Hi, Jack. I have tried the vinegar and baking soda trick, but I didn't seal the drain. I'll have to do that the next time. I love vinegar for cleaning. I heat some up in the microwave and it loosens the gunk in the microwave. (Why is it that people don't cover ravioli in the micro?) Anyway, it works great. I also use it to clean the inside of the coffee maker. Just run 2 or 3 cups of vinegar through once and then do several rinses with plain water to get it out. The coffee maker can be a breading ground for all kinds of yucky stuff since it doesn't dry out well. Stay well, dear Jack.

Outstanding tips, Jack. I'm very sensitive to chlorine, so I always use vinegar or laundry soap to clean up moldy sinks and fixtures.

Here's another tip...to clean below the water line in a toilet, fill a bucket with water and dump it into the bowl first. It will flush without refilling the bowl, so you can spray vinegar on it or whatever.

Good place to find cleaning rags...Home Depot. They sell bundles of inexpensive terry-cloth cleaning rags that do a great job of dusting and general cleanup.

Another good non-irritating cleaner...yellow laundry soap, which I buy in supermarkets or the hardware store. Take a small scrub brush, wet it down, rub it on the bar of yellow soap, and scrub away...no fumes and it really cleans away mold and grime.

If you've been exposed to poison ivy on your hands and arms, wash with yellow soap and it will remove the toxic resin. Ordinary bar soap cannot do this, and you will scratch and spread the rash everywhere.

Don't use the laundry soap regularly on sensitive skin or it might give you a rash too. But once in a while, it does a great job of cleaning really dirty hands. When I worked on a grounds crew as a young man, the foreman made sure we all scrubbed our hands and forearms with Dif brand hand cleaner at quitting time...nobody ever got a rash from poison ivy all that summer...even though it was growing all over the place.

Oh, I see they had one about the microwave on the link you gave us. They didn't have the coffee maker one, though. Smiles to you.

My husband works in the forest and gets poison ivy all the time. He has been using Fels Naptha soap. Is that similar to the yellow soap you are talking about? The Fels Naptha comes in a bar and is a tan color. My grandfather used to use it for poison ivy; so it's a remedy that has been in the family for a while. Blessings.

Back when I was a half-assed prepper, I read an article about soaps that would be good to have after TEOTWAWKI and Fels Naptha was on the list. I believe it's an ingredient in a home-made laundry soap recipe I saw once. They also included Bronner's, FWIW.

Wow... I even found that home-made laundry soap recipe. http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/laundrysoap.htm

Wow, Jack. I never knew you could make your own laundry soap so easily. That was pretty fascinating. My mom used to add Borax to the laundry all the time. She also used it to deodorize the carpets. She put it on and vacuumed it off. Many blessings.

Fels Naptha...that's the stuff I buy. I use it for hand washing laundry items too. My mother used to use it to wash clothes with a washboard in the kitchen sink, and it was a standard remedy for poison ivy when I was a kid.

This may sound unbelievable in today's world, but when I was young, kids had to do chores like mowing grass, painting fences, and helping their mothers wash clothes. A little hard work never hurt anybody.