Baking Soda: Miracle Cleaning Agent?

Last weekend, I made some delicious quiches.  As quiche cooks, it grows, which sometimes forces raw egg up and over the edge of the pie pan.  To avoid an apartment that smells of burnt oven, I put a baking sheet underneath the pie pans.  It worked great! The baking sheet caught all of the egginess and prevented it from burning onto the bottom of my oven!

This plan was great for my oven, but not so good for my baking sheet. Imagine spreading a thin layer of egg on a pan and then cooking it for a solid 45 minutes.  This is not a nice mental imagine, and I can guarantee the pan was not so pretty.  I felt lazy, so I just let it soak for a long time before trying to wash it.  This was absolutely ineffective.  I didn't feel like using a lot of elbow grease so I was ready to toss the pan, but Steve suggested I just google a solution.  Pff, google a way to get super-burned egg off a pan? Fine.

The interwebs suggested filling the pan with water, adding a couple tablespoons of baking soda, heating the pan, and let the simmering baking soda water do most of the work.  I was skeptical because the lip of the pan was like a centimeter high, but we tried it anyway.  The simmering baking soda water really did help to loosen up the nasty burnt egg.  We also used a spoon to help loosen the gunk.  After no more than ten minutes, the charred egg bits were all floating around!  I dumped out the water, gave the pan a gentle was (no scouring required), and found that it looked as good as ever.

this is baking soda, courtesy of one green generation

I still don't really understand how baking soda can be so powerful, but it makes me pretty happy that we used a non-toxic method to easily, quickly, and totally clean a pan that was absolutely disgusting.  Moreover, that amount of baking soda probably cost ten cents.  If baking soda had a report card, it would probably get A's all down the line.  I am simply flabbergasted I had no idea such an awesome cleaning agent exists.  I feel like it's some secret that everyone's been hiding from me.

Additionally, you can use a baking soda solution to clean your hair, too! No, it doesn't smell as nice as coconut or bubblegum, but some online sources (of unknown quality) strongly advocate it.  I just tried it a couple of hours ago and my hair does look clean.  Interesting... I'm not sure if shampoo is as unhealthy and damaging as some people in the "no 'poo" movement claim, but I do appreciate that it is cheap and gets the job done.

I just now googled "baking soda clean" and found a plethora of tips (like here and here).  I am too excited to keep these to myself. Imagine how clean your stuff is going to be! You'll be like me and have a stupid grin on your face because you avoided tons of toxic chemicals and saved so much money.  As a side note, other natural cleaning products include lemons, vinegar, and cornstarch.  I kind of understand lemons and vinegar, but cornstarch surprised me.  Anyway, I promise not to write about each of those (though if you want to read about them, go here or implement the googling).