My New Best Cleaning Friend

A couple of years ago, when I was ordering regularly from Approved Foods, I ordered what I thought were a couple of bottles of regular handwash at a knockdown price of 50p each.  When they actually arrived they were in fact alcohol based hand disinfectant, of the kind you find on a hospital ward!

Needless to say, these two bottles have been kicking around the kitchen ever since and haven't really been used all that much.  I keep one in the downstairs toilet and use it occasionally, as there is no sink in there, but usually I go and wash my hands at the kitchen sink.

Anyway, I've been wanting to find a use for them and can't really bring myself to throw them out.  I know they're not the most eco-friendly product, so I don't want to put them down the sink.

Fast forward a couple of years and I did use them once to clean my hands before changing a dressing on OH's shoulder recently and I attempted to use some in a homemade spray on deodorant, which needless to say, didn't work at all.

Then whilst taking a look at Pinterest I came upon an article entitled 20 uses for Rubbing Alcohol. Well, one of the ingredients of this hand disinfectant is rubbing alcohol, namely Isopropyl Alcohol, so I figured it would probably work in a similar way.

Reading the list, it was interesting to note that it had quite a few uses:

Removing sticky residue from labels
Cutting through grease (i.e. on the top of the cooker hood)
Removing scuff marks from floors
De-icing windscreens and helping to prevent them frosting up
Removing permanent marker
Cleaning jewellery
Cleaning mirrors
Making stainless steel sparkle
Deodorising shoes
Sterilising scissors/tweezers, etc.
Getting rid of onion smells from hands, etc.
Cleaning white boards
Tick removal!!
Cleaning smartphones

yadayadayada.

Well, guess who is my new best cleaning friend.  I put some in a spray bottle and tried it on a stubborn scuff mark on our kitchen cupboards that had been annoying me for ages.  I'd tried various cleaners on it and not been able to budge it a bit. It took a bit of elbow grease, but here's the before:

and the after.

Like new. I also used it to remove some pen marks from one of the drawer fronts too, but didn't photograph these. I then tried it on the cooker hood and got very quick results with the minimum of elbow grease.

It's now earned it's place in the under sink cupboard.  I'll be trying some more of the above uses out out in the near future.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?