Limescale is a white chalky mineral buildup that forms in your kettle when water is heated or left standing.
Over time, limescale in your kettle can reduce the water flow, affect the efficiency of the heating element and cause corrosion, so it’s essential to regularly clean and remove kettle limescale to improve the performance and longevity of your appliance.
There are many methods to remove limescale from a kettle, but using white vinegar seems to be the most common.
The acidic nature of white vinegar eats away at the limescale leaving no trace behind, however there is something this cleaning agent leaves in its place – a pungent odour.
Like many who are not a fan of the white vinegar smell, a cleaner has swapped this household staple for another “easy” solution – lemon.
Taking to their Instagram page @77shome, they shared how to use a lemon to descale a kettle.
The post was captioned: “Here’s one easy home hack to descale your kettle. A general rule of thumb is to descale your kettle every one to two months.
“Lemon is not the only way to descale your kettle, you can mix equal parts of vinegar and water.
“I’d personally prefer using lemon because it’s a natural home cleaner and leaves a much refreshing smell after boiling as compared to vinegar.”
The cleaner starts by showing the limescale in the kettle, then cuts a lemon in half, squeezes it into the kettle and adds the rinds before filling it up with water halfway.
The kettle is then put on to boil and is left to stand with the lid shut for 15 minutes just so that the acid in the lemon has enough time to dissolve the limescale.
Finish off by pouring the solution away and giving it a rinse and you should be left with a “clean and sparkly” kettle that’s “as good as new”.
Lemons are something many will have in their fridge, if not a pack of four can be picked up from Asda for 65p. This works out as 16p per lemon.
Taking to the comments section, cleaning fans shared their thoughts on this. One user wrote: “Yes! It works! Thank you for sharing.” Another said: “I used to use vinegar but lemon works better for me.”
A third commented: “I tried this out yesterday. Very successful.” One user claimed that the lemon hack can be made “even better” by adding salt.
