Cleaning faucets is one of the trickiest jobs in the household. Just a bit of soap application and scrubbing might be always the primary resort to our every cleaning problem, but never enough for eliminating the mineral deposits that are always building up over the chrome faucet heads.
Lucky for us, vinegar is always here to save the day!
Let’s save the day (clean the faucet) with a little help from our old pal vinegar, shall we?
Things You’ll Need:
- Distilled White Vinegar
- Dry, clean cloth or rug
- Rubber band or hair tie
- Zip-lock bag or regular plastic bag
- Scrubbing brush
- Salt (Can be optional depending on the situation)
The Process:
- Preparation: Now you can proceed in two ways preparation-wise. Either you can fill the zip-lock bag or the plastic bag, or soak a cloth or rug into that distilled white vinegar. Yes, white vinegar is required for separating that calcified mess.
If you’re going for the option with the bag, make sure to fill with half a cup of vinegar, 1/3 cup will do as well. In the cloth soaking method, the cloth has to be properly clean, so that nothing messes with the vinegar, on the scum later on. - Wrapping: Tie the bag tightly over the faucet head so that the calcified area gets submerged into vinegar. Use a hair tie or rubber band to tie the bag tightly to the spigot so that it doesn’t fall down. In cloth/rug method, wrap the whole faucet in the soaked cloth/rug.
- Resting Time: Wait for two to three hours after tying the bag/wrapping the faucet. In these two-three hours, the acetic acid in the vinegar will loosen the mineral build-up and eat into it.
If you want, you can leave the faucet for an overnight vinegar reaction as well. - Scrubbing and Rinsing: After letting the faucet rest all soaked in vinegar for hours, take the cloth/rug away, untie the zip-lock/plastic bag. Start scrubbing the faucet until you can see that proper chrome shine. Then rinse the whole residue away with cool water.
- Salt mixture: Sometimes soaking the faucet in vinegar doesn’t do enough to loosen the mineral buildup. In this case, salt functions as an excellent agent for breaking the deposit.
Firstly, scrub the calcified area after soaking in vinegar. If it still doesn’t change anything, make a mixture of salt and white vinegar. The vinegar should be distilled. Since salt melts, use vinegar in 1/4th amount of the salt you’ll be using. Spread the mixture over the scrubbing brush and start brushing again. This will do the trick.
Hard water stains, that stubborn mineral buildup is the absolute worst. But not anymore for you, with that vinegar-based solution up your sleeve!