Who Knew?

Several months ago, I happened upon a set of all-natural cleaning recipes on a website. I forwarded the link onto my three HHH buddies, and Megan sent me this incredibly jazzed-up word document listing each of the recipes and their respective ingredients. (I still need to ask her just how she did this, as the formatting was way stylish and cute!)

As I gleefully printed her Document Art (as it can be best described!) I saw a recipe for rust remover. What really caught my eye was the ingredients: Salt and a Lime. That's all. As I pictured myself drinking a margarita (what other lime and salt combinations come to mind, I ask you??) I immediately became intrigued. It had recently come to pass that our cast iron skillet acquired a rust spot. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but it made me sad. We use our cast iron skillet frequently and I was looking for a good way to remove the rust without damaging the skillet or jeopardizing the finish. After all, this skillet is used to cook our food on a routine basis, so the last thing I wanted was to use harsh chemicals that could possibly linger on the skillet and get into a future batch of food. Yikes!

So, I tried the 2-ingredient rust remover. And, you guessed it, it worked. Like a charm, to be precise! I became immediately enamored of this all-natural rust remover and used it to take off a few rust spots by my bathroom sink, where I accidentally left bobby pins which then got wet, creating a rusty mess. (Am I the only person these things happen to??) Unfortunately, I don't have before-and-after pictures, but please trust me that this recipe will get rid of rust and you will be thrilled that you didn't spend money on a special cleaner or cough up a lung while using that cleaner in your house.

So, without further ado...

The Rapturous Rust Remover

Ingredients:

Lime
Salt (kosher or other coarse-grained salt, such as sea salt. Although I guess table salt would work in a pinch!)

Directions:

Layer salt onto the rust. Squeeze lime juice over salt, being sure to save the lime rind. Wait 2-3 hours. Then, scrub salt away with the rind from the lime. (You will be surprised at how strong the rind is...I expected it to crumble or tear apart, but I scrubbed at the rust pretty vigorously and it maintained its shape) Voila! Your rust will be gone.