It seems official — you can clean your entire home using ingredients from the kitchen. We've already covered olive oil, citrus fruit, coconut oil, and Kool-Aid and now here's another handy cleaner: Cream of Tartar.
- Stainless steel: Mix it with a bit of water to polish small stainless steel appliances, from your coffeemaker to your toaster.
- Scratched Dishes: Make a paste using water and rub it on scuffed dishes to remove the scratches.
- Aluminum Pans: Make a paste with either water or hydrogen peroxide to clean stained aluminum pans.
- Copper: Mix it with lemon juice to clean and polish copper kettles.
- Fireplaces: Follow the instructions in this handy post and clean your fireplace with just cream of tartar, water, and a nail brush.
- Laundry: Whiten dingy whites by washing normally, then soaking overnight in a mix of 1 teaspoon cream of tartar for every quart of water. You can also mix 2 teaspoons cream of tartar with a 1 teaspoon of glycerin in a spray bottle and spot treat to remove stains.
- Bathtub ring: Make a thick paste of cream of tartar and hydrogen peroxide and apply it to the bathtub ring. Let it dry, wipe it off, and rinse.
(Image: Emma Christensen for The Kitchn)
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very helpful
removes rust stains from laundry!
I don't know about anyone else but Kool Aid is not an 'ingredient' that I have in my kitchen.
Where are you buying Cream of Tartar in bulk?
Interesting tip but it seems to do the same thing as baking soda, which I have much more readily on hand and in plentiful amounts.
This is wasteful - Cream of Tartar is expensive. That's why Amaranta wants to buy it in bulk.
I meant Dovenoir.
I was thinking the exact thing!
I haven't seen it in bulk either (and I've checked at our local co-ops and at the Whole Foods in the nearest big city). We only use in our house for playdough!
Cream of tarter is only for snickerdoodles in our house. Baking soda at Costco so much cheaper.
I can find it in bulk at my indy grocery with the awesome bulk spices section.
Don't know it I would use it to clean, but if you feel a UT infection coming on, nothing works better to blast it away that a pinch of Cream of Tartar dissolved in water or some drink that will mask the acid taste. I learned this trick from the nurses at the hospital when my son was born. Beware that even a tsp has a lot of potassium, way more than the daily RDA.