Pinteresting Pins: Magic Eraser & a Baking Soda Trial

Time to test out more fun things I found over on Pinterest.

Shockingly enough, Pinterest is good for more than just finding yummy food.  Did you know that?
There are all sorts of great time-saving and sanity-saving tips on there.  I created a great little board called "Frugal Household Ideas."  Go, check it out.  There are lots of great (cheap) household tips that should make your life easier.

I looked over what I had pinned to see what would be most useful to me right now and this pin stuck out at me: All the uses for Magic Erasers that you didn't know about.  I always keep Magic Erasers on hand, but, I have to admit, I pretty much only use them to clean walls and trim.  I guess I never knew there were other things to clean with them (hence the pin title "all the uses for Magic Erasers that you didn't know about").

When you visit the website, you will see an incredibly long list of uses in the post, as well as 240 comments that include more uses (and a very detailed conversation about what the Magic Eraser is actually made of, in case you are interested).  Obviously, I couldn't try out every use on the list, so I picked out a few that intrigued me and went to work.

Here's my list and the results:

• Inside the oven door - On the actual metal, it cleaned great. On the Glass? Not so much. I tried Windex Multi-Surface Cleaner and a regular sponge on the glass and it was so much better.

• Dried paint on door hinges - The Magic Eraser did not clean this at all, not even one little smudge came off.
• Agitator in washing machine - It's crazy that this was on the list because mine has been dirty forever and it never even crossed my mind that you could clean it!  Maybe I'm really the one who's crazy.  Anyway...this was a score!  It cleaned that agitator beautifully and so quick and easy.

• Stained caulking around sink - It really didn't do anything for my stained caulking, but maybe it depends on the type of stain?
• Bathtub floor - The thought behind this is that the sponge cleans with micro-abrasion (kind of like the micro-dermabrasion you can use for your skin).  It actually gets the dirt clean by taking off a tiny layer of whatever surface you are cleaning.  So those little micro thingies are supposed to get into the spaces on the rough bathtub floor and get them all clean.  Guess what?  It didn't work. AT. ALL.  But since I was in the bathtub cleaning anyway, I decided to try it out on the stubborn ring around the tub.  It worked very well.  Just scraped that sucker right off.

My last experiment was with the grout on the kitchen floor.  The Magic Eraser article claimed that it could clean grout and mine really need cleaning. So I did a little experiment.  It just so happened that I had pinned another tip about how to make your own grout cleaner. (Direct link if you don't have Pinterest.)  I decided to clean some of my floor with the homemade baking soda and water grout cleaner from that pin and some of it with the Magic Eraser to see which cleaned better.

Definitely the baking soda and water cleaned better than the Magic Eraser.  The Magic Eraser did get the grout cleaner than it was before, but not shockingly clean.

While the baking soda paste got the grout clean, it was a complete mess to use.  The directions said to "let it dwell for 10 minutes" then to "rinse clean."  I'm not really sure what it means to "let it dwell for 10 minutes" so I just let it sit there.  But the hard part?  "Rinse clean." How do you get a bunch of wet baking soda off of your kitchen floor without making a huge mess?  You just don't, that's how.  I cleaned it all with a sponge...twice.  Then I mopped...three times.  Guess what?  The floor is still gritty with baking soda.

The moral of the story is: I still haven't found a grout cleaner that I like, but, hey, if you want to clean your washing machine's agitator...the Magic Eraser is the way to go!

Have you found any great uses for the Magic Eraser?  How about grout cleaner?  Know any good ways to clean that?