Does anybody actually clean their houses with vinegar, and if so, doesn't your house smell like vinegar?

I do, but I also polish my furniture and wax my floors with olive oil, so my house smells like Italian salad dressing. ;-p

Seriously though, I clean my kitchen counter tops with vinegar. I just spray it on and wipe it off. It’s a great nontoxic disinfectant and ant repellant.

There’s no residual odor, not even if I put my nose right on the counter and deeply inhale.

I do use vinegar from time to time. The vinegar smell doesn’t hang around once it is dry. It is actually a great deodorizer. If you have a bathroom garbage can that is stinky, it will help get rid of the smell.
Use it on your outside garbage cans to test it out. Initially it is smelly but it does eliminate smell and cuts the grease on windows without leaving streaks.

I use vinegar many times for my home cleaning. I prefer to mix vinegar with few drops of fragrance liquid which helpful to get rid from vinegar smell. As well its smell will be disappear after some time.

I like the smell, so it doesn’t bother me. I actually wish it would last a bit longer, as it dissipates very quickly.

I use it. The house doesn’t smell once the vinegar dries.

Same with using apple cider vinegar instead of conditioner. No smell once it dries.

It’s nontoxic, inexpensive and easy to use.

I use vinegar all the time. It’s dirt cheap and safe to clean with. The smell of vinegar goes away pretty quickly.

I use a 50/50 vinegar/water solution to clean glass. It is cheaper and works as well or better than any commercial product.

It seems to me that if you always keep plenty on vinegar, baking soda, duct tape and WD-40 on hand, life will stay just a shade easier for you….

I use vinegar on my floors. It’s a mild acid and it really cleans. No, my house doesn’t smell like Easter Eggs. :) It just smells naturally clean.

When you use other types of cleaners, they have all kinds of fake scents added to them. Those scents are much stronger than the vinegar, and they linger. They cover up other smells. It gives people the impression your house is clean, even if it isn’t. You could have just sprayed cleaner in the air 2 minutes before they came over, and not really cleaned the floors!

I clean bathrooms with windex that uses vinegar. It works really well and makes things shiny. There’s a faint smell of vinegar in the rooms at first, but it smells clean. Plus, I spray them with air freshener afterward anyway.

My mom and I both do. It doesn’t smell at all once it’s dry.

I thought my mom had lost it when she mentioned cleaning with vinegar to me.
I was concerned that my house would smell like a pickle or something. She actually told me that it would be an improvement. lol I have a bad addiction to Glades Angel Whispers candles. She thinks they stink.

I agree with @Dutchess_III. Now that I have switched to natural products, I have a very low tolerance for fake fragrances.

I use it to make salad dressings and for making poached eggs (just a splash), but I never thought of it as a cleaner. Thanks, everybody, for all these great tips.

I do use it from time to time. I also use it as a fabric softener and it does not leave any smell.

That’s all I use. No smell.

I use only a mix of half water and half white vinegar, for everything. The odor dissipates almost
immediately.

I switched from the more toxic commercial cleaners over 5 years ago when Milo arrived and began to drink from the bottom of the bathtubs and the toilet bowl and from random damp splashes in the kitchen.

My house looks just as clean. It is cheaper and I can mix it myself. I keep several gallon jugs of white vinegar in kitchen and laundry room.

I put a mixture of the vinegar and water in a spray bottle; my cleaning couple (every two weeks) don’t care what they use as long as that bottle is filled.

We use it on our wood floors – it’s what the previous owners recommended and the floors looked awesome, so we followed their advice. Actually, it’s like solution of half vinegar (white) and half water..and we spray it and use like a cloth mop to wipe it up.
Keeps the floors super clean, doesn’t smell at all once it dries, leaves no build-up on the wood floors.

I do it to clean the soap scum in my shower and no my house don’t smell like vinegar because white vinegar evaporates.

Roomba’s wet floor cleaning robot (Scooba) has a commercial cleaner you can use in it, but the instruction manual says you can also use water with 2 ounces of vinegar in the tank. And I preferred that because I had a tiny crawler at the time and wasn’t keen on her licking whatever that machine was depositing on the floor. But vinegar is non-toxic in small enough quantities, so I felt better if she was licking vinegar residue if the floor.
Yes, the house would smell like vinegar for the rest of the afternoon, but we left the windows opened and the smell was gone by the time we went to sleep.

Well, yeah, it’s non-toxic @drhat77! People use it in cooking! I use it in potato salad.

I’ve been curious about this as well. When mixed with water in a spray bottle, does it last or does the vinegar become ineffective after a day or two in the bottle?

I wouldn’t think it would @augustlan. I don’t like using vinegar on my counter tops and stove and such, because it doesn’t really cut the grease the way commercial cleaners, or even just soap and water do. Or maybe that’s just a perception of mine because it almost seems like your using plain water to clean.

@Dutchess_III I mix blue Dawn soap and vinegar and clean with that. It’s a great all-purpose and de-greasing cleaner.

Nice @Cupcake. Or maybe ammonia. I used and ammonia/water mix for years and years, until my husband showed up. Now we have tons of commercial brand cleaners and soaps and crap.

I would never voluntarily breathe ammonia fumes, no matter how diluted. Give me vinegar or give me a dirty house.

@augustlan – We leave our “Floor Cleaner” mix (which is about 50/50 white vinegar and water) in a spray bottle and it seems the same (same effectiveness cleaning, same initial vinegar smell when we spray it on the floor) regardless of how long we’ve stored it mixed with the water.