How to Clean With Salt

Salt has many uses in addition to being an ingredient in your favorite recipes. Use common table salt to clean your kitchen, bathroom, laundry room and living room. You'll be surprised how useful salt can be in your housecleaning chores.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Make salt useful in your laundry room. To clean an iron, turn it on a low setting and iron over a piece of wax paper with salt on it to remove build up from the sole plate.

2. Take salt to your living room. Lift grease stains from rugs by mixing one part salt, four parts rubbing alcohol and aggressively rubbing the mixture into the rug. Remove fresh ink stains from carpets by pouring salt over the stain and vacuuming the salt pile the next day.

3. Use salt in your bathroom. Combine equal parts salt and turpentine to revive yellowing bathroom fixtures. Use rubber gloves and a brush to rub the stains out. Rinse the fixtures thoroughly after you've finished and before you use the fixtures again. Mix some salt with lemon juice to remove mold and mildew from bathroom shower walls, doors, tubs and tiles.

4. Reach for salt in the kitchen. Wipe your refrigerator down with a 1/2 cup of salt and a gallon of warm water. Sponge away coffee and tea stains on counters with salt and white vinegar. Sprinkle salt over oven floor spills to stop smoke, odor and mess. Wait for the oven to cool completely before you try removing a spill with a brush or wet cloth.

5. Eliminate food or lipstick stains on drinking glasses by rubbing the stains with salt before putting the glasses in the dishwasher. If the stains are especially hard to remove, soak the glasses overnight in a 1/2 cup of salt and 1 quart of vinegar before wiping them off in the morning and washing them.

6. Put salt and a little water into pans that have grease or food stuck on them. Leave to soak and allow the grease or food to remove itself. Wipe before washing the pans, as usual. Deodorize your garbage disposal by boiling salt in water and pouring the mixture down your garbage disposal.

7. Care for real and artificial flowers with salt. Pour warm water and a large amount of salt into a vase, shake it and remove flower debris with a bottle brush. Fill a bag with your silk flowers and 1/4 cup of salt. Seal the bag and shake it a few times to clean the flowers.

Tips & Warnings

• Open doors and windows before working with the salt and turpentine mixture.