| By :
Nick Vassilev
Many blokes (and non-blokes) receive car grooming gifts for Christmas. Some receive them for their birthdays. If you got something else, don't despair if you want to get the chrome and paintwork nice and gleaming. If you've got a bottle of vinegar in your kitchen cupboard, you can clean your car perfectly well - without getting your hands all itchy and cracked from using ferocious chemicals. But hang onto your chamois leather cleaning cloth - this is still a great way to clean your car. And many of these tips for cleaning a car with vinegar can be applied to other cleaning jobs around your home - you can use them for cleaning bathrooms and other places with chrome fittings, and for window cleaning and mirrors cleaning. Chrome responds very well to being cleaned with vinegar. Use full strength vinegar and apply it to chrome - inside and out - with a soft cloth. Vinegar diluted to half strength is also very good for cleaning vinyl upholstery. As vinyl upholstery is a pig to sit on, especially on a hot day or with the heaters on, not many cars these days have vinyl upholstery (thank goodness). This tip will be best kept for older classics that have the old-style seat trims - or you can use vinegar to clean vinyl upholstered kitchen chairs. Leather upholstery (much nicer and found in all the best cars) can be cleaned by mixing equal proportions of vinegar and vegetable oil (which includes linseed oil as well as more familiar ones). Rub this mixture into the leather with one soft cloth, then buff with another. This can be used for cleaning leather of all sorts, including shoes, leather sofas and leather jackets. If somebody has been carsick, vinegar can help to absorb the smell. This is not done by cleaning up the vomit residue with vinegar (although this will help to kill any germs). Instead, place a bowl of vinegar on the floor (keep it in the bowl) and close the doors and windows very tightly. The vinegar will absorb the smell and/or replace the smell of vomit with the cleaner smell of vinegar. Alternatively, you can absorb the smell by sprinkling the site with baking soda and then vacuuming up the powder later. This one's a bit harder to apply to other parts of the house, but mixing 3 parts of water to 1 part of water and covering your car windows with this is supposed to stop your windscreen frosting up overnight if you leave your car out overnight in winter. Neat vinegar is great for removing flyspots (and other bits of insect) on windscreens and windscreen wipers. Dilute the vinegar to about 50% with water and you can use it to clean windows and clean mirrors. Simply spray on the vinegar/water mix and buff the glass thoroughly with a soft cloth (this is where your chamois leather will come into play). This gets glass gleaming and doesn't leave any streaky residue - and you can use it for cleaning other windows and other glass as well. Any of these car and house cleaning methods can be enhanced by adding about 10 drops of essential oil to the vinegar and shaking well before use. This beats many of the artificial car scents you can buy and are better for you to breath in, too.
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