Say goodbye to limescale in your kettle with this handy hack.
If you live in an area with hard water, you’ll know the pain of everything that comes into contact with water getting covered in limescale after just a few uses. From taps to showerheads to your kettle, the battle against limescale seems never-ending.
It’s important to keep on top of getting rid of limescale, however, as leaving it to build up can cause damage to your appliances. For the kettle especially, limescale can shorten its lifespan by eating away at the element and stopping it from boiling water as effectively as it should.
But cleaning limescale can be a pain, particularly inside your kettle, as it can be tricky to scrub inside the appliance. There is one plus side, though – you can boil an effective cleaning solution inside your kettle.
All you need are two ingredients you probably already have at home.
In a TikTok video shared by Beatriz, it was claimed that all you need to do is fill your kettle with equal parts white vinegar and water. And there you have it, an effective cleaning solution that will make your kettle sparkle.
The cleaning guru recommended boiling the water and vinegar solution once – but said the key is to let the mixture sit in the appliance for around 30 minutes once it’s boiled.
She explained: “Let it sit for about 30 minutes to break down any limescale buildup. For tough limescale, repeat this step until all buildup is removed.”
Once you’ve tackled the limescale buildup with however many rounds of boiling it takes, fill the kettle one last time with fresh water and no vinegar.
Boil the water and tip it away. This should leave you with a sparkling clean kettle that won’t give a nasty vinegar taste to your next cup of tea – and, more importantly, no limescale.
Commenters on the video hailed the tip as “perfect”, with many saying they couldn’t wait to try it out for themselves.
Vinegar isn’t the only way to clean a kettle, although it is regularly hailed as an effective method. You can also put half a lemon or some citric acid in the appliance along with some water and follow the same steps as the vinegar method.
To prevent limescale build-up in the first place, you should empty your kettle once you’ve finished using it, especially before bed so that water doesn’t sit in it for long periods of time. You can also use filtered or softened water to reduce the amount of minerals in your water.
