Hi y’all! I’m super-psyched to introduce you to Tameri Etherton. Tameri is a writer by day, a wife and mother by night, and a dreamer always. She’s also my friend, which make me about 70 shades of happy, because friends like Tameri don’t come along every day. You should definitely run over and check out her blog – you’ll find everything from the fabulously funny to whimsically thoughtful and everything in between!
I’m so excited to have her helping out here at Blogging Barefoot while I recover from new baby/surgery/pancreatitis. I know you’re going to love her every bit as much as I do!
oOo
Hey Myndi’s readers! I am so excited to be hanging out today at Myndi’s blog. Mostly because I love Myndi to pieces and also because I get to share with you some super fabulous cleaning tips.
You know how Myndi is the Happy Hausfrau extraordinaire? Yeah, I love those posts, too. Especially when she has great tips on how to clean with safe, non toxic cleaners like vinegar.
Well, I’m here today to tell vinegar to step aside and make room for another powerhouse cleaner ~ Baking Soda!
Baking Soda is more than just another ingredient in chocolate chip cookies. It can be used to clean almost anything in your home, including your body, and it works as an amazing odor eliminator.
Here are a few of my favorite uses for Baking Soda:
1. To get rid of onion or garlic smells on your hands, put a little baking soda in your palm and add just enough water to make a paste. Rub all over your hands and rinse well. The smells will be gone and your hands get a nice exfoliation!
2. Got a mess in your microwave? Add a few spoonfuls of baking soda to a cup of water and boil for 3 – 5 minutes in the microwave. When the timer goes off, your microwave will be damp and easy to wipe down with just a sponge. Easy peasy!
3. Did you think shampoo was just for your hair? Wrong. Sprinkle baking soda on tiled showers and then scrub with a sponge and some inexpensive shampoo. Give it a good rinse and your shower will sparkle. And smell great, too.
4. I read this in the comments of one of Myndi’s posts and gave it a try. It’s now my new favorite way to clean toilets! Add a few drops of spearmint essential oil to 1/4 cup of baking soda. Sprinkle in the toilet and give the side a good scrub. Your toilet will be clean, smell fresh, and there’s no harmful chemicals going down the drain and ending up in our lakes, rivers, or oceans. Winner!
5. Want a mini-facial? Mix one teaspoon each of baking soda and olive oil. Massage gently into your skin and rinse well. You’ll feel refreshed and moisturized. Ahhhh.
6. Feel a blemish coming on? Apply a thick paste of baking soda and peroxide to blemish before bedtime and come morning you should be blemish free. Don’t do this if your blemish has already broken the surface. That would really hurt.
7. Need to polish your tiara? I know, this happens a lot to me, too! No worries. Just put a piece of aluminum foil in your sink and place your tiara on top. Sprinkle with baking soda and cover with warm water. Let sit for awhile, say 10 – 15 minutes while you have a cup of tea. Rinse with warm water and ta-da! Shiny new tiara. This also works well with silver.
8. This last tip I discovered quite by accident, no pun intended. My sweet Australian Shepherd had an accident on one of our rugs (he has a very delicate tummy and someone, not me, gave him a piece of pizza). I used our spot bot pet cleaner upper thing to get the mess, but there was still an odor. Eww. Fear not, my friends. I sprinkled some baking soda on the carpet, let it soak in for a few hours (actually overnight) and in the morning I vacuumed it up. No more smell! Now, if I could just get people to stop feeding him treats…
There are a million other uses for baking soda, but this post is getting so long I think Myndi might be on her fifth child by now!
Take that box of baking soda out of the pantry and put it to good use. It’s safe enough to use around babies, which is a good thing for Myndi!
Do you have any awesome ideas how to make baking soda work for us? Share them with us! We love to learn new things.
Myndi Shafer 
Some more for ya…
Baking soda dabbed under the arms works as a natural deodorant.
Combine with vinegar to scrub stubborn grout flush a drain.
Combine with vinegar, place in a plastic baggie and “tie” it to your showerhead to remove buildup. (I use a rubber band to hold it in place)
A few drops of spearmint oil and baking soda makes a lovely toothpaste.
Sprinkle on a glass cooktop, set a damp rag over it, then come back later and scrub it off. Sparkling cooktop!
I am sure there are more… 🙂
PS – When you buy it in bulk, baking soda is incredibly inexpensive compared to traditional cleaners. No fumes, and good for the pocketbook. 🙂
That’s a great point, Amber. I buy they huge box for cleaning and the smaller one for baking. For some reason I just can’t use one box for both, I’m a goof I know.
I am totally going to try that shower head cleaner thing and I had no idea about the glass cooktop. Definitely going to do that one as well. Thanks for the fab tips!
Anytime! (And I totally do the same thing – little box for cooking, big bag for cleaning.)
I usually pour some from the big bag into a Tupperware container and add a little essential oil to tote around the house for cleaning.
I don’t really clean, but I find that baking soda works great in baking recipes! 🙂
That works, too. If you ever happen to need to clean something, like your tiaras, now you have great ideas how to do it organically. 😉
OMG AWESOMENESS!!! Love the facial rub idea and using it to clean the toilet and to remove the left over smells from “incidents” – squeee! And Ambers list is FAB as well….wonderful!!!
And if you do that on your hands it makes a very gentle hand exfoliator, too. The toilet one is ah-mazing!
Thanks for the love, Natalie!
Hey Myndi! Thanks so much for having me over here today!! I hope you and your minis are recuperating well. I just wish I was there to give you a ginormous hug. Be well, my friend!
LOVE having you, Miss Tameri! And don’t worry – I’m getting that hug at some point. Just have to plot my way to sunny CA first. 🙂
Excellent tips, Tameri, shared with your usual great humour! Thanks … and to Amber for her list as well … it’s SO good to go green with white. Get stronger, Myndi and I hope someone else is doing your cleaning!
I love that ~ go green with white! Amber has some great tips. I’ve got a book with 500 uses for baking soda and another one for vinegar. It’s amazing how much these two innocuous items can do.
Thanks so much for stopping by, Patricia.
Oh, yes. My sweet 10 and 8 year old boys are totally picking up the slack for me. They’re making this momma super proud. 🙂
Baking soda is my BFF for cleaning.
I remember my mom using it when I was little. But I hadn’t heard of some of these tips so thanks for sharing them!
You are so welcome, Jennifer! Our moms were so smart… for so many things that now we take for granted!
Great tips on using BS, Tameri! Wait – that doesn’t sound right. Baking (B) + Soda (S) = BS. Yeah, okay. I guess it’s right.
Now I’m off to clean my tiara.
Patricia Rickrode
w/a Jansen Schmidt
Laughing so hard. Someone really needs to do a post on tips for using the OTHER kind of BS… 🙂 🙂 🙂
Ohmygosh! I’m laughing so hard, too. Total BS Tips. Now THAT would’ve been a great title for the post! Hope your tiara came out all sparkly. Every girl needs a sparkly tiara. 😉
I use baking soda to clean my sink drain. After I clean the sink, i put in baking soda and then add vinegar. Then fizzy clean! Thanks for more tips 🙂
I LOVE the fizz from baking soda and vinegar. It makes me happy. 🙂
That’s a great idea! My bathroom drains are being a little funky ~ I’m going to try this tonight. Thanks for the fab tip!
Wow!
How clever are you guys? I’m going to use all these nifty handy hints.
Great post, Tameri. (love that name going to use it in the future for one of my heoines!)
Thanks! I totally made up my name, so there aren’t many of me around.
I would love to take all the credit for this cleverness, but I googled some tips and others came from my baking soda cleaning book. Although, that carpet freshener one I discovered all on my own. It’s the only one I really wish I didn’t need to know. 😉
Er. Heroines. *head slap for the twitchy finger*
I believe we should be able to edit our comments. I don’t know how many times I’ve hit ‘post comment’ and thought, NOOOOO! Because I saw a typo go through. So frustrating!
I totally knew what you meant, though.
These are great ideas! I will probably end up in your spam folder and that is why I didn’t come sooner….
I used to use the griddle on top of my stove. To get rid of the hardest cooked on deposits, I used baking soda and added vinegar. It volcanoed it off like oxyclean!
Oh my heckness, I love household tips! Will be adding a huge box of baking soda to my cart next time I go to the store!
Love that! Oh my heckness. New favorite saying.
Definitely add the box ~ it’s all non-toxic so it’s good for you and the home. Which I know you’ll LOVE.
Briliant tips. Thank you so much, Tameri. Soda also works for smelly shoes. I will have to try combining soda and vinegar.
You are so welcome, Reetta! (gorgeous name for a gorgeous lady)
I didn’t know that about the shoes. I have a teenage son, you know I’ll be using this tip. Thanks for passing it along!
Tameri, what a great list. I especially love item number 7. I hate polishing my tiara … um, I mean my silver … and this little tip will not only save oodles of time, but I’ll sparkle … um, I mean, my grandma’s silverware will once again sparkle. Thank you, thank you, thank you! 🙂
Thanks Sheila! Isn’t tiara polishing tedious. I mean silver polishing… Apparently the foil is the key here, so make sure you don’t skip that step. Thanks so much for your comment!
Cool stuff! After prom I had to use baking soda to get the hair gel out. It was pretty horrifying actually.
What? I have never heard that. Baking soda to remove hair gel. What was horrifying? The amount of hair gel you used or using the baking soda to get it out? 🙂
Oh I definitely didn’t put that gel or spray in there myself. It was the first and only time I’ve ever had my hair done so it was some professional strength insanity.
I’m off to buy some baking soda- my tiaras are going to sparkle!
That is what I love to read! A sparkly tiara is a happy tiara.
Awesome post Myndi! I think my comment from yesterday is in your spam filter. If you could pull it out that would be awesome!
Were you hanging out in the Spam folder again? Sheesh!
Nope. Thank God! These are from last week!
Blarg, that evil spam folder. Hate it when my friendlies get lost in there…
This is such a great post! I have used a combination of vinegar and baking soda to make my own Oxy clean! I works on my stove!
Yep, vinegar by itself is awesome, baking soda alone is awesome, but put them together and you’ve got one heck of a powerhouse cleaner!
Awesome post!
My honeybun uses BS to settle his tummy (rather than alkaseltzer). He swears by it. 🙂
Baking soda neutralizes acid. Guys used it for years on the batteries underneath the hood of their cars. That’s why is worked so well with the doggie accident with Tameri’s dog. And my doctor recommends it for upset/acid stomach. Your honeybun is a smart man. 🙂
Ooooh, I’ll have to share this with my Hubs. I’ve never heard of it working as an antacid, but it totally makes sense. Thanks for the great tip!
I think we’re going to have to add you Tameri to the Hausfrau! Baking soda is so awesome and cheap! Amongst the other wonderful reasons and ways for using it, before toothpaste it was used to clean our teeth. Not that I’m old enough to remember that little tidbit mind you. No that information would be coming from my grandparents.
Thank you Myndi and Tameri! 🙂
Aw, thanks Karen! An honorary Hausfrau would be a cool thing.
Our grandparents knew what was going on back in the day. They had great ideas of how to save money and make use of anything in five hundred different ways.
I tried brushing my teeth with baking soda but it was too gross. I’ll stick with Tom’s. 😉
Love it! We can be Hausfrau twinsies…
Cool! I didn’t know about some of those things. Thanks for the tips, Tameri. I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it but my tip involves mixing 1/4-1/2 tsp baking soda, 2 TBSP apple cider vinegar (preferably organic-and with the mother)….and a little cayenne pepper (optional…and I tend to use a little more than a little 🙂 in a small glass…along with about half a cup of water. Make sure you don’t breathe over the top of the glass because the pepper fumes can make you cough. Anyway, sip this over the course of fifteen minutes or so for indigestion. It works a million times better than Rolaids or Tums if tomato based foods don’t always agree with you. I imagine it would work just as well for other problem foods.
In case you’re thinking, ‘EWWWWW!’ it’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s not a chocolate milkshake by a long shot, but the soda pretty much eliminates the sour, nasty taste from the vinegar…and I’m not kidding, you’ll be surprised at how effective it is.
Whoa, that sounds lethal, but in a good way! I’ll definitely give this a try and have my husband try it as well. For some reason milk shakes don’t agree with him, but he refuses to stop eating them. It’s not lactose intolerance just milk shake intolerance, I think. Anyway, I’ll mix this up for him the next time his tummy is sore. We always have organic apple cider on hand.
Thanks for the tip!
wow, all those uses for baking soda. I”ll treasure the pet one, cause accidents happen quite a lot in my house. Also, there’s the one where you put a cup in the fridge to absorb fridge smells – works pretty well!
Definitely use the pet one ~ it works great. I keep forgetting about the cup in the fridge and I need to do it. Thanks for the reminder!