Vinegar has many uses: I condition my hair with it, detox with it, clean dishes and laundry with it, drink it. Vinegar is amazing stuff and helps with countless things. There are 2 main types of vinegar out there. One you can ingest (Apple Cider Vinegar) and one you wouldn’t normally (regular all purpose white vinegar).

For the purpose of this post we will talk about using white vinegar as a rinse aid and fabric softener (don’t worry, you can find out about using Apple Cider Vinegar here).

For your laundry, vinegar works great as a fabric softener.  You put it in just like you would regular fabric softener.  Your machine should have a dispenser for it.  As an added bonus it helps boost your laundry soap as well and gets those loads of laundry fresher.  Don’t worry- if your machine is working right, your clothes won’t smell a thing like vinegar when they come out.  Actually they shouldn’t smell like anything other than clean!  Vinegar (as smelly as it is) helps to remove unwanted odors from clothes.

Your dishes will thank you when you put vinegar in your rinse aid compartment.  It helps to remove hard water spots as well as make them shiny.  The downside to this is newer dishwashers have more plastic parts in the rinse aid compartment so the acid in the vinegar can wear that away and cause problems.  A trick to this is to take a small container and put it on the top rack of your dishwasher.  Add a small amount of vinegar (about a teaspoon or so) and run your machine like you normally would.  This will give you the same result, leaving your dishes beautiful and sparing any damage to your machine.