Baking soda bonanza

Friends, I am a fiend for cleaning things so long as they're in the public view. I do not keep my bedroom tidy. It looks like the bedroom of a six-year-old boy with a mild case of ADHD. But my kitchen, living room, and dining room I like to keep clean in case the president comes over. (It could happen, you don't know it won't.)

Recently I moved into the most adorable little apartment. It has hardwood floors. It has the most adorable little built-ins where we store our alcohol like classy, employed folk. It has a fireplace. It has a pantry with a hook in it from which you are meant to hang an apron. I died the first time I saw it. And now that I am dead, it is my heaven.

However, since I'm renting, there are a few things wrong because people don't feel the need to invest in maintenance while they live there. Tragically, this comes at the cost of the adorable bronze cabinet pulls in the kitchen. So I resolved to clean them.

The answer isn't 409 (85% of problems are solvable with 409) or Windex (my other standard cleaner). The answer is baking soda, salt, water, and scrubbing. Just look at this:

I feel like a serious blogger right now, recommending a home remedy like this, but look at the difference. Look at it. It's insanity. The one on the right is sticky and blackened by years of disregard, and the one on the left is clean. It's even a little shiny.

Here's how I did it: I dumped a bunch of baking soda into a bowl and stirred in some larger salt to help as an abrasive. Then I added just enough water to make a paste, et voila: homemade cleaner.

The brown/black stuff is what came off the pulls. Ewwwwwwww.

I unscrewed the cabinet pulls from the doors and scrubbed away, just covering them in the paste and the rubbing with my fingers, rinsing when I was done. I probably took about 5 minutes per pull, and I wasn't even scrubbing that hard.

So there you go, ladies and gentlemen. I've been converted to the cult of baking soda. You may consider this my first proselytization.