Cleaning expert warns ‘don’t use white vinegar and baking soda to clean drains’

Lynsey Crombie aka Queen of Clean, joined ITV This Morning yesterday to share her summer cleaning tips.

Alongside using cotton wool balls with essential oils to rid bins of odours, or adding tea bags to smelly shoes, the cleaning expert spoke about using white vinegar and baking soda, and how these two natural cleaning products shouldn’t be mixed or used together.

When discussing how to clean a drain, Lynsey suggests using a drain snake unblocker – a long thin cleaning brush, similar to a pipe cleaner that fits down a drain and hair, dirt and grime clings to it as you pull it out.

Lynsey explained: “These are just epic. You think your house is clean until you stick that down the drain and even in my house, I’ve pulled some rubbish out.

“I was cleaning a house last week and OMG – the smell. But it is so satisfying!

“They’re a couple of pounds, and you can reuse them,” Lynsey recommended checking Amazon to purchase the gadget.

The drain snake can be used for “kitchen or bathroom” drains to remove “grime and hairs” deep into the drain pipe.

Then, Lynsey recommended eliminating bad drain odours with bicarbonate of soda.

She explained: “Just get your bicarb, sprinkle it down the sink, put it with just boiled water – you don’t put it with vinegar. You will see people on TikTok and that putting it with white vinegar, don’t do that, they cancel each other out – it doesn’t work.”

Instead, just sprinkle bicarb down the drain then pour boiling water on top. Lynsey said “it’s a deodoriser” that “flushes out” muck in the drains and “breaks it down”.

With baking soda working well to remove odours from drains, white vinegar is effective at removing stains on clothing.

For fake tan stains, Lynsey recommends using white vinegar and washing up liquid mixed together. But you have to blot it onto the area, “don’t rub too much”.

She added: “For fake tan stains on your toilet seat use a magic eraser or a cream cleaner. For your mattress use hydrogen peroxide, a natural bleach.”

As for suncream, the cleaning expert revealed: “Drench the stain in white vinegar, leave overnight and then rinse with cold water and wash as normal or use a stain remover that acts quickly.”