Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar

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You probably have Apple Cider Vinegar in your home, but do you know all of the many ways it can be used? Here are some new uses for Apple Cider Vinegar so that you can make the most out of this common household ingredient.

You probably have Apple Cider Vinegar in your home, but do you know all of the many ways it can be used? Here are some new uses for Apple Cider Vinegar so that you can make the most out of this common household ingredient. #applecidervinegar #usesforapplecidervinegar #acv #usesforacv #usesfor #frugal

Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar

Apple Cider Vinegar is another one of those amazing “do-it-all” items that you have hiding on your pantry shelf. What you may consider just a great addition to a salad dressing recipe, the uses for apple cider vinegar are numerous.

Although we don’t use apple cider vinegar much in our baking and cooking (I want to start using it more, especially after doing the research for this article!) I always keep a good supply on hand for various things. Since it has so many uses I know that I’m bound to need it once in a while for the random task.

heinzvinegar

Now when I’m talking about apple cider vinegar here I’m not talking about this —->

braggs

<—–I’m talking about this. Raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar with “The Mother”.

What exactly is “The Mother” and why is it and raw, unfiltered ACV important?

Raw means that the vinegar is unpasteurized. Similar to milk, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar still retains all its original properties. The Mother is the enzymes with which the vinegar is made. Regular apple cider vinegar has been filtered to remove The Mother and consequently the properties that come along with that.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way 🙂 we can talk about all those excellent uses for apple cider vinegar!

–Learn How to Make Homemade Vinegar

Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar Around the Homestead

  • Feed it to your chickens to maintain a healthy flock. Mix a small amount into your chickens’ water to feed it to them. Around 2 tablespoons to 1 gallon of water. (Make sure it’s in a plastic container to prevent erosion.)
  • Place apple cider vinegar in goat’s water during breeding time to produce more females than males. (source)
  • Spray on weeds in the driveway to kill them. (See more ideas: Homemade Weed Killer)
  • Remove the skunk odor from a pet. Wash with full-strength apple cider vinegar and rinse with water until the smell is gone.
  • You can add up to a 1/4 cup daily to your horses’ feed to help increase their coat shine and decrease flies. It can also be used as a natural detangler on their mane.
uses for apple cider vinegar

Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar in Health and Beauty

  • Use it as a rinse after you shampoo. Not only will it improve your hair health and help it shine, but it can also help remove any dry, flakiness from your scalp.
  • Create a mixture of 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar and 2 tablespoons water and use to dab on your face as a toner before you go to bed and before you put a moisturizer on your face.
  • Use it as natural sunburn relief.
  • Use it to remove warts. Soak a cotton ball in apple cider vinegar and wrap it around the wart with a bandage or first aid tape.
  • Use it to whiten your teeth. Soak a cotton ball with apple cider vinegar and rub on teeth. Rinse your mouth out with water after you are finished.
  • Add some apple cider vinegar in a warm tub of water to give yourself a detox foot bath.
  • Make Homemade Aftershave Lotion.
  • Instead of mixing clay with water, mix it with apple cider vinegar and place it on your face as a mask.
  • Use Apple Cider Vinegar to make a Vinegar Oxymels or a Rose Petal Herbal Syrup

Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar Around the Home

  • Keep the fleas off your dog by mixing one part apple cider vinegar to one part water. Place it in a spray bottle and spray on pets. Rub the spray into their fur every day until the fleas are gone.
  • Make a simple cleaner by mixing together 1 part apple cider vinegar and 2 parts water. Combine in a spray bottle and use for an all-purpose cleaner on countertops, bathroom surfaces, windows, and more.
  • Use it to wash your produce.
  • Use it to make your produce last longer.
  • Use it as a disinfectant for your cutting boards.
  • Use Apple Cider Vinegar and Baking Soda as a drain cleaner.
  • Make a fruit fly trap by placing apple cider vinegar in a container, covering with plastic wrap and poking holes in the top with a toothpick. The fruit flys are attracted to the vinegar but can’t get back out of the holes.
applebutter

Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar in Cooking

  • Use it to make a Buttermilk substitute with regular milk.
  • Make a delicious and Simple Salad Dressing with ACV and just a few other staple ingredients.
  • Add ACV to your marinades to help tenderize your meat.
  • Adding vinegar to your homemade bone Broth to help extract the minerals and create a more nutritious broth.

Here are some great recipes that include Apple Cider Vinegar:

Looking for more uncommon uses for products around your home? Here are a few to check out:

Uses for Witch Hazel
Uses for Epsom Salt
Uses for Shea Butter
Uses for Olive Oil
Castile Soap Uses For Your Home & Body
Hydrogen Peroxide Uses For Home And Body

Find more Uses For Items on Little House Living.


If you love these different Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar, you will absolutely love my book, Little House Living: The Make Your Own Guide to a Frugal, Simple, and Self-Sufficient Life. It features 130 recipes and ideas just like these that are perfect for your household!

What are your favorite uses for apple cider vinegar?
Have you tried any of these? How did they work for you?

merissabio

This post on the Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar was originally published on Little House Living in November 2013. It has been updated as of November 2019.

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17 Comments

  1. Hi Merissa!

    Love, love, LOVE your site and all your fantastic resources! This particular blog post is just awesome, too. . .I have long known about many of the virtues of vinegar, but keep finding out new and wonderful ways to use it! Aiding in getting more female goats than males?? Who knew!!

    I am about to attempt to make my own apple cider vinegar, Mother and all, for the first time, too. . .now that I have a million ways I want to use it, and considering how expensive Bragg’s is, I thought I would give it a go! (looks easy, but time will tell!)

    You are doing an awesome job providing great information. . .thanks for all of the time and effort you put into it! I’ll be coming back regularly!

    Blessings,

    Robynne

    1. Some really good to know tips. I use ACV a lot too. I make a hot tea with garlic, Honey and ACV and little lemon. If you mix it half and half with Honey, you have a cough syrup and sleeping aid. I use it to clean reather than chemicals. I have Asthma.

  2. Apple cider vinegar w the mother will also releave cramps and charle horses, just add a cap full to a 4 oz. glass of water…

    1. Yeah that works too. I get them real bad in my legs and ribs. But, have you tried Pickle juice or a couple bih spoons of Yellow Mustard? They work too!

  3. I have my kids use ACV with water in place of hair conditioner. It does help with the itchy flakiness. I also use it a lot in canning pickles and pickled veggies. I tried making my own but it got moldy and I had to throw it away. Our house had a lot of mold in it though. Since then we have moved to a non-moldy house. Does anyone make their own? If so how did you do it and how did it turn out?

    1. I’m working on making a red wine vinegar myself. Did you try tying a piece of netting or sheet over the jar? That should help. Also, remember if you’re not storing your homemade vinegar in the refridgator, you need to pasturize it, which for apple cider vinegar is going to defeat the purpose you’re trying for. The new house should help a LOT. My project is coming out well, and its a very old house. 100 years old, w/ ancient oak, so we have problems with it being too dry, but at least that means no mold. Good luck!

      1. It did turn out! I did use cheesecloth over the jar.but I have never heard of needing to store it in the fridge. Why is that?

        1. because its still alive. when its alive, it must be kept cold or it can keep working and potentially spoil. the acid is high enough that once you pasturize it, hold it at 180 for a minute or two, any foreign bacteria will be dead and its shelf stable.

  4. Can you tell me how to get rid of skin tags?
    I love your site, I have tried a few things found on your site and so far I have been very satisfied with results!!

    1. I’ve heard you are supposed to place a cotton ball soaked with apple cider vinegar (held on with a bandaid) for several hours a day and it’s supposed to make them go away 🙂

  5. Hello Merissa! I love reading your blog, thank you so much for the time you dedicate to these wonderful posts. We use apple cider vinegar in our 3 shih tzu’s water (1 TBSP per gallon of water) for tear stains. It changes the acidity of their tears and makes them less staining on teary breeds like my short nosed shih tzus. It works very well and I can tell when my husband has been skimping on putting the ACV in their water 🙂

  6. Apple cider vinegar, lemon juice; honey.hot water ..very good for colds and sore throats….Really enjoy your page..

  7. I just came across your website and am enjoying reading through everything. Thank you for providing all these greats recipes, the information, and the simple ideas to living.

    I have another use for apple cider vinegar. My newly adopted puppy who was about a year old at the time contracted canine papiloma virus from the dog park. He had these awful warts in his mouth that were multiplying weekly. I had emailed the vet asking about them and he said they only they could do was surgically remove them if they got too bad and he could no longer eat. It was a virus so no medication would get rid of them. I started researching online and saw dozens of photos of dogs with their mouths filled with them and they couldn’t eat, drink, sometimes couldn’t breathe! It was horrifying. I was not going to let that happen to him. So I started my own little research on helping him with natural remedies. And this is what I ended up doing, a combination of things.

    Firstly I found out they are very contagious and dogs under 2 years are more likely to get them because they do not have fully developed immune system yet. The other thing is that whatever they put their mouth on gets contaminate, toys, dog dishes, anything. So if you do not wash their things DAILY they will just reinfect themselves and the virus can last for months.

    -Firstly you need to snap off a couple of the warts (didn’t hurt him) to increase and set off his immune system to start fighting the warts. Because his was a puppy, and under 2 his immune system wasn’t fighting them the way an adult dogs would. You will see a little bit of blood when you do this, but do not worry, that is normal and didn’t seem to bother my dog, he wasn’t in any pain. You just do this one time, not everyday. And just snap off 1 or 2 warts. Snapping off all of them is not going to make the virus go away or keep from coming back either, so don’t bother and it will just be messy and uncomfortable for your dog. Just doing a couple will set off his immune system to kick in.

    – I ran his food and water dishes through the dishwasher nightly so they were clean and virus free for the start of the next day.

    -I washed ALL his toys, balls, bones in hot soapy water every night and let them soak in the water for at least 30 minutes. After they air dried on the counter overnight I rubbed each one with apple cider vinegar on a dishcloth.

    -I washed all his bedding and my bedding (since he sleeps with me at night) every single morning in hot water and dried on high. So we had clean bedding every day for the next night.

    -I gave him 1 TB of apple cider vinegar, Braggs with the Mother like you have shown above. I gave this to him once a day in his breakfast mixed with a little water and a few pieces of meat to make it more palatable.

    -I also dabbed apple cider with a cotton ball onto his warts once a day usually around midday.

    -I then gave him 5 drops of pure vitamin E oil that came in a dropper bottle so I didn’t have to deal with cutting open vitamins and squeezing it on. I gave him the oil every night before bed. I would put the oil directly onto the warts and I did it at bedtime so he wouldn’t drink water afterwards and dilute it. You have check the IU amount you can give for your size dog. My dog is 34 lbs and about 100-200 IU a day is good, so that equaled 5 drops or so. You have to do some math to figure this out correctly.

    Then the magic happened. In only 5 days, his warts were completely gone! I continued to wash his toys, bowls daily for a week after they were gone and also continued the vinegar and oil regime for that next week but then stopped and they never came back. That was about 8 months ago. Apple cider vinegar, Vitamin E oil, and daily disinfecting did the trick. I had told me vet how I got rid of them and she was shocked. She said she has seen cases were they are they and multiply for months. About a month after I had told her about what I did, she called me because she had another patient with the warts and wanted to recommend my remedy. I think the western vets are starting to see that medicine, surgery isn’t always necessary.

  8. Put a little apple cider vinegar on a cotton ball and dab a fresh mosquito or fly bite. It immediately stops the itch.

  9. Just so you know, if you can’t afford the raw apple cider vinegar, the cheap stuff has uses as well. Apple cider vinegar added to your bath water helps with several conditions. Such as…late pregnancy itchiness. You know, the kind where you want to claw your skin off? 1 cup added to a generous bath of warm water. My teenager uses a slightly stronger version, 1 and a half cups to a bath to control body acne that has started with her new job. 1 cup to favored bath temp water for those w/ reoccuring staph infections. Using this now w/ my toddler stepdaughter and while its too soon to see if its going to help control it, she’s already much more comfortable.

  10. I take a Tbsp of organic in water daily. I use the cheap stuff for a hair rinse. We’ve all forgotten a load in the washer overnight. Just run a rinse cycle with a cup of ac vinegar and the smell is gone! Works on Hubby’s dirty, smelly work clothes too.