I received a great tweet this morning which I clicked through to and it was to 40 fantastic uses for baking soda which of course in Australia we call bicarb soda and I mean a lot of these I knew, I must say, I’ve used them on several occasions. It really is quite an amazing compound, bicarb soda. We all know that it’s a leavening agent and when it’s mixed with something like cream of tartar it forms a compound which we call baking powder and the alkaline and acid mixed together actually cause baked goods to rise such as cakes and biscuits and what have you. But apart from that baking soda or bicarb soda also has some other applications, things like personal care, cleaning around the house, you can use it to deodorise, I mean the list of benefits it has is really quite extensive and it’s a very inexpensive compound to purchase and always great to have on hand so I thought I might go through some of these and tell you a little bit about them.
Making toothpaste. Now I’ve actually purchased baking soda toothpaste, I get it from a company in New Zealand called Red Seal, I think they’re called, and they make a fantastic one. It’s great, it’s quite gritty as you would imagine it to be but it really does do amazing things for your teeth. I remember my mum and dad telling me when they were children that they used to use baking soda almost all the time because they were too poor to afford toothpaste and I’m not even sure that they actually had toothpaste back then anyway so baking soda was in fact regularly used. I think they also used to say they used to use charcoal. I can’t imagine cleaning my teeth with charcoal but I guess the things that they used to do. Another one is to use it as a mouth freshener and apparently you can put a teaspoon in a glass of water, swish it ‘round and you know spit it out and it does that as well so I guess if you’re using it to clean your teeth then it’s also got a deodorising effect so that’s a good one.
They also say that you can use it to soak your oral appliance. Now when they say that I’m assuming that they mean things like dentures and mouth pieces and maybe even your toothbrush as well so you can just mix up a little bit of that also in warm water and the baking soda apparently loosens all the food particles and neutralises odours and keeps everything fresh. I don’t know that I’d want to clean out that water though afterwards, would you? Especially if it was someone who … yeah, let’s not even go there.
Another one is as a facial scrub and a body exfoliant. I can understand this one and apparently you mix this one with water as well and you rub it in a gentle, circular motion and it exfoliates the skin. I would imagine however that it becomes quite liquidy once you do it so the grittiness probably wouldn’t be there as much as I would like and maybe it might be an idea to mix that with some sort of crushed nuts or even maybe a little bit of sand or something similar. I think you can use almond kernels that have been crushed as well, another great exfoliate, so that might be worth thinking about mixing with it.
Apparently you can use it as an antacid as well and it will relieve heartburn, a sour stomach and a little bit of indigestion. Apparently the package actually has some instructions on it and whether that has that on all the packages wherever you can buy it all over the world I am not sure about so I think this article was actually written by an American so maybe on the American pack it has that but it’s worth looking at as well.
Apparently you can treat insect bites and itchy skin with it as well so that’s something to think about. Again you’re mixing it with a little bit of water, apply it to the affected area and it will ease up the itching. You can make it into a hand cleanser and softener and this is great, instead of using harsh soaps and things like that you can just rub a little bit of it onto your hands, mix it with some water first and it becomes like a liquid soap so that’d be interesting to try and certainly inexpensive.
They also say that you can use it in your hair and we all know that vinegar is amazing for our hair and so is lemon juice but baking soda can be used as well in place of those, you just sprinkle a little bit apparently onto the palm of your hand, mix it in with your favourite shampoo and then just rinse as normal and it’s supposed to help your hair so that might be worth trying. Certainly not going to lose anything by doing that.
It cleans brushes and combs and I’ve known about that one for quite some time, same sort of thing. It’s like a deodoriser so you just mix up an amount of that with water in a small basin and then you just allow your brushes and combs and things to sit in there. But there’s something I do before I do that that they don’t mention but I have experienced, and that is if you have oily hair you will find that there will be a build-up of the oil on your brushes and combs that baking soda won’t remove so what I do is I soak them in a cloudy ammonia or in Australia we have a product called Handy Andy and I just soak them in that first, that lifts all of the oil from the brushes and the combs and then you can use the deodorising effect of the baking soda.
There’s a whole host of other things as well from this article that you can use it for and that includes cleaning, just general cleaning. It can be used as a soft scrub. I’ve actually used it on leather and it’s brought up the leather beautifully so that’s a good one. In fact the toothpaste that I purchased is a fantastic cleaner as well. You can use it as a hand wash as we talked about before and you can also use it to deodorise and help remove stains from stainless steel. You can also use it on your pots and pans and it will help to remove any stains especially if you’ve got some baked-on food. I would advise however, it won’t completely remove anything that’s been baked on or burnt on but what I do here is I will use a fabric stain remover first so Preen is an example of one in Australia and I will spray that on the stain, leave it overnight and it generally lifts it the next day but what the baking soda will do is when you rub it into the stainless steel it will remove any of the marks on there and bring it back to that lovely shiny new again so it’s quite good for that. It will also freshen up sponges so if you’ve got stale-smelling sponges you can put a little bit of the baking soda into some water and soak the sponges.
It’s great for cleaning the microwave, getting rid of all of those marks and of course it’s a natural product so it’s not going to leave a residue that’s going to bake on and affect any of the flavours of the cooking when you’re using your microwave as well. Apparently it can also be used to clean silver flatware so for example plates and cups and stuff that are silver. I’ve never tried it on that, I find silver very difficult to clean at the best of times so I suggest you do that one at your own discretion. Also the same with coffee pots and tea pots so I think anything that leaves a stain behind it’s probably worth thinking about because if it will do the pots and pans then chances are it will do coffee and tea and things like that as well. The same as with your microwave you can use it to clean the oven and it is actually quite good for doing that because again it doesn’t leave a chemical residue that when the oven is heated up actually bakes on and affects the smell of the food and the flavour of the food so that’s worth thinking about.
It also cleans floors, it’s great in warm water to use with your mop to clean your floor and furniture as I mentioned earlier and you can also use it as a boost for your liquid laundry detergent so when you put your liquid into the washing machine you can add a little bit of baking soda in and around that as well so I guess it’ll probably work along the same lines as a Napisan or a Disan or one of those sort of deodorisers so that’s worth thinking about ‘cause those actually can be quite expensive. So there’s just a few of the different things that you can utilise baking soda for. The website has 40 all up so I’ve given you the link below and you might like to go through them and have a look at some of the other ones, they are quite interesting.
40 Fantatsic Uses for Baking Soda – http://green.yahoo.com/blog/care2/4/40-fantastic-uses-for-baking-soda.html
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