I’m all for using vinegar to unclog a drain, or make salad dressing. The Vinegar Institute (seriously, there’s a Vinegar Institute) says that Martha Stewart lists white vinegar as one of her top five cleaning products. Well, if it’s good enough for Martha, it’s good enough for me. I decided to fill an old spray bottle with some diluted vinegar and give it a try.

It worked amazingly well. I started in the bathroom. It cleaned toothpaste spit splatters off of the bathroom mirror and shined up the faucet easily, so I kept going. I cleaned the whole bathroom, spraying vinegar water everywhere. I moved into the kitchen, wiping down counters, the front of the stove, the finger smudges on the fridge, and dog nose prints on the window.

The vinegar smell was strong, like a cross between dying Easter eggs and hanging out in a photo lab, but I wasn’t worried. Vinegar Works Wonders assured me, “While vinegar does have a distinct odor, it’s a clean smell that dissipates quickly.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t dissipate quickly. Hours later, when my husband came home, the first thing he said was “Woah,” and then he asked me why the house smelled like vinegar. When we woke up the next morning, the house still had that Easter egg smell.

Maybe I didn’t dilute it enough. Maybe I’m super sensitive to the smell of vinegar. Some people add essential oils or lemon juice, and that supposedly helps with the odor, but I’m worried it would just make the house smell like vinegar and lemon. If you’ve had luck with making a vinegar cleaner that didn’t make you crave salt and vinegar potato chips, I’d love to hear about it. For the meantime, I’d rather have my house smell like parsley.