Baking soda - on your teeth and on your feet

What else can you use on your battery terminals or in your belly or on your poison ivy or on your teeth, in  your toilet or on your feet?

Baking soda, still coming packed in the same old raunchy-looking cardboard box that used to sit on Mom’s shelves more than 60 years ago, is still an old-fashioned value.

Using it as a refrigerator deodorizer is fairly common knowledge, but did you remember that you can also used it as paste to cover insect bites, burns, or poison ivy? Or that you can use it to make play clay for kids, or fashion from it things like plaques, candle holders and pendant necklaces? (Here’s a place to learn about those applications)

Use it to put out grease, electrical or oil fires; put it on battery terminals to remove corrosion; sprinkled some in ash trays or other stinky places it gives relief; cover the bottom of your cat’s litter pan to keep it smelling better (three parts litter to one part soda); maintain swimming pool pH at 7.4 to 8.2 by using one pound per week per 10,000 gallons of water.

Use baking soda on a damp sponge to take mildew off fiberglass showers without scratching them. Brush your teeth with it, use it as deodorant, drink 1/2 teaspoon (sometimes much less in my experience) per 1/2 glass of water for heartburn, remove dead skin from your feet by soaking in it; scour pots, pans, and utensils with it; sweeten drains, food disposers, coffee pots, and vacuum bottles with it and also take the onion smell off chopping boards. 

I wish I had invented that stuff.