Microfiber, vinegar, and mice

The news for today is rather mixed. First, we appear to have mice. The pest man is supposed to be here in about an hour. Two nights ago, we were sitting in the livingroom when this little brown creature runs out into the middle of the room, looks at us, and runs back behind my dining room hutch. Oh, my. Luckily, I store mostly everything in plastic. I let him know that we have a baby, so please don’t use anything that will hurt my child.

Next, we bought ourselves a nice, light beige (the color is called stone but I think it should be called sand) sofa. I couldn’t argue with the price – $299 for a three seater sofa with a practically unlimited five year warranty. Those of you with children, you will understand. Children are rough on sofas.

However, there’s a problem – we can’t sit on the darn thing without generating a ton of static electricity. I’m scared of destroying our computers. I’ve asked on Twitter and looked online, and my best bet is to spray it with liquid fabric softener. I called the Brick, where I bought it, and they had no idea how to fix the problem. Apparently, though, despite their lack of knowledge, it’s a fairly common problem with microfiber furniture.

But I don’t use fabric softener! I feel silly for not adding it to my list of how to avoid buying fabric softener sheets, because I don’t even use liquid fabric softener. I use vinegar in a Downy ball. I’m sure that the Downy company would be horrified to know that you can use vinegar in the ball, toss it in the wash, and it will open in the rinse cycle, just like when using Downy.

Vinegar doesn’t make your clothes smell like vinegar. It rinses clean. I think that the first time I ever heard of using it was when watching my grandmother wash clothes with a wringer washer. She would have two metal buckets – one with clear water and one with vinegar.

So what does vinegar do? Amazingly, it does a lot. It removes odors. It removes static cling. It helps with lint build-up. It softens hard water. It removes soap build-up or that horrible sizing that comes on some clothes when you buy them. Soaking colored fabric in one gallon water with one cup of vinegar will brighten them. 1/2 cup of vinegar in the rinse water will keep linen, wool, and silk from yellowing when you’re handwashing them. Soaking clothes in vinegar and water will remove coffee and tea stains. For grass stains, soak in full strength vinegar.

What else does vinegar do? Because of its acidity, it removes mold, germs, and bacteria. And it’s definitely non-toxic, so you don’t have to worry about using it around pets and children. 1/4 cup baking soda, 1 Tablespoon liquid soap, and enough vinegar to make it creamy equals a non-toxic scouring cream for bathroom and kitchen.

Every once in a while, if my baking soda is starting to get old and doesn’t work so well, I’ll pour a cup of baking soda down the kitchen drain. I follow it with a cup of *hot* vinegar (although I don’t always bother heating it) and then follow that with a full kettle of hot water. It cleans out, disinfects, and deodorizes the drain.

If you look around, you’ll find hundreds of uses for plain old white vinegar.

And … it’s cheap. However, I think that vinegar sprayed on my sofa just might void the warranty.