Before You Clean Your Kitchen With Vinegar, Infuse It With This Comforting Spice

Vinegar isn't just for shaking up homemade salad dressings and cooking perfect rice. In addition to its myriad culinary applications, the acidic kitchen staple is also a cleaning powerhouse, perfect for everything from deodorizing smelly sinks to effortlessly cleaning dishwashers. Vinegar is a fabulously versatile, cheap, and natural alternative to store-bought cleaning products. Slightly less fabulous? Vinegar-based cleaning solutions tend to leave your kitchen reeking of, well, vinegar for hours afterwards. 

While the pungent smell of vinegar is certainly preferable to the funky dishwasher odors that it vanquishes, it's not exactly homey and comforting. Luckily, you can effectively cover up the harsh odor by first infusing the vinegar with a warm spice you probably already have in your pantry: cinnamon. The pleasantly woody aroma of this beloved spice is the perfect foil for the pungent vinegar odor. Plus, the comforting scent of cinnamon is widely popular and tends to bring to mind sweet memories of holiday baking and warm, gooey cinnamon rolls. 

One of the simplest ways to infuse cinnamon into your cleaning routine is by creating a cinnamon-scented all-purpose cleaner. Simply toss a few cinnamon sticks into a clean mason jar and add equal or two parts water and distilled white cleaning vinegar (which is not the same as cooking or pickling vinegar). Let it infuse for at least a day or up to a month. Then, remove the cinnamon sticks, pour the vinegar into a spray bottle, and use it to clean everything from sinks to stovetops. This general formula is extremely flexible, so it can easily be customized to your cleaning preferences and needs. 

Beyond cinnamon sticks, feel free to play around with adding citrus peels, cinnamon extract, and any other whole spices you fancy for an even more pleasant fragrance. Cinnamon and orange peel pair particularly well. Oh, and if the lingering aroma of cinnamon in your freshly cleaned kitchen inspires you to whip up a pan of decadent pastries, make sure to avoid these common cinnamon roll mistakes.