what's the point of using baking soda and vinegar together?

July 11, 2023 12:54 PM

I see "baking soda and vinegar" recommended as a cleaning solution (for drains, various cruddy buildup, etc) and I don't get it. Vinegar alone, ok, the acid might dissolve something. Baking soda alone, maybe the alkalinity would dissolve something. But if I put baking soda in a drain and then chase it with vinegar, aren't I just making bubbly salt water (or at best, a nearly neutral, only slightly acidic or alkaline solution?) Wouldn't it be better to choose one or the other, maybe with hot water added?
posted by fingersandtoes to Home & Garden (17 answers total)

For some people, bubbles = clean. If it's not bubbly it won't clean and if it is bubbly, it's cleaning. So we have sudsy shampoo and pour hydrogen peroxide on wounds. And mix an acid and a base to make bubbly water.

Use one or the other. Baking soda can help with greasy crud like baking sheets and kitchen drains. Sometimes following baking soda with a vinegar *rinse* can help clean up residue if needed.
posted by muddgirl at 12:58 PM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

I assume the purpose is to loosen gunk in places you can't really reach without a specific tool, like your bathroom sink drain. No clue under what circumstances it's strong enough to make that happen.
posted by meemzi at 1:09 PM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

It’s just because bubbles look good on social media. But it’s ineffective and messy. It works worse than either alone: vinegar is somewhat antibacterial - but baking soda neutralizes it . Baking soda is mildly abrasive - but vinegar dissolves it. Better off using just plain water and letting the gunk soak for a few minutes.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:11 PM on July 11, 2023

Best answer: I routinely use Baking Soda + Vinegar to clear our slow tub drain. The third element you're missing is that you stop up the drain as soon as you add the vinegar, so the foaming action of the solution (think about every school volcano science project you've ever seen) expands in a confined space. It can't go up into the tub, so it expands against the proto-clog instead, encouraging it to break up and move down the drain.

Our plumber suggested it, and it has greatly reduced the amount of full hair clogs we've had to deal with, while also being safer and less expensive than buying Drano once a month.
posted by anastasiav at 1:21 PM on July 11, 2023 [52 favorites]

Baking soda and vinegar together is a pretty useful way to fix a minor pipe clog. Hot water helps.
posted by chuke at 1:21 PM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

I've had to clean stuff that had acquired a smell, usually from mildew. It's always seemed odd that the products of a reaction were supposed to work better than the acidic and basic chemicals before the reaction. I found this to be correct - I might as well have used mud.
I've tried mixing the substances together on the surface I wanted to clean and this works very well. I suspect that this is because some of the intermediate products (the reaction is fairly complicated and not the simple one-step thing it's usually shown as) are very reactive and destroy the surface contamination.
Also vinegar is a good cleaning product generally, and it's not likely that people mixing the two get the proportions exactly right and both reagents are exactly used up.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 1:23 PM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Yeah, it works fine to add some bubbles to the vinegar. And bubbles do physically aid in cleaning. Lots of little nucleation sites form and bubbles form at wide variety of scales, creating lots of surface area. And yes, you use it as it's reacting, not when it's mixed and sat and the reactions are finished.

Don't use it if you don't like it, but don't assume it doesn't work just because of the notion that they neutralize each other. Because in practice they don't, and even if you mixed it just right, the expansive gas is useful in many situations.

I use either, both, and neither depending on their context, based on what's worked for me in the past.
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:44 PM on July 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

I think "this is a good way to clear a drain" has been incorrectly generalised to "this is good at cleaning"
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:59 PM on July 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

The way I always see it being recommended is to first do one and scrub it or leave it there for a while and then do the other. So you aren't mixing them first and then trying to clean stuff with it but are rather letting either the acidic vinegar or the alkaline baking soda do their work and then adding the other to create lots of bubbles everywhere and to neutralize things so that the vinegar or baking soda stop doing whatever it was they were doing.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:08 PM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

I don't think there's any cleaning action taking place per se, but I do use it for helping sinks drain, and it makes a difference getting the gunk to go down, as well as making things smell better if there was a mild clog causing slow drainage.

The other thing that seems to work for me is to wet the calcium carbonate buildup on my sink, then spray with WD-40, let sit, then scrubbing lightly with baking soda and finish by dumping vinegar till it foams away, then scrubbing whatever is left. Seems like the crud comes off easier than just scrubbing. My theory is that the WD-40 gets under the buildup and loosens it up, then the bubbles help loosen it up even more. But maybe it all just makes me feel like I'm doing something scientific.
posted by BlueHorse at 3:51 PM on July 11, 2023

I'm unimperssed with vinegar or baking soda as cleaners, mostly. But for a slow drain, baking soda followed by vinegar creates a bit of pressure and heat and helps. Much safer than drano or whatever.
posted by theora55 at 5:14 PM on July 11, 2023

I've just always used them like this:
Baking soda - Greasy stuff, especially the caked-on-glass-baking-dishes sort. Sometimes on grout.
Vinegar - Smells. Especially on fabric or carpet. Especially effective for very-cleaned-but-still-smelly urine or house-fire-smoke. Does well as an add-in for the rinse round of carpet-shampooing.
Both together - Just drains.
posted by stormyteal at 7:47 PM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

I’ve always assumed that it results in a full distribution to the diameter of the pipe rather than just having flow down the bottom.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:40 PM on July 11, 2023

We got a plumber testimonial, but I am very skeptical nonetheless. The alkaline or acidic solutions you'll get with baking soda and vinegar is very weak for treating the various oils/fats you'll find in drains, and will do nothing to hair. Really hot water can usually flush a lot of the fatty stuff, and the only way to really deal with hair is to physically remove it or use some very dangerous chemicals like plumbers sulphuric acid to dissolve it. I guess the more common consumer grade caustic chemicals will do it too, but they pale compared to the acid. I believe there are enzyme products that claim to dissolve organic material, but I suspect they'll take a lot of time to digest that stuff.

As for cleaning in general, the ingredients might be generally better than plain water overall. I have used baking soda alone as a mild scouring cleaner, and it works well enough for that purpose. Seems to be a little less abrasive than actual scouring powders. Vinegar can cut some grime and kill some smelly stuff/mold/mildew. But it smells itself and can be corrosive to some materials. Mixing the two makes a nice show, but really doesn't seem to enhance each other.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:59 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I tried clearing drains with vinegar and a baking soda solution. Put one down the drain, then the other. I put the baking soda solution first, just because it''s cheaper and you use a lot. Sometimes I got satisfactory rumbling noises from the pipes, sometimes not. Did it work? Not never. Plumbers are more likely to suggest boiling water. Does that work? Not never.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:36 AM on July 12, 2023

I used to use the vinegar+baking soda bomb for my drains, but found that squeezing a glug of blue Dawn down the drain, waiting 20 minutes, then following with very hot water is more effective.
posted by Preserver at 8:52 AM on July 12, 2023

I've only heard of using them in combination for clearing slow drains. The way I do it is baking soda first, then vinegar - make sure they are actually going down the drain. I generally do a round of it, then add a bit more vinegar. Basically add vinegar until the fizzing stops. Or whatever - probably some left over baking soda is fine too.

Then let it sit for a little while. Then run a bunch of hot water directly in there. For awhile. I don't use boiling, b/c I've sometimes heard that's bad for certain pipes.

I've found this worked on some stubborn clogged pipes when just a bunch of plunging didn't. Sometimes I had to do a few rounds.

It beats using Drano/having to call a plumber, as long as it works.

(I have very long hair, it sheds a fair amount in the shower, and despite my best efforts, some of it usually ends up getting stuck in the drain)
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:39 AM on July 16, 2023