Bringing food into your bedroom isn’t usually a recipe for success (something I’ve learned after multiple dinner-in-bed spills), but according to the truTV series Hack My Life, there are two kitchen staples you’ll want to use on your bedding in order to give it a spruce: baking soda and vinegar.

In a recent segment, the show—which focuses on finding atypical methods to treat supposedly unsolvable problems—featured an extremely affordable way to bring some life and softness back to your bedsheets using nothing but baking soda and vinegar. Together the ingredients cost about $3, but you likely already have ’em in your pantry, perhaps to make other stellar cleaning solutions.

To use the hack, toss your sheets in the washing machine with a cup of baking soda and half a cup of vinegar and run a full cycle—they should come out silky soft.

To use the hack, toss your sheets in the washing machine with a cup of baking soda and half a cup of vinegar, and run a full cycle. They’ll come out silky soft—or at least a small group of New Yorkers thought so. The six of participants on the show did a blind snuggle test on two pairs of sheets: one set that was luxe and expensive and a cheaper set that was treated using the hack. Out of the too-small-to-be-scientific test group, five of the six assumed the more expensive sheets were cheaper than the ones washed with the natural fabric-softener cocktail of baking soda and vinegar.

To find a more trustworthy verdict, the experiment would obviously need to be broader, but if you’re on the fence about buying a new set of (Amazon-customer-approved) bedsheets and would rather make the most of your old ones, take this hack for a spin(cycle).

Use your leftover baking soda to create a celebrity-facialist-approved DIY face mask, and try this surprising hack to remove all clothing stains.