Mineral Buildup on RV Windows?

You can always tell when spring hits the desert. Well, sure, the cactus wrens are twittering, the doves are cooing, and all other such heartwarming delights are taking place. But I can be sure that ’spring has sprung,’ when the sweet side of my life (wife) begins bemoaning the state of the windows. While she’ll handle the inside side, cleaning the outside of the rig’s viewports always seems to fall to me.

With tools of the trade in hand (step ladder, cleaning rag, paper towels, and bottle of window cleaner) I somehow eventually got out the door and at the task. But it didn’t take too many minutes (but a LOT of paper towels) to determine that the outside cleaning just wasn’t going to be a cake walk. It seems we’d built up a pretty window-cleaner resistant amount of haze on the windows, and something (other than a hammer and chisel) was going to be required for fixing it.

I dunno what did it, but somehow old Sarah Bellum finally kicked in: My feelings were that somehow, all that old desert alkali dust had managed to coat my windows, and its tenacious grasp was simply too much for old “windy-x” to handle. Flashback to high school science class: Alkalai, sounds like alkaline, opposite of acid. A quick trot back into the house found me toting out a bottle of vinigar. A liberal application of the liquid to the window glass and a fast scrub down with my cleaning rag, and Hey Presto! that nasty stuff came right off. Sweet! (OK, so it does taste a bit the opposite if you splash it in your mouth).

Where else will vinegar help you in your RV? Well, thanks to our friends at the Vinegar Institute we herewith provide a few more useful ways you can use one of America’s favorite sours:

-Wipe with full-strength vinegar to banish grease
-Dilute with water to remove grease and grime on mini-blinds
-Use full-strength to clean chrome fixtures and whiten grout
-Brew full-strength to clean your coffee maker
-Dilute with water and use with a cloth to remove starch build-up from your iron
-Dilute with water and sprinkle on pet-stained carpet
-Mix with salt and baking soda to unclog drains
-Dilute with water and spray on mirrors for a streak-free reflection
-Mix with olive oil to remove glass water rings on wood furniture

photo by cyancy on flickr.com