The First Thing You Should Do with a Box of Baking Soda

Baking soda is the MVP of cleaning agents. We all know this, right? But I think we can also all agree that the household staple has a finicky flaw: actually dispensing it. (A fact that I’m reminded of every time I pour some out and get stuck with inevitable spillage, a powdery mess, or both.) 

But over the summer, I spotted a useful tip on a DIY Facebook group that offered a quick fix for this all-too-common issue…

The solution? Transfer baking soda from its fumbly box into empty (and clean!) spice jars (or empty parmesan cheese container!) instead. You can then ditch the box entirely for your newfound baking soda shakers — which are, in every way, much better. If you don’t want to decant the ENTIRE box into several shakers (maybe you need to use some of the stuff for, I dunno, baking?), you can open a new box, put some in a shaker, and save the rest for your baking cabinet.

Once you have a full spice jar, shake the powder into or onto just about anything: pots with burnt-on grease, stubborn carpet spots before vacuuming, or nursery Diaper Genies to keep rogue smells in check. The slotted spice cap makes dispensing the baking soda super easy, efficient, and mess-free. (If you have trouble cleanly transferring from the box to the shaker, use a kitchen funnel.)

And bonus: Because you’ll inevitably encounter an empty spice jar in your pantry, it’s a solution that costs nothing and allows you to upcycle something that would otherwise likely end up in the trash.

This post was originally published on The Kitchn. Read it there: The First Thing You Should Do with a Box of Baking Soda