Why buy this when a solution of half vinegar and half water is better, cheaper, healthier, and more environmentally friendly?

i can't stand the smell of this stuff!

Meredith, I agree! But I will give them kudos for being one of the first 'green' cleaners around... Simple Green has been around forever.

I use it to wash my cats' litterbox. Don't inhale it -- I can't believe it's environmentally friendly when it causes me to cough and choke.

Never used it after I noticed the strange smell. Vinegar, Method, Meyers and hydrogen peroxide, what more do you need?

Simple Green is people! Simple Green is made out of people!

Simple Green is an industrial strength cleaner which can be used full strength to get embedded dirt and/or grime off of things like your car wheels or dilute with water for smaller tasks. Due to the smell, I really don't care to use it regularly, but it is highly effective and I'd rather use a small amount of an effective chemical than a lot of a chemical that is half effective. And sorry, vinegar and water work for lots of things, but not on embedded dirt.

I used simple green when I did printmaking and oil painting, which is a level of unclean that vinegar and water is really not going to help with. It smells funky, but so does paint thinner.

I guess it depends what you mean by "embedded dirt". misting with vinegar and water gets the smudgy buildup off the door jambs and light switches in my apartment. It breaks down the grime that builds up in my kitchen when the black Brooklyn soot coming in the window meets the grease coming off the stove. It breaks down the dust that gets baked onto my radiators. I've never used another "all-purpose cleanser" that did any of those things as well as vinegar does.

I can see Simple Green working for seriously hardcore tasks I might do once every few years, like, I dunno, maybe the outside bits of window hardware. But for everyday household cleaning, there's honestly nothing Simple Green does that vinegar doesn't.

Vinegar won't do anything to thin oil paint, because to thin oil paint you need oil. You can use regular household oils for that (canola, vegetable, etc - serious painters use linseed), you don't actually need paint thinner. Using vinegar on oil paint will just make pretty (if inedible) salad dressing.

Cleaning products are not magical formulas that will do anything and everything better than the mundane items we're familiar with. It's just chemistry, people. A mild acid (vinegar) will break down most dirt -- you don't need an industrial strength detergent. Oil-based items can be diluted away with other oil-based items, which can then be cleaned safely with dish soap (a very mild base) or simply wiped away, depending on the use and finish of the item.

I like the smell of the stuff, but it REALLY irritated my lungs when I used it. I gave it up after doing my own research on its ingredients.