I use white vinegar in the bathroom for removing hard water deposits. I would prefer to decant the vinegar from its glass bottle into a plastic squirt bottle, both because the squirt bottle is easier to aim and because I prefer not to have glass containers in the bathroom. If it matters, the squirt bottle is marketed as a condiment dispenser, you’re supposed to put ketchup or mustard in it. The reason I hesitate to just do it is because if keeping vinegar in a plastic bottle was a good idea, I’m pretty sure that the vinegar manufacturer would have packaged it in plastic in the first place.
I’ve got a plastic gallon jug of white vinegar that’s at least five years old.
Yeah, vinegar comes in plastic and glass; a 5% acetic acid solution isn’t really very strong at all.
very good on keeping glass out of the bathroom.
it will be fine in plastic for cleaning purposes.
Great, I can get that glass bottle out of the bathroom, then. Thanks everyone.
For that matter, the ketchup or mustard that the bottle was intended for has vinegar pretty high on its ingredient list.
Ha! The plastic jug of vinegar in my mom’s basement is at least ten years old! Vinegar lasts forever!
Ummm…
isn’t it vinegar that is used to “pickle” foodstuffs?
There’s probably something about it that lasts a long time…
I don’t think Lynn was worried about the vinegar itself going bad (given that she would otherwise be storing the same vinegar in a glass container). I think she was just worried about it degrading the plastic.
Yes, I was worried that some morning, I might pick up the plastic dispenser of vinegar and find that the acid had weakened it enough to leak or even split. I am at my least functional in the mornings and I really don’t need to deal with a bunch of vinegar spilling all over the place at any time of day. I’m not particularly worried about vinegar going bad, it’s really pretty cheap, and I don’t use the vinegar in the bathroom for making food, I just use it to dissolve deposits, soften skin, rinse hair, stuff like that. I PARTICULARLY don’t like glass containers in the shower, but I do like to rinse my hair with vinegar sometimes, and a squeeze bottle is much more efficient at dispensing a liquid in the shower.
Check the plastics code on the bottom. If there’s a 5 or PP5, it’s polypropylene and resistant to virtually anything.
If there’s a 2 in the triangle, it’s LDPE which may degrade somewhat in time, but still will hold your vinegar for months or years.
It doesn’t have a code on the bottom, all it has is “not microwave safe” and “made in china”. Yes, in all lower case. It doesn’t have a code anywhere else, either. I was rather surprised at this, because I bought those bottles within the past couple of months.
Probably a low-grade plastic, but good enough for now (vinegar really isn’t that strong). But next time you are out shopping, look for a squeezer with that 5 or PP5.
It will be microwave safe and top-shelf dishwasher safe. (Also can be sterilized in an autoclave, should you get in the mood to do it.)
Polypropylene is what plastic lab ware is made of. Nalgene is one brand.)
Larger quantities of vinegar do come in plastic containers (see: Google image search for ‘vinegar’), although I don’t know what sort of plastic.
For this:
I freely admit I’m WAGging, but I strongly suspect that the familiar glass bottles are common for purely marketing / tradition / aesthetic reasons. A hearty, clear, clean glass bottle of vinegar looks a lot better on a customer’s kitchen counter next to the equivalently aesthetically packaged olive oil and red wine.