In a kitchen somewhere, a cook peels potatoes for dinner and, instead of binning the skins, drops them into a pot of hot water with a spoonful of coarse salt. The starchy water comes to a boil, and within minutes the burnt residue that had clung to the stainless steel begins to loosen. This is not a recipe but a cleaning ritual, one of dozens of domestic practices that are quietly displacing the spray bottles and bleach of the supermarket aisle.

The method, detailed in an Argentine newspaper, relies on the mild abrasive texture of the peel and the grease-loosening power of potato starch. It is part of a broader rediscovery of simple, often edible, substances for household tasks. Baking soda, long used to absorb fridge odours, is now sprinkled on window tracks to neutralise damp smells and ease the slide of the sash. White vinegar, with its acetic acid, is applied to rusted iron railings and left to react with the orange bloom before scrubbing. Lemon juice and salt are rubbed onto bathroom taps to lift rust stains, while citric acid powder – the same compound that gives lemons their sharpness – is dissolved in warm water to descale electric kettles and shower heads.

What links these practices is not nostalgia alone. When the artificial-intelligence chatbot ChatGPT was asked for a limescale remedy, it suggested citric acid, a recommendation that circulated in Spanish-language media as a novelty. The same articles note that the powder is easily found in health-food shops or online, and that it leaves no harsh chemical smell. Elsewhere, a cleaning influencer on Instagram demonstrated how percarbonate of soda, activated by boiling water, releases active oxygen to restore yellowed white laundry without the fibre damage caused by chlorine bleach. The shift is pragmatic: many commercial cleaners are abrasive, expensive or incompatible with certain materials, and the alternatives are often already in the cupboard.

This is not a wholesale rejection of modern chemistry. Hydrogen peroxide, once a staple for disinfecting cuts, has been abandoned for wound care because it damages healthy cells, yet the same oxidative power makes it a useful stain remover on fabrics and hard surfaces. The Cleveland Clinic now advises soap and water for grazes, but the brown bottle remains in the laundry for its bleaching action. Similarly, bay leaves are boiled not for medicine but to fill a room with a vapour that, according to tradition, repels insects and eases breathing – a practice that sits somewhere between aromatherapy and pest control.

In the end, the gleaming pot, the streak-free tap, the window that slides without resistance, are small victories. They are achieved not with proprietary formulas but with the same ingredients that might season a salad or leaven a cake. The potato peels, once the water is drained, can still go to the compost, having done a second job on their way out of the kitchen.