During the coronavirus pandemic, regular cleaning and disinfecting of your home is essential for staying safe.
The challenge? High-proof alcohol is hard to find, and bleach can be too harsh for daily use.
Fortunately, you can create an effective homemade disinfectant using lemon and white vinegar—a natural, virus-fighting solution backed by medical insights.
- 1 lemon
- White vinegar
- Spray bottle
1. Fill the spray bottle 3/4 full with white vinegar.
2. Cut the lemon peel into small pieces.
3. Add the lemon peel pieces to the bottle.
4. Let it sit in a dark place for a week.
5. After a week, wear gloves and spray the mixture on surfaces.
6. Scrub thoroughly to eliminate viruses, germs, and bacteria.
7. Wash your gloves in soapy water afterward.
8. Launder any used cloths in the washing machine at 60°C.
Your homemade lemon sanitizer is ready! Simple, quick, and highly effective.
Perfect for daily-touch surfaces like door handles, light switches, remotes, phones, keyboards, keys, car dashboards, steering wheels, and fridge handles.
Bonus: It leaves a fresh, lemony scent that freshens your entire home.
It's ready when the vinegar turns slightly yellow, indicating the lemon's active compounds have infused fully.
White vinegar's acetic acid makes it a powerful disinfectant, effective against fragile viruses like COVID-19 in open air.
As Dr. Damien Mascret explains, "White vinegar is effective against Covid-19 because it destroys the lipid layer of the virus, which is the fatty layer that surrounds viruses."
This natural acid also eliminates germs on household surfaces and doorknobs.
Lemon amplifies vinegar's disinfecting power with its own citric acid.
For more, watch Dr. Mascret's expert segment on France 2's 8 p.m. news (enable sound in the bottom right of the video).
