Frugal Uses for Baking Soda (2024)

Baking soda is such an inexpensive product but it can be used in such a wide variety of uses from using in your personal care routine to using it for cleaning. It is also very inexpensive and widely available which makes it easy to find a variety of frugal uses for baking soda.

1. Car Surface Cleaner: You love your car, right? It gets you from point A to Point B and then back to A again at the end of the day. So naturally, you want the best for your car, so it can get you back to point B the next day. You can keep your car’s finishnice and shiny by making a baking soda paste (There’s no specific amounts of powder or water you need, just make sure it’s a nice paste) and rubbing it all over your car’s dulling paint job. Let the paste sit for 5-15 minutes and then rinse your car off. Nowyour Camaro ;) looks as good as the day you bought it back in ’72.
2. Mouthwash: Have you checked out the price of oral care products lately (The kids’ college or some Agent Cool Blue? Choices, choices…). For those of us who decide that our kids getting fine careers in politics, law, or medicine is more important, your child no longer has to deal with minor tooth decay thanks to the advent of baking soda. If you mix a single tablespoon with half of a tall glass of water, you have some pretty effective mouthwash.
3. Skin Exfoliator: For those of us who strive for clean, smooth, baby-like skin, this trick will serve you all quite well. You can make a nice exfoliating paste for your skin by mixing 3 parts baking soda with 1 part water. When applying it, you should gently massage it on your skin, getting as much coverage as you want. When you’ve gotten it all massaged on, rinse it all off with some warm water.
4. Tougher Laundry Detergent: Maybe you have heard about using vinegar to brighten colors in your laundry before, but what can baking soda do? 1/2 a cup of the stuff mixed in with your detergent makes your detergent work much more effectively, making clothes cleaner and colors brighter. Is anyone wondering what would happen if we mixed the vinegar trick with the baking soda trick? Your clothes probably wouldn’t live through it, so I wouldn’t try it. {Learn how to make your own laundry detergent.}
5. Homemade Clay: If you have an artist in the family (or maybe you are the artist), the following project could be a fun thing to do. If you mix some baking soda in with 1 1/4 cups of water and a cup of cornstarch, the result is something quite similar to store bought modeling clay. Afterwards you should go and find an air-tight tin to maximize its shelf life.
6. Deodorant: Stick or spray? You don’t have to pick either with baking soda; its magnificent quality of being able to make anything smell nice makes it an extremely viable option when choosing deodorant in the morning. No fancy steps at all to doing this: just firmly pat the baking soda under your pits and go about your day.
7. Toilet Cleaner: None of us want to do it. Not a single person in the house wants to deal with THAT one dreaded job. No one wants to deal with the dirty job of cleaning the toilet. Then you remember you have baking soda on your side. Dump roughly a single cup into the toilet bowl and let it sit for about an hour. After that hour has passed, go back and flush the toilet. You’ll now have a clean and odorless toilet.
8. Deodorize Your Home: Baking soda can deodorize just about anything. You can put an open box in the back of a fridge to keep odors bearable; you can sprinkle some across the bottom of your trash can before you put a new bag in to keep the smells at bay; and you can leave a snowstorm of the stuff on the carpet before you go to work and vacuum it all up when you get home.
9. Poor Man’s Foot Bath: For most families, it’s too expensive to buy a personal sauna for the entire family to relax in. So, if you still want their feet to experience the soothing sauna experience, our only friend is baking soda. For a nice foot bath, simply fill a tub with warm water and then add and stir in at least 3 tablespoons of our fine friend, Baking Soda.
10. Replacement for De-Icing Salts: We’ve all had that moment; we walk in from the cold winter air, dust our jackets off, and start the boring, monotonous task of getting all the salt off of our shoes. Would you believe that Baking Soda can also help you here? You can substitute a fine dusting of Baking Soda for all those salts you’re tossing onto your driveway and patio. Unlike all the other options available, Baking Soda provides you with good traction and melts the ice just as well as salt. Unlike salt, it won’t cause damage to your shoes or your floors.

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