I do a lot of my cleaning with baking soda and vinegar, but sometimes another choice is better. That would be cleaning with lemon juice.

You can’t beat the smell for one thing. An area cleaned with lemon juice smells good!

A classic use is as furniture polish. There’s a reason why so many store bought furniture polishes are lemon scented. You can put two parts of olive oil to one part lemon juice to make your own hardwood furniture polish.

Plain lemon juice is also good for cleaning wooden cutting boards.

Mixed with baking soda into a paste, it can polish chrome or copper. Salt can work in place of the baking soda, as it provides grit for scrubbing. I like baking soda in most cases, although it is less gritty.

Lemon juice is also good for your laundry, as it can help with natural bleaching. Hanging clothes out to dry in the sun can help with stains too, but sometimes you want that boost from lemon juice. Just add a half cup of lemon juice to the rinse cycle, then dry in the sunlight. A small amount of lemon juice also just makes clothes smell good when they dry, but honestly I’ve never found the need to worry about how my clothes smell after washing.

You can also soak clothes in a mix of vinegar and lemon juice to get a stain out. Just soak for a half hour before washing.

Lemon juice is a pretty flexible cleaner, and delightful for those times you don’t want the smell of vinegar when you clean. Sometimes scent matters.