I love using vinegar to clean with. It is cheap (I can get a gallon at Save a Lot for under a buck), natural and multipurpose (hey, you can clean with it, disinfect with it, and eat it)
The three things I use vinegar for most often are:
#1 Fabric softener. I just put it in the liquid fabric softener dispenser in my washing machine. Although there may be a slight “vinegar” smell when you take the laundry out, it disappears when the clothing dries.
#2 Mopping the floors. I use a squirt of dishsoap and a few “glugs” of vinegar in my mop water.
#3 Deoderizing. A small dish of vinegar left in the microwave, fridge, or on a counter naturally absorbs odor.
There are tons of frugal folks who have written at great legnth about the wonders of vinegar. Some of the best are the Vinegar Page over at Frugal Living at About.com and the Many Uses for Vinegar Pages on Frugal for Life.
My favorite vinegar trick is using it to clean the microwave. You put a little in a cup of water and set it to boil. The steam and the acid of the vinegar loosens everything up and makes it easy to clean.
In fact, wasn’t it you who wrote about how silly and expensive those individual microwave cleaning packets are?
Yup-that was me 🙂
Now if cleaning the regular oven was as easy. . .