Eco clean your home

How to use it

• Mix one part bicarbonate of soda with four parts water to make a really effective abrasive dirt-dissolving multipurpose cleaner - ideal for cleaning the bathtub, sinks and showers.
• Add a small amount of water to make a paste and use to scrub stainless steel, iron or copper pots clean.
• To eliminate carpet odours, sprinkle on to carpet, leave for a few hours and then vacuum up.

Malt vinegar - limescale remover and surface cleaner. Malt vinegar isn't just something to season your chips; it has powerful and highly effective cleaning properties too.

How to use it

• De-scale your kettle by pouring in a litre of neat malt vinegar and leaving it to dissolve the limescale (two hours is usually long enough). The results are amazing and, even better, you can pour the vinegar back into the bottle and re-use it to remove limescale more than once (just don't sprinkle it on your chips).
• Richard Nissan of Staunch & Flow plumbers in London recommends neat vinegar for cleaning bathroom fittings. 'Vinegar is a very weak acid so it will not damage plastics or metal in its neat form' To clean shower heads he recommends placing a kitchen towel soaked in vinegar around the showerhead. Fix it in place by covering with a plastic bag and secure with a rubber band. Leave to penetrate for an hour. Any stubborn bits of limescale can then be tackled using a cuticle stick to scrape away build up.
• Mix with three parts water to make a window cleaning solution. Apply to the windows with scrunched up newspaper and wipe clean using a clean dry cloth.

Bicarbonate of soda and malt vinegar - mixed together these two are a cleaning tour de force.

How to use them

• To unblock a sink, remove all the water from the sink and pour a pot of bicarbonate of soda down the plug hole, then tip in a bottle of malt vinegar. Leave for one hour, then pour in a litre of boiling water and get to work with a plunger. Repeat as necessary.
• To clean a barbeque or grill pan, sprinkle on a thin layer bicarbonate of soda and pour over enough malt vinegar to cover. Leave to soak overnight. The burnt food and grease can be easily rinsed away by morning.