster on your hands: one too many shakes of cayenne powder has turned your award-winning chili into an inedible five-alarm blaze, and your guests are waiting at the table. Vinegar to the rescue! Add white or apple cider vinegar to your food, one teaspoon at a time, to neutralize the spice.

Prolong the life of cut flowers

Bouquets of cut flowers brighten a room all too briefly, often wilting after just a few days. Squeeze a little extra enjoyment out of your arrangements by adding two tablespoons of white vinegar per quart of water in the vase, which will keep them perky just a little bit longer.

Glass, plastic, chrome and floor cleaner

A half-and-half solution of water and white vinegar will cut the grime on the shelves and walls of the refrigerator and eliminate spoiled food smells too. Full-strength vinegar will remove tough smudges on glass and make porcelain sinks shine. Make it into a paste with a little baking soda to scrub chrome, or mix 1/3 white vinegar with 1/3 rubbing alcohol, 1/3 water and 3 drops of dishwashing liquid for an economical floor cleaner. Just be sure not to get vinegar on marble, granite or slate surfaces.

Treat fungal infections

Fungal infections like athlete’s foot, toe nail fungus and dandruff are definitely no fun. White vinegar and apple cider vinegar can both be applied topically to affected areas of the body to kill fungus. For foot-related ailments, soak in a solution of one part vinegar to five parts water for about thirty minutes a day.

Tenderize and kill bacteria in meat

Marinate meat overnight in apple cider vinegar and it will be delectably tender. This can reportedly also kill the bacteria that causes food-borne illnesses, including e. coli.

Open drains and freshen garbage disposals

Clear a clogged drain without the nasty, headache-inducing chemicals. Dump about 3/4 cup of baking soda down the drain and chase it with 1/2 cup white vinegar, then plug the drain. Leave it for about 30 minutes before rinsing with a kettle full of boiling water. You can use the same trick to clean and deodorize garbage disposals, or freeze vinegar in an ice cube tray and grind them up in the disposal to clean and sharpen the blades at the same time.

Awesome Product Innovations

From: http://www.geekfill.com/

Zombie Doorstop (Crawling)

Doorstop shaped like a crawling zombie, squished by the door. Buy it here.

Doctor Who TARDIS 4 Port USB Hub

Collectible item from the Doctor Who TV series. 4-port USB hub shaped like the Doctor’s TARDIS. Buy it here.

Between the sheet Bed Fan

The Bed Fan delivers a cool breeze between the sheets—without AC costs, and without disturbing your partner. Buy it here.

Bizarre Night Bulb

Product page here.

Best Book Stand Ever?

Stop those books from falling over with Art Ori Design’s funky bookend. The heavy books appear to almost crush the handsome little man, but don’t worry – the sturdy bookend will keep your books tidy and upright. Product page here.

Portable Amplifier for iPhone

Slip the BONE Horn Stand speaker onto your iPhone for lo-fi amplification simplicity. Using old-fashioned acoustical science, this silicone stand adds 13 decibels of sound pressure to your iPhone’s speakers without asking for an erg of battery juice. Buy it here.

Half Liter Pirate Skull Drinking Glass

You can buy it here.

Shark Socks

You can buy it here.

7 High Tech Products And Their Cheap Ass Ingredients

http://www.cracked.com/
By Ian Fortey

Every day you are bombarded with commercials for things you have to buy to avoid ending up bitter and alone in a pile of your own, reeking filth. You trust these products, because they arestate of the art and one of a kind, and because you are an idiot. Or at least, that's what the advertisers think. It turns out a lot of these amazing, cutting edge products are really bullshit. Not just bullshit, but bullshit you could make on your own, for next to no cost. Such as... #7. Audio Cables How They're Marketed: The world of audiophiles is a strange and frightening one. For them, the actual song is bullshit. What really matters is the sound quality. Do you want to listen to t.a.t.u all scratchy and low fidelity, whatever that means? Fuck no, you want to hear it with such clarity and richness the pseudo-lesbian antics are practically tickling your eardrums right alongside every awful note. And you can't do that with your shitty Walkman. You need high tech audio equipment. Shit like Pear audio cables. They fucking rule, because they cost thousands of dollars. Pear stays in business based on the "holy shit" principle. As in "holy shit, those speaker cables cost thousands of dollars" or "holy shit, I breathe through my mouth, and these cables cost thousands of dollars, therefore they must be the best and I should buy them." Pear's Anjou cables apply "rigorous consideration of applicable scientific and engineering principles followed by real world testing." That means they're so highly advanced that when you use them to connect your 8-track player to your speakers, if it happens under a full moon, Aqua may actually appear and sing "Barbie Girl" live for you. No shit. It's happened before. Twice. It's not like they're doing anything else. What it Really Is: Like any audio cables, the Anjou cables--and other insanely expensive cables like them--are kinda sorta just cables. Pretty much a few pennies worth of copper and plastic. Not only do the expensive cables not make thousands of dollars worth of difference, they don't make any difference. To prove it, skeptic James Randi offered $1 million to anyone who could hear the difference between cheap cables and the high-end ones in a big, public "you are full of shit" throwdown. Seriously, just take the blind hearing test, cheap cables vs. Pear, and if you can pick out the difference, you're a millionaire. As it stands, Randi still has his million dollars and you can get some decent cables at Wal-Mart for a few bucks. #6. Whitening Toothpaste How it's Marketed: Toothpaste ads are quick to inform us that every time you smile you're forcing the world to tolerate your corn-filled shitlog of a grimace and no one anywhere is enjoying it. Indeed, the fact is no matter how much you brush with your tube of Sponge Bob Bubblegum flavored toothpaste, your teeth are still manky, stained pillars jutting forth like the decrepit fingers of the damned. Brooke Shields wouldn't be half the woman she is today if she was walking around with the Crypt Keeper teeth she was born with Brooke Shields, 1983. Fortunately, toothpaste manufacturers offer redemption via just a few weeks of vigorous brushing with their cutting edged whitening toothpastes! What a miracle of modern fucking science! What it Really Is: Whitening toothpaste, by and large, is regular toothpaste with grit in it. It can be anything from aluminum oxide, which is the main ingredient in chalk used for billiards, to calcium carbonate, the basic ingredient of many antacids. Basically, if it's gritty, it'll scrub shit off your teeth. They could use sand in whitening toothpaste and get the same effect. Or you could grind your teeth on a big bag of rocks. Another popular ingredient is hydrogen peroxide; that stuff that mom put on all your scraped knees that fizzed up like nobody's business. Peroxide does have bleaching properties, but in toothpaste is at such alow level its effect is pretty negligible. So your dentists formulated and recommended whitening formula's actual working components could be mimicked at home if you drop your toothbrush on the floor and simply choose not to wipe all the crunchy shit off of it before brushing. #5. OxiClean How It's Marketed: Like us, you probably do your monthly load of laundry then pull out your graying boxers, tears in your eyes, and lament those fart starts that just won't come clean no matter how much detergent you put in the wash. And while we're on the topic, how do we get the barbeque stains off the other side of the boxers? Can't anyone answer our prayers? Fuck yes, late infomercial barker Billy Mays can! Rest in Peace, you magnificent beard. OxiClean is so amazing that pitchman Billy Mays cannot keep his voice at a reasonable volume at all. He is losing his shit and it's because stains are history. Did you see how Julia saved her home from the filth trail left by those two dwarfs on PCP? Amazing. If it hadn't been for Billy Mays and his ultimate weapon against stains, Julia would probably be turning tricks right now. "You'd never know that I just killed a hooker in this bed. Thanks OxiClean!" What it Really Is: In fact, OxiClean is actually sodium percarbonate, a standard cleaning chemical that's been around just short of forever. You can buy it in bulk at most chemical supply companies or pool supply stores where it's sold to help balance your pool's pH. You can get bucket loads cheap as hell there, but you have to ask yourself if you're willing to deprive the Mays estate of the income. Do you want Billy to have died in vain? #4. HeadOn How It's Marketed: After an evening of drinking Wild Turkey and smashing open coconuts with your forehead, chances are good that you're going to wake up with a splitting headache. Sure there's proven, over the counter drugs like Tylenol and Advil that you can get at the drugstore, but you know what else they sell at the drugstore? Tampons. Ergo, drugstores are for pussies. You need some scientifically formulated awesome that's going to fix your mildly bruised frontal lobes and allow you to go about your day. You need HeadOn. We hear you apply it directly to your forehead. If you haven't seen the commercials for this stuff, count yourself lucky. It's like a gypsy curse that grasps your brain with spindly, boney claws and won't fucking shut up. "Apply directly to the forehead. Apply directly to the forehead." Nowadays the commercials just repeat "HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead" about 16 times. But back when it first hit the market they assured consumers that one rub of this giant chapstick of pain thinner was all it took to make your headache vanish. In fact, they said it was "clinically proven." Hey, that sounds clinical, sign us up! And it provides fast, effective relief for headache pain. They even have a migraine strength version that probably contains opium or something. Best of all, the shit is available without a prescription, so thank God you don't need to offer your doctor a hummer to get your next HeadOn fix, you can just go to Walgreens and buy some. What it Really Is: But then the Better Business Bureau asked the makers of HeadOn to remove any "factual claims" from their commercials because there weren't a hell of a lot of "facts" to back up anything they were "claiming." HeadOn is really easy to duplicate even without the use of a fully stocked chemistry lab. If you'd like the same effect at home, you could rub a candle directly on your forehead. HeadOn, as it turns out, is almost completely made from wax, with a small amount of extra crap--small as in parts per trillion--added in. That means it is, effectively, just wax. Or, in other words, HeadOn is a shitty wax placebo. HeadOn is a shitty wax placebo. HeadOn is a shitty wax placebo!

#3.

Antiperspirants

How It's Marketed:

By and large everyone wants to assure you that, until you use an antiperspirant/deodorant of some kind, you're a fucking leper. Whatever situation you're in is going to end in disaster if you even think of starting to sweat, you greasy, slippery fucker you. And don't even think of having sex. Women hate you if you sweat. And ladies, men hate you too.

Ewww.

Secret has made a name for itself over the years assuring drippy, nasty ladies around the globe that their product, while strong enough to handle a man's pit deluge, it's actually pH balanced for a woman. Whatever the fuck that means.

Both hilarious and informative! So by what amazing medical advancement do these products somehow trick your body into not sweating?

What it Really Is:

Most antiperspirants contain chemicals like aluminum chloride or aluminum chlorohydrate. All they do is get stuck in your sweat glands and stop sweat from coming out. They're glorified stink corks. The same effect could be achieved at home by using something like alum to cover over the pores or witch hazel to shrink them. Realistically, though, any layer of shit that sticks in your pit would do just about as well as an antiperspirant.

Yes, even pudding. Especially pudding.

#2.

Energy Drinks

How It's Marketed:

Staying conscious is hard. There's awareness and cognition and all sorts of other shit that just wants to harsh your mellow. You need a little pick me up every once in a while to help keep you focused, and jabbering away like Quentin Tarantino. But if cocaine is too hard to come by, maybe you need an energy drink.They're like cocaine, only they taste like fruit that someone sat on.

The ads make us think that all energy drinks are marketed to the functionally retarded. The basic line is that you do shit poorly, drink this stuff and you will do it like Jesus if he were a pimp and jumping a skateboard off the top of Fuck You Mountain.

It even makes fat guys start cars. Sweet, that'll definitely help college kids do homework to the X-Treme!!

X-TREME!!!

What it Really Is:

Let's take a drink like Amp, which contains caffeine, taurine and guarana. Those are the big three ingredients, along with sugar, in pretty much every single energy drink out there. You should know by now sugar gives you a quick burst of energy followed by a big downer, and if we need to explain the effect of caffeine then we'd first like to welcome you to the 19th century. Please, hang up your tweed pantaloons as we explain this thing called electricity.

Sixteen ounces of Amp contains about 143 milligrams of caffeine. This seems like a lot, probably. On the other hand, an eight ounce cup of coffee is going to contain up to 175 milligrams. But Amp also has that guarana and taurine. Of course, guarana is just a plant that is full of caffeine and pretty much nothing else of note. That's where your 143 milligrams came from, but at least it contributes to what Amp does, unlike taurine. Taurine, so far as anyone can tell, doesn't do a goddamned thing.

So you could spend a few bucks on a big can of mildly fruity douche water to get a slight buzz, or just brew a cup of coffee and add some sugar and get the exact same effect. X-TREME!!!

This is the first Google image search result for "douchewater."

#1.

Gatorade

How It's Marketed:

Gatorade contains 22nd century nanotechnolgy and is responsible for Michael Jordan knowing how to play basketball and for Tiger Woods making anyone at all give a shit about golf.

Just look at this:

Holy shit is right, kids. Gatorade has laboratories and fucking face masks and dudes in white coats and all of them work together to make sports happen properly. None of that "may the best man win" bullshit . May the dude drinking Gatorade win. Fuck you every team in every sport from Cleveland!

Eat a dick, Chief Wahoo.

What it Really Is:

If you're anxious to become the next lacrosse sensation or, in this case, the first and only lacrosse sensation, but because you play lacrosse are too broke to afford Gatorade, you can make your own. How's that, you wonder? Cracked got its hands on the secret those Gatorade lab coat guys have been using for decades to make Michael Jordan a superstar.

First, you take some Koolaid. Then put on a lead apron (we have to assume this stuff isn't safe in its raw form) and add some salt. Now stand back. You just made Gatorade!

Yes, the space-age electrolyte balancing formula in Gatorade is pretty much the same thing deer have been using for centuries to stay moist: salt. The rest is pretty much just flavored water.

Now dump that shit on someone.