Baking soda: It's like magic powder. It can be used everywhere, and once you start utilizing it for all of its 101 uses, you just might get pretty attached to this stuff.

You can bake, deodorize, and clean with sodium bicarbonate. Most people are already using it for the first two uses we mentioned, but the last one - not so much. However it is a great way to clean most surfaces and things in your home, while at the same time avoiding toxic, yucky chemicals.

Burned a pot? Put some baking soda and hot water in there and let it sit for a bit. Don't want to mix chemicals with your food? Baking soda can be used to clean both counter tops and fruit & veggies. Martha Stewart recently suggested dipping half a lemon into baking soda for a great & natural sink cleaner.

Most baking soda is made from soda ash, which comes from a naturally-occurring mined substance called trona. Most trona comes from Wyoming, which is known as the Saudi Arabia of sodium carbonate. Trona is mined completely underground, and we hear these mines are like underground cities. While we're still trying to understand how these mining practices affect the environment, we're confident in saying that baking soda is still light years better than using toxic chemicals to handle your dirty work.

Rebecca says: When it doubt, try baking soda out. I have used it in a paste with water as an abrasive cleaner, to take terrible burned gunk off of pots, and even as a fire extinguisher. I just learned about using it as a cleaner for fruits & vegetables, and you can bet I'll be putting that into action this week.

Arm & Hammer Baking Soda Solutions

Trona Mining Resource