You know, it really wouldn't hurt if LH editors adopted a policy of always testing hacks themselves before posting, if at all feasible.

idoru

I am disappointed in this site, that is one of the dumber ideas I've ever read. Who's doing the reality check on the posts you ok?

casjen54

o_O

Given the vast list of just natural household products you can use to clean a house, I don't know how wine got on here.

I mean. *Wine*. It'd be a little more hilarious if someone suggested red wine, but even just using white wine - great. Your house now smells like stale wine (and frankly, the smell of wine makes me a little nauseous at the best of times - I'd *much* prefer vinegar), and there's a thin film of sugary wine over everything.

Please. Someone *try* this before reposting stupid internet tips.

Sangrail

Drink enough wine and the place will look clean... kind of like drinking enough wine and the person at the end of the bar will look good...

My house is spotless and I am stunningly good looking.

Dr. J

@rachaeljean: Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so...

You can buy alcohol at any corner drug store... if that's all you want, why take all the other crap that's in wine along for the ride?

If I'm going to do something once, I'll fudge it and use some sort of a makeshift tool, if I'm going to do something many times, I want to use the right tool for the right job. Cleaning one's house should not be a one time thing.

Binks

Contrary to the others, I read this post and thought it to be a great idea.

Then I drank all the wine.

It was indeed the best idea this site has ever had. I have never been happier.

DetergentDinners

This has got to be the dumbest idea I've ever read on this site :-/

rachaeljean

"(...)douse fruits and vegetables in the alcohol and let the acids within do their tricks. It's not a bad idea when traditional chemicals aren't readily available(...)"

What are the traditional chemicals used in cleaning fruit and vegetables?

AbramCove

How could anyone think this is a good idea? It's the vinegar and alcohol contained in the wine you want, not the wine itself. Your brains-use them.

Tymian

I third (fourth?) the "wine attracts nasty stuff" train of thought. I recently used wine to get rid of a swarm of fruit flies that attacked my kitchen. They loved the stuff! But now I don't want any wine in the open for fear that they might return.

goodman

I always clean my house while drinking wine...

WhatThe...

Though the great Pasteur once said : "wine is the most hygenic beverage" dare I say that I use it for another yet more noble purpose ;-)

Thibault

It's posts like this that make me question how much longer Lifehacker will have a slot in my RSS reader.

Sigh

eatingorange

@Vanderwomble: Touché!

Victor Souza

Acid and alcohol, great for cleaning, yes! And what else is in wine? Sugar! Spread a film of sugar, vinegar and alcohol over your kitchen counter, and after the alcohol evaporates, you'll have a lovely petri dish/cockroach cafeteria right there at a convenient working height. Get yourself a used PCR setup off eBay, and you can do a little molecular biology on the side.

piminnowcheez

Using wine in this manner is just alcohol abuse. Buy wine so you can drink it.

If you need alcohol and acid cleanser, mix some vinegar with isopropyl. Much cheaper and you really won't want to drink it unless you like being sick.

On the other hand, if you have some old, stale wine on hand, you could make vinegar out of it with the purchase of a vinegar mother culture.

drsmith

And if you're looking to clean your house of wine ?

Vanderwomble

Too bad it doesn't help against carpet stains.

HarrisonHopkins

any thoughts on how this is better than vinegar (which is obviously much cheaper)? I guess vinegar smells worse.

[Although, I like wine, but wouldn't want my house smelling like it, either.]

justbrag

wine isn't that great of a household cleaner. Your kitchen will smell like a bar and ants love the chemicals.

ironchef

I hear red wine is great for getting stains out of carpets too.

sacred_hoops

@AbramCove:
Not to mention that fruit I have soaked in the wine is now going to my kid? Oh wait... is that a good idea?

This is by far one of the most ill-conceived ideas that I have seen on here. First of all, if you don't have cleaning products but do have an abundance of wine on hand there is is probably a group meeting somewhere with your name on it ... find a sponsor. Second (for all the reasons posted above), why would you not use either a bonafide cleaning product, or home remedy (vinegar and isopropyl, diluted lemon juice, baking soda, or club soda). The chances for creating surfaces that I would never again touch with food is extraordinarily high.

This would have been a better post on April 1.

BrisketKid

Please clean responisbly.

BrisketKid

Ridiculous idea. You know what's good for cleaning your kitchen? Cleaning products. They're dirt cheap, do a good job, and they clean all the wine your stupid flatmate poured all over the kitchen to "clean" it.

holyspidoo

@sacred_hoops:
Yeah, just pour liberally over entire carpet; let sit for 3 hours; allow yourself to be intoxicated by the fumes; wake up with a hangover; and voila no more stains. However you may need to rethink whether those new drapes really look good with burgundy.

By the way would a 76 Bourdeaux be better for the bathroom or the laundry room?

BrisketKid

Hey Lifehacker, while you are at this... why clean your kitchen? Why dont you buy all new appliances and granite countertops while you are at it?

I am sure baby seal oil makes for a nice shine on that platinum plated luxury car.

rdldr1

I think that this is one of the dumbest lifehacker tips I have ever come across.

ubuntuking

@space race ace: The article says "in the absence of", not "exclusively".

Victor V.

The only thing wine is good for in the kitchen -- besides drinking and cooking -- is making fruit fly traps. Although, a vinegar-based salad dressing works better than that.

I guess my only question is -- why? Why would you waste money on wine at $8 a box (I don't know, is that what a box of wine costs? I'm not using my bottle of Chateau-Neuf-de-Pape on my countertops) when a jug of white vinegar is about 1/4 of the price and is universally accepted as a cleaning agent?

Oh, Lifehacker. Next week you'll be telling me that Cheez-Whiz makes an excellent shaving cream and if I'm out of motor oil, single-barrel whiskey can do the trick!

space race ace

Sorry, I thougt it was about cleaning your Linux OS under WINE... Please stick to geek subjects, thanks. You're obiously not in your area here.

christofunk

Wow.. Such vitriol. Go easy on each other people. I know it's Monday but really..

Tomu

For reference: hand sanitizers contain 60-65% alcohol. The ethanol we use in lab to disinfect is 70%. Wine contains 10-14% alcohol. I'm not certain this would be an effective disinfectant; and it's not clear what, if any, evidence was in the original article since neither blog entry cited any.

mrakins

I'm always a little surprised at the nasty edge to some of the criticism I sometimes find here. This certainly isn't one of the best posts I've seen, but so what? There's literally dozens of things I've found on Lifehacker that are interesting, funny or thought-provoking. Many are of no use to me whatsoever, but they are to somebody else.

Bottom line: It's pretty much free, and generally of good quality. If a particular item sucks, skip it and move on. Or have some fun with it, as some people have done here.

Personally, I wouldn't clean with wine because the prospect of having my girlfriend follow me around the house with a straw, just waiting for me to put the bottle down for a second, is too distracting.

Counterglow

Wow.
This is hands down the most ridiculous thing I have ever read on Lifehacker.

Grungydan

@idoru: While it's clearly not feasible for the LH editors to test every hack that they post, this seems like it would be one of the easier ones. I would presume that every LH editor has both a kitchen and access to wine, after all.

Though, to be fair, we (as readers) don't have any insight into the full pool of tips that are sent in to LH, so we have no idea of what percentage of what they receive is usable and what is just plain stupid. Could be that sometimes something that should have been sorted straight into the trash (like this tip) happens to make it in with the useful tips accidentally.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't fault the LH editors for running this tip, as long as they're willing to come out and say that they acknowledge that this is probably the Worst Tip Ever, or at least explain how or why someone thought this was worth posting.

Maybe we could get a sneak peak behind the scenes at LH so that the readers can really understand how tips are fielded, sorted, and pruned for posting?

Andy S.

how is the better/cheaper than traditional cleaners and soaps?

mawcs

Cheez-Whiz makes an excellent shaving cream

Now say, THERE's a great idea for a post! When you're done with your shave, you lick your face clean and save a little water! A green, delicious alternative to traditional shaving chemicals.

piminnowcheez

Tough crowd!

Maybe we should all just agree to use soap and water and drink the wine. Thats what the majority of our mothers did and we (mostly) turned out clean and ok...
Did you hear the tip about cleaning white carpet with coffee??? :)

mooneypilot18067

For the curious/housebound-and-bored, here's the abstract of the food science article on which this post is based:

[www.blackwell-synergy.com]

Careful readers will note that wiping one's counters with wine is not among the authors' recommendations.

piminnowcheez

The only thing I use wine to clean is strawberries. It is a good idea to wash them, since they tend to accumulate dirt. But they are little sponges and will quickly absorb any liquid. If you use tap water, you may detect a hint of chlorine in your berries. At the very least, you are diluting their flavor. Wine, on the other hand, not only helps a bit with sanitizing, but enhances the flavor.

GBMax

This is the most profoundly misguided article I have ever read @ LH. I am a bartender and use wine as an ATTRACTANT for insects. Again, vinegar and alcohol are the CHEAPEST and most readily available chemicals around. If you guys are hard up for writers or something, just let me know.

cannibalpeas

Sounds a bit expensive and sticky to me.
I use lemons a lot to clean both myself and my house.
Adding some slices of lemons to water makes for a great grease cleaner and putting them in your bath works quite well to. Putting some sliced lemons in the refrigerator will also help against nasty odors.
Vinegar is great, especially to clean a water boiler.
And then there is peanut butter to get chewing gum off the sofa.

Spend more time with your grandparents and you will be amazed about what you learn about cleaning.

Pzler

I'm tearing up a little at the thought of using my Italian, German and California wines to clean my countertop after spilling tomato sauce on it.

No, no. I'll just leave that job to the fantastik and enjoy the wine. How can Lifehacker possibly encourage wasting finely tuned beverages? Gah... If you want to clean with the benefits of alcohol, rubbing alcohol is $0.49 at Rite-Aid. For the cost of a bottle of cheap wine you could get about 2 gallons of concentrated Isopropyl Alcohol.

Tommasta

Ok, this is just a little ridiculous if you ask me. Even a cheap bottle of wine is more expensive than the $4.29 you might spend on a bottle of Clorox CleanUp or any other bacteria-killing spray cleaner.

Honestly, I think this is taking DIY just a little too far. There are times when it's ok to suck it up and use something off the grocery store shelf that it was actually intended for... no one's going to question your DIY-manhood/womanhood if you clean your counter with a little Lysol, I promise :)

Bill Clark

I didn't see anyone mention Hydrogen Peroxide. If you don't like the smell of Clorox, HP is a good alternative to killing bacteria on nonporous surfaces like counters. As for the use of wine, I can't see how something as cheap as "Two Buck Chuck" makes sense until it's turned into vinegar and is undrinkable. Even then you've got all that sugar to content with.

Dave_Surfs

@Victor V.: "in the absence of" water -- but when would I have wine and not water? Only at a Jesus-attended wedding, I guess.

space race ace

Some points:

#1.) Doesn't wine leaves a sticky residue after the water and alcohol evaporate? As a cleaner this would requires a rinse, which is more time consuming.

#2.) Wouldn't basic pharmacy alcohol be better and cheaper if you're going to do this?

#3.) I clean with soap and water mostly, and comet and highly diluted water/bleach for the deodorizing and de-grungyfying quality.

#4.) I doubt this is leaving a huge "footprint". And if you only put 7,000 miles on your car a year (half the national average) and use cloth bags at the grocery store then in return it's probably OK to use the 5% bleach solution, no?

#5.) If you want to get technical, I'm sure the industry involved in making wine is having some detrimental effect on the ecosystem, so the green argument in this regard is not really relevant.

#6.) This sounds like some lame thing to make people feel like they're "green" as they continue to drive 20 mpg cars at 14,000 miles per year and use those terrible plastic Taco Bell Chalupa bags that end up in the middle of the ocean: [www.algalita.org]

olegna

I've been using vinegar and hydrogen peroxide combined as a great disinfectant for the last couple of years. I read a great report by Dr. Susan Sumner from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. I can't seem to find the text of the article now, but I recall it killing just about everything, yet being safe for washing produce.

I believe the reason for the study was to find a way to kill E. Coli on fresh produce without be3ing toxic to the consumer.

campusrunner