Beyond First Aid: The Ultimate Guide to Cleaning with Rubbing Alcohol

Life in Chicago moves fast. Between work, family, and trying to enjoy everything our city has to offer, keeping your home spotless can feel like a full-time job. If you’re looking for smarter, more efficient ways to clean, you’re in the right place. Sometimes the best cleaning hacks come from the most unexpected places—like your medicine cabinet.

My name is Melissa Maker, and I’m an accidental cleaning expert. I don’t love to clean, but I am passionate about finding the most effective ways to get the job done right the first time. Today, I’m sharing why a simple bottle of rubbing alcohol (or surgical spirits for our friends across the pond) deserves a permanent spot in your cleaning kit. It’s a powerhouse for disinfecting, degreasing, and adding shine, all while drying quickly to avoid streaks.

What You Need to Know Before You Start

Not all rubbing alcohol is created equal. To be effective at killing bacteria, it needs to be at least 60% alcohol by volume. You’ll typically find it in stores ranging from 70% to 99%. Remember, if you dilute it, you dilute its power, so be mindful when mixing your own solutions.

10 Surprising Ways to Use Rubbing Alcohol at Home

This versatile liquid goes far beyond treating minor cuts. Here’s how to put it to work for a cleaner, fresher home.

1. Restore Shine to Stainless Steel & Appliances

Is your fridge or stove looking streaky? For a brilliant, factory-fresh shine, spray rubbing alcohol directly onto the surface. Use a microfiber cloth to buff in an S-pattern, following the grain. This works on large appliances and small ones like kettles and toasters.

2. Disinfect Electronics Safely

To quickly disinfect phones, remotes, or keyboards, use a pre-moistened wipe with at least 70% alcohol. Gently wipe non-porous surfaces, avoiding cracks where moisture could seep in. Follow up with a dry microfiber cloth if needed.

3. Make a Flexible, Homemade Ice Pack

Tired of rigid blue ice packs? Create a pliable one by mixing a 2:1 ratio of water to rubbing alcohol in a zipper-lock freezer bag (e.g., 2 cups water to 1 cup alcohol). Squeeze out the air, seal it, and freeze. The alcohol prevents it from freezing solid, so it can mold to your body.

4. Make Your Jewelry Sparkle (Safely!)

For gold, silver, and certain gemstone jewelry (avoid pearls and costume pieces), create a sparkling soak. Place items in half a cup of rubbing alcohol with a teaspoon of dish soap. Let sit for a few minutes, then gently scrub with a soft toothbrush, rinse, and dry. They’ll shine like new.

Pro Tip: Always clean new earring posts and backs with rubbing alcohol on a cotton pad before wearing.

5. Tackle Permanent Marker Stains

Permanent marker lives up to its name, but it’s worth a shot! Place a clean paper towel under the fabric stain. Using a cleaning toothbrush or sponge corner, dab rubbing alcohol around the stain’s edges, then work inward. The alcohol breaks the ink’s bond, transferring it to the paper towel. Replace the towel as it absorbs ink, then launder as usual.

6. Degrease & Clean Glass Without Streaks

Thanks to its fast-drying, solvent properties, rubbing alcohol is perfect for mirrors and windows, especially against sticky hairspray residue. Spray it on, let it sit for a minute to break down the grime, then wipe. For a final streak-free finish, use a 50/50 mix with water.

7. Banish Shoe Odors

Smelly shoes are often caused by bacteria. Liberally spray the insides with rubbing alcohol, then place them outside on a sunny day. The alcohol kills bacteria while the UV rays from the sun provide an extra disinfecting punch, drying everything thoroughly.

8. Create a DIY Eyeglass Cleaner

Save money with a simple homemade lens cleaner. In a small spray bottle, mix three parts rubbing alcohol to one part water, and add a single drop of dish soap. Shake well and use with a flatweave microfiber cloth (never your shirt!) to avoid scratches.

9. Degrease Sticky Surfaces

From sticker residue to greasy splatter on your stovetop hood, rubbing alcohol is a powerful degreaser. Apply it generously to a cloth or spray it directly on the surface, let it sit for a few minutes to dissolve the grease, then wipe clean. Important Safety Note: Rubbing alcohol is flammable, so never use it near an open flame or hot surface.

10. Disinfect & Shine Your Kitchen Sink

After your regular apartment cleaning routine, use rubbing alcohol to give your kitchen sink a two-step finish. It disinfects while removing water spots and bringing a brilliant shine to faucets and stainless steel. Just apply with a cloth and buff.

When DIY Isn’t Enough: Call in the Pros

While these hacks are great for maintenance, some jobs require a deeper touch. Life gets busy, and sometimes you need a reliable, fast cleaning service to handle the heavy lifting. If you’re looking for deep cleaning help for your entire home, it might be time to schedule a cleaning with experts.

Finding a trustworthy cleaning service near me in Chicago can be a challenge. As a leading Chicago cleaning company, we understand the unique needs of city living. Our professional home cleaning takes the stress off your shoulders, so you can come home to a spotless space without lifting a finger.

Ready to book an appointment? It’s the easiest way to get your space cleaned thoroughly and reliably. Whether you need to clean your apartment before guests arrive or you just want someone to clean my apartment regularly, professional cleaning services in Chicago are the perfect solution for help cleaning my place.

I know, right? Rubbing alcohol. But you’ve got to trust me on this. I’m an expert. Rubbing alcohol has so many different cleaning uses. You’re going to go straight to your first aid cabinet, take that bottle, and put it right into your cleaning bin. I should just mention if you’re in the UK or across the pond, you want to be looking for surgical spirits, not rubbing alcohol. My name is Melissa Maker. I’m an accidental cleaning expert, which means I hate cleaning, but I love finding the most efficient and effective ways to get the job done right the first time. And I am here to teach you all about how to clean with rubbing alcohol. And by the way, if this is your first time to the Clean MySpace channel, welcome. Love having you here. Make sure that you subscribe so that you can see more of our videos coming right into your feed. And if you want to save time, you should also totally check out my sister company called Makers Clean, where we sell all sorts of premium microfiber cleaning tools and so much more. All designed to cut your cleaning time in half. So, a couple points about rubbing alcohol before we get going. In order for it to be effective at killing bacteria, it’s got to be at least 60% by volume. So, remember, as soon as you start diluting it, you’re going to dilute the amount of alcohol you have in your recipe. So, when you go to stores, typically you’re going to find it ranging anywhere from 70% all the way up to 99%. So, just be mindful of that when you’re picking it up and mixing it for different recipes. When it comes to using rubbing alcohol, of course, there are many different ways you can use it around the house. It is a star in a first aid setting. You can use it for relieving muscle soreness and bruises. You can even use it on clean skin as an underarm deodorant because it kills bacteria. But I want to get into some other ways that we can use rubbing alcohol around the house for cleaning and for sort of just general home hacks cuz this stuff is incredibly versatile. Here’s a nice easy cleaning tip for you. If your stainless steel is streaky and you just can’t get it back to that beautiful factory shine, take some rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle. Simply spray it on the stainless steel. By the way, this goes for large and small appliances. So, toaster, kettle, but also your fridge and stove. Once that’s done, you’re going to take a microfiber cloth and just buff in an S pattern going with the grain so that you get that nice shine. If you want a quick and easy way to disinfect your electronic items, specifically ones with non-porous surfaces, the easiest thing you can do is just get yourself a little rubbing alcohol wipe. You can pick those up in the first aid aisle. You’re going to look for one that has at least a 70% alcohol dilution. And you’ll open that up and apply it to any of the non-porous surfaces on your electronics, making sure that you don’t get into any of those cracks or crevices where a leak could happen. So, you really want to stay flat surface specific. The other applications you can use for this, uh, you can stick your finger in the middle of the cloth and kind of use it to wipe little areas of your keyboard. again, making sure nothing seeps in. And if you notice there’s any excess moisture after a couple of minutes, feel free to grab yourself a flatweave microfiber cloth and just give the surface a quick wipe. If you’re looking for a pliable ice pack, those blue bricks just aren’t going to cut it for you. Instead, you can make your own by getting yourself a zipper lock freezer bag and using a 2:1 ratio of water to rubbing alcohol. So, for example, if you have a 1gallon zipper lock bag, you can add 2 cups of water and one cup of rubbing alcohol. When you seal the bag, you want to make sure you get as much air out of it as possible. You’re going to stick that in the freezer. And because rubbing alcohol is rubbing alcohol, it won’t fully freeze, meaning that the water will be frozen. The rubbing alcohol will help keep everything bendable and moldable. So that way if you have jaw surgery or a bruise, you can easily wrap that bag around wherever the ice is needed. Just as a general rule, whenever I bring home a new pair of earrings, I always clean the post and the backing with rubbing alcohol. So I add a little bit to a cotton pad and I just quickly clean that so that I feel good and safe about using them on my body. But rubbing alcohol can do a lot more for jewelry. Now, just to be clear, not for all types of jewelry. This is specifically for gold and silver jewelry and specifically for jewelry with stones that can tolerate this kind of cleaning. So stones are fine, but costume jewelry and pearl jewelry, not okay. So the cool thing is if you have like rings on your finger and you’re constantly putting on hand cream, you know that they get a little bit dull and lackluster. Think about doing this. Put your jewelry into about a half cup of rubbing alcohol. If you want to be a little extra special, you can add a teaspoon of dish soap, stir this combo together, let everything sit for a few minutes, fish it out, plug your sink, and use a cleaning toothbrush to gently scrub. Then rinse and dry. And honestly, they will sparkle like the night sky, like a firecracker, like the day he proposed. Pick your thing. They’re going to sparkle. They’re going to look great. Now, to be clear, permanent marker is meant to be permanent, but let’s say it gets on some clothing and you really want to try getting rid of it. There is something you can do with rubbing alcohol that might work. So, here’s the thing. Like, you might as well try it because it either will work or it won’t, but if you don’t try it, you’ll never know. So, here’s what you do. You get a little stain on a garment. Fine. Take a paper towel, put it under the stain. It’s got to be a clean paper towel. Then you’re going to take the area, take some rubbing alcohol on a little cleaning toothbrush, and you’re kind of going to dab an area around the stain. You’re going to create a ring around the stain. The next thing you’re going to do is start to apply rubbing alcohol either with a cleaning toothbrush or the corner of a little sponge or something like that. You’re going to just start dabbing. And the idea is that you want the rubbing alcohol to break the bond of the stain and the clothing. So, the paper towel underneath is there to absorb that ink. Meaning, you’ll want to fold it and get a clean surface often so that the stain isn’t further saturating the garment. And as needed, you’re going to replace that paper towel. Now, you continue doing this until as much of the ink is gone as you’re able to get rid of. Then, you’re going to launder the shirt as usual, shirt, pants, I don’t know what you got, and see what happens. And the hope is that it works. But again, if it doesn’t work, don’t feel too bad because the ink is indeed indelible. Another reason why rubbing alcohol is so great is because it is fast drying. It’s also a solvent, which means that it can dissolve sticky things. So, a great place to use rubbing alcohol is on glass and mirrored surfaces. Specifically, if you’re someone who likes to style your hair in front of a mirror and you use a lot of hairspray, you might notice that there’s a sticky buildup or you might have some sort of sticky splatter on your window that you just can’t seem to get rid of without causing major streaks. Easy thing to do, put a little bit of rubbing alcohol on a cloth and kind of just focus on that area if it’s a centralized spot. If it’s a more generalized spray, like something with hairspray, you can just douse your mirror with rubbing alcohol. Spray it down, let it sit for a minute, and then just wipe. And what you’ll notice is the solvent aspect of the rubbing alcohol starts to break down that sticky stuff. You might have to go over it once more, perhaps with an equal parts mixture of water and rubbing alcohol. Just give your window or mirror a nice spray down and wipe down. And you’ll see it is nice and clean and clear and not sticky. The other cool thing about rubbing alcohol, like I said, because it dries quickly, it’s less likely to streak. Because of course, rubbing alcohol is great at killing bacteria, we thought we would apply it to something that has odorcausing bacteria, and that would be a pair of sweaty, smelly shoes. So, here’s the way this is going to work. If you have a pair of shoes that you love, but you’re embarrassed to wear cuz there’s a bit of a stench. Take some rubbing alcohol, spritz the inside of the shoe pretty liberally, and then on a sunny day, you want to do this on a sunny day, put the shoes outside and let the sun do the rest of the work. Not only will it dry the rubbing alcohol, but the UV power of the sun helps to knock out bacteria as well. So, you’re using that kind of one-two punch to get rid of odors in those smelly shoes. If you don’t want to spend a fortune on eyeglass cleaner, and by a fortune, I mean anything more than 5 cents, you can make your own. Get yourself a little spray bottle, fill it three parts with rubbing alcohol, one part with water, and add a drop. And when I say a drop, I mean like a teardrop sized drop of dish soap. Give that a good shake and voila, you have an eyeglass cleaner. When you’re cleaning your glasses, you want to make sure that you’re using a flatweave microfiber cloth as opposed to your shirt or a paper towel, which can create micro scratches on your glasses. Rubbing alcohol is also a terrific degreaser. So, anything from a sticker to a sticky, oily spot on your overhead exhaust, rubbing alcohol can deal with. And the way that you’re going to apply it is so simple. You just put a little bit on a cloth or paper towel and apply it. But you want to make sure that when you apply it, it is fairly damp. And because rubbing alcohol dries quickly, you’re going to have to use quite a bit of it. Alternatively, you can spray it onto the surface and let it sit for a couple of minutes before wiping it off. Now, the one thing to know is rubbing alcohol is flammable. So, it’s important to make sure that when you are using rubbing alcohol, you’re not using it around an open flame. Since we know that rubbing alcohol brings out that special sheen in stainless steel and chrome, it’s also great to use on your kitchen sink. So, if you notice there are water spots or you really want to get that nice, beautiful shine when you finish cleaning your sink, you can finish up by adding some rubbing alcohol. either with a spray bottle or just putting some right on a cloth and using that to buff and shine the faucet, the fixture, and the sink itself. Now, the other nice side benefit of this is it’s a great way to offer two-step cleaning in your kitchen. So, if you’ve cleaned your sink using regular cleaning methods and you want to add that extra disinfecting punch, you can finish off with this as well. The benefit, of course, is you get the nice shine and you also get rid of any excess bacteria. So, now you know how to clean a little bit easier and a little bit more effectively with the power of rubbing alcohol or surgical spirits backing you up. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is, have you already been using rubbing alcohol for cleaning or is this a new thing that you’re going to add to your cleaning arsenal? Let me know in the comments down below. If you like the work that we do here at Clean My Space, it’s me and a very small team, and you can support us by becoming a member. And if you want cleaning tips and product recommendations sent straight to your inbox, you can sign up for the Dirty Dish newsletter. I’ve got a link for that down below as well. And since you’re here, you probably have some interest in DIY cleaners. So, I’ve got a video all about unexpected vinegar cleaning hacks, and you can check that one out as well. Just a reminder, if you haven’t done so already, to subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next