Well, I guess I had a leak this spring….and now summer is almost over. Seems water from the sprinklers and spring rains got into my basement and was collected in my large pot that I use for water bathing when I can.  I had no clue… until it came time to do some water bath canning.  Oh!  What a surprise!

I was setting up to make apple sauce and can it for the winter.  I had jars, apples, lids, rings, a food mill, and everything else I needed.  But when I took the lid off of my water bath pot…this is what I found:

I was not a happy camper to say the least.  I realized then that I had an issue the I need to take care of, STAT!  So I did.  Ended up being an easy fix, whew!  You know how some days being an adult is NOT enjoyable…well, all I had to do was shut a window that had been left open in the basement.  Probably from when we cleaned out the basement this last spring.  It was behind a shelf….easily forgotten.  Not my brightest moment to say the least.

Now, on to the pot.  A SUPER easy and natural way to remove all the rust.  I grabbed a potato and my salt shaker.  Lately, I’ve been doing quite a bit of cleaning using salt.  Very interesting results.  I use it on my frying pans now…

5 Minutes Or Less: How to Clean Your Cast Iron Skillet with One Ingredient

But for rust, I need 2 ingredients.  Salt and a potato.

I poured salt in the bottom of my pot and sliced off the end of the potato to use as my ‘scrub brush’.  Then I rubbed it on the bottom of the pot.

When the potato was saturated with gunk, I sliced it off again to keep it fresh.  And I added more salt as I felt it was needed.  But the end results were EXACTLY what I was desiring!

After rinsing, this is what I was left with.  A nice, shiny, rust free water bath pot.   This whole process took me less that 5 minutes and I was back at mastering this whole adult thing again.  🙂

Guest post by Kiz. Good friend of The Thrifty Couple and busy mom to 4 teens who works hard to meet their family’s tight budget and to make the most of the time and money they have!