Dangerous Cleaning Product Combinations Every Chicago Homeowner Should Avoid

Between work deadlines and Chicago’s brutal winters, keeping your home clean is challenging enough without accidentally creating toxic fumes. While you might be tempted to mix cleaners for a stronger solution, some combinations can turn your professional home cleaning routine into a trip to the ER. Here’s what you need to know to clean safely in your Chicago apartment or house.

Never Mix These Cleaning Products

1. Bleach + Vinegar = Chlorine Gas

While vinegar cuts grease and bleach disinfects, together they create chlorine gas that can cause:

• Severe respiratory irritation
• Burning eyes and throat
• Potential hospitalization

2. Bleach + Ammonia = Chloramine Gas

Common in many glass cleaners, ammonia mixed with bleach creates toxic chloramine gas that leads to:

• Coughing and shortness of breath
• Chemical pneumonia
• Watery, burning eyes

3. Bleach + Rubbing Alcohol = Chloroform

That’s right – the same knockout drug from movies. This dangerous combo can cause:

• Dizziness and nausea
• Loss of consciousness
• Liver and kidney damage

Other Dangerous Combinations

• Hydrogen Peroxide + Vinegar: Creates corrosive paracetic acid
• Different Drain Cleaners: Can cause violent chemical reactions
• Oven Cleaner + Bleach: Produces toxic, lung-damaging fumes

Safe Cleaning Practices for Chicago Homes

Always Read Labels

Every cleaner’s label specifies what not to mix it with. When in doubt, stick to single-product solutions or call cleaning services in Chicago for tough jobs.

Proper Ventilation is Key

When using strong cleaners:

• Open windows (even in winter!)
• Run bathroom fans
• Consider air purifiers

Use Products Sequentially

Clean in this order:

1. Remove dirt with appropriate cleaner
2. Rinse thoroughly
3. Disinfect if needed

When to Call the Professionals

For deep cleaning tasks that require harsh chemicals or pose safety risks, trust Chicago’s top-rated home cleaning service. Our experts:

• Use commercial-grade products safely
• Have proper protective equipment
• Know which combinations to avoid

every now and then you might come across a story in the news where somebody seriously injures themselves or perhaps even dies because they mixed cleaning products together this is a serious thing and I know sometimes you’ll Scroll online and see people dumping a whole bunch of cleaning products into a toilet bowl or a sink or a bucket and say that it’s totally fine and totally safe but please please do not mix cleaning products I’m going to go through lethal combination in this video things that you should never mix together I’ll also talk through some safe stuff to mix together but remember we are not the chemists here I mean if you are a chemist absolutely by all means go ahead but the average lay person who is picking up cleaning products does not have a chemistry background and shouldn’t be making their own cleaning potions and just a quick reminder if you haven’t done so already to subscribe to the clean Myspace Channel and I wanted to let you know that this video is brought to you by makers clean our sister company where we sell premium microfiber cleaning tools and more first up bleach and vinegar I can’t imagine a combination that would smell worse to begin with but you’ve got vinegar which in and of itself is a great cleaner for cutting grease and getting things streak free and then you have bleach which is a disinfectant and can be used on its own however when those two products mix they cause chlorine gas which is something you you do not want to inhale you do not want to be in the same vicinity as it can cause eye lung nose irritation it can land you an all-inclusive trip to the ER as well next up is bleach and ammonia you’re commonly going to find ammonia in glass cleaners you can also clean with ammonia on its own we already know bleach is something that you would use for disinfecting and if you mix those two together you’re going to get chloramine gas which can lead to shortness of breath coughing scary stuff lots of irritation again another all-inclusive trip to the ER for you next up we’ve got bleach and rubbing alcohol and if you mix those two together you get chloroform which you don’t want to get because if you do get it it’ll make you pass out yes it’s that creepy stuff from crime shows if you’re noticing a trend here about bleach just bleach plays on its own that’s it I do a lot of cleaning with hydrogen peroxide and I do a lot of cleaning with vinegar however these are two things you never want to mix because if you do you will get parastic acid which is corrosive which means that it eats away at things no thank you so even though they’re two relatively harmless ingredients they can form something pretty pretty nasty if you’ve ever had a Clogg drain you might feel inclined to dump a bunch of different things down the drain until the problem is solved and if you hear bubbling and gurgling you might feel excited and encouraged and want to throw even more down there please resist all urges to do this do not mix drain cleaning products with other drain cleaning products or with other cleaning products at all pick one drain cleaning product use that commit and then walk away here’s another weird combination but hey people talk about it and that’s mixing oven cleaner and bleach we are talking about two extremely harsh products in and of themselves but mixing them together again is going to create a toxic gas now when I clean the oven I stay far far away from oven cleaner I just find it too toxic too dangerous for me to want to use and bleach I wouldn’t put that anywhere near my oven there’s absolutely no reason to be using bleach to clean your oven in the first place there are tons of Alternatives that you can try next up we’ve got a weird combination of toilet bowl cleaner and bleach now I totally understand you want your toilet to be clean but a lot of toilet bowl cleaners do contain a enough product in them to get rid of stains get rid of bacteria get rid of germs and also clean the toilet you do not need the addition of bleach in the bowl that can also create extra gas and I’m not talking about this kind of gas this one’s a double up we’ve got mildew cleaner and glass cleaner both of these very likely contain ammonia you do not want to mix these with bleach if you’re going to tackle either of those areas and you want to use bleach just use a a solution of 10:1 water to bleach leave the ammonia based product out however I will say I don’t think you need bleach to clean your glass and if you want to use bleach to clean a mold or mildew infested area you want to make sure that you’re using a specific product bleach can deal with it but in my opinion there are better products on the market that supersede bleach’s ability to deal with those issues so now that you know what not to mix let’s talk about some safe clean CLE practices first and foremost please please read the label on your cleaning products they are going to tell you everything you need to know where the product is safe to use where it is not safe to use and what it does not play nicely with if you need to do a little bit more digging you can always find the MSDS sheets which is the safety data on any cleaning product on the cleaning products website now in my vast cleaning experience I’ve been doing this since 2006 I can honestly tell you I don’t use bleach I don’t use ammonia I just don’t need it there’s no point there are plenty of other products that I can have in my home to tackle those issues without having to bring those two in and I leave them out of my house because it just doesn’t feel safe there are too many risks associated with using or mixing those products I just want to eliminate any concern now if you are someone who likes to have bleach or ammonia in your home please make sure that it’s clearly labeled and that you’re using it safely now if you are going to be using multiple cleaning products the right way to do it is to use them in tandem which means one after the other so you want to tackle one cleaning issue first like removing dirt from a surface and then you want to tackle the next issue say disinfection in between those cleans you want to make sure that you’re rinsing the surface to remove any product residue if you’re using something strong like bleach or ammonia you want to make sure that you’re in a well ventilated space so if you’re in a small bathroom you can open windows turn on the fan and if you’re in a larger space you want to make sure that you’re opening Windows and have any fans on in the house to just keep things ventilated and keep air flowing you also want to make sure that for Harsh things you’re using proper PPE rubber gloves eye protection now I love making DIY cleaning products I always talk about it here on the clean Myspace Channel and I have lots of videos that you can check out below that talk about some of these safe DIY recipes stick to those clean should make our homes healthier and safer not a toxic hazardous Zone that can land Us in the emergency room and that brings me to this week’s comment question which is do you like making your own cleaning products or do you prefer store-bought products let me know in the comments down below I like a mix of both I would say about 60% of the cleaning I do is with DIY products and about 40% is with store bought and on the topic of DIY cleaners I’ve got a whole video for you right here about DIY cleaners that actually work so you can check that out if you haven’t done so already make sure that you subscribe to the clean Myspace Channel thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time