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What chemicals/substances do you keep at home? And what do you do with them?
I've always found this to be a fun conversation topic among geeky, mechanically-inclined, or DIY-enthusiast friends, and it might be interesting to what see bubbles up from the Tildes crowd:
Other than standard things like dishwasher detergent or window cleaning spray, what chemicals or other substances do you keep at home? And what do you do with them? And if you need to take any special precautions for storage, use or disposal, what are those precautions?
Mine are not actually all that interesting, but I'll start:
- Powdered citric acid - for descaling plumbing or kitchen appliances
- Acetone - cleaning gunk off of all sorts of tools, labels off glass items, etc.
- WD40 - cleaning greasy car or bicycle parts
- Glycerin - making "fog juice" for a fog machine
Hehe well. There's a question. We have the usual sort of stuff in the house but.. in my workshop and just from memory because it's cold and dark out there right now:
I keep concentrated hydrochloric, phosphoric and occasionally sulphuric acids. I use them for cleaning, degreasing, pickling (removal of metal oxides), for drain unblocking and for pH control. HCl can be used to strip zinc from galvanised steel, which is important if you want to weld it because gaseous zinc is all kinds of unfun.
Hydrocarbons are limited mostly to acetone and isopropyl alcohol. Largely just for cleaning/degreasing purpose, although I wash 3D prints in IPA too. Oh, I use acetone to dissolve superglue sometimes. Also White Spirit, for thinning paint and washing brushes.
I have sodium hydroxide to use mostly in saponification in soap making. But it gets poured down drains occasionally. I also have proplyne glycol for going in moisturiser, and a bunch of assorted fats and oils as well. Can't remember what, but at least cocoa butter, shea butter and limonene (orange oil).
Borax for forge and casting flux. It's a (mildly) controlled substance here, the idea that Americans put it in their laundry is mad.
Silicone and PTFE (Teflon) lubricants in a variety of forms, which I use for my bike, as cutting fluids, protective coatings for stuff, blah blah. The PTFE in particular gets a lot of use.
Ferric chloride for etching copper. I have a massive 10L bottle of this which will last me forever because I once needed to etch a huge sundial and it's reusable so I just kept it.
Glues: cyanoacrylate, woodglue (x3), contact glue, several flavours of epoxy, pipe weld, probably a couple of others I've forgotten. Also glues in tape form. I have CA accelerant as well, which is some sort of light hydrocarbon or other.
Unknown but definitely CHEMICALS I have silver dip, which smells awful and strips tarnish from silver in seconds flat. Gun Blue, which is for "bluing" steel. Nasty stuff, lovely finish. I also have Blue Dykem, which is a layout/marking fluid and about 50% of it's label is just warnings. There's a bottle of mortar improver somewhere, used to make mortar more.. creamier? Cutting fluid, which is some sort of light oil. I also have a few light oils, both as lubricants and quenchants for heat treating steel. And a tub of some kind of concrete waterproofing compound which smells evil but did stop my walls leaking.
3D printing liquids. I'm fairly sure the resins for SLA printers are made of pure liquid cancer and I'm very careful when handling them.
Various plant feed mixtures for... feeding plants. Organic and non-organic, as well as pH buffers, chemical soil additives, biological additives and so on. I also have bleach and disinfectant for cleaning plant pots and tools.
I have a LOT of abrasives in ceramic, mineral and encapsulated forms. Belts, papers, wax-borne compounds, etc. I guess they count as chemicals? The final final stage polish is 0.1 microns, which is virus size. Blows my mind I can buy a bar of something that small for a few pounds.
Satanite is not really a chemical but it has a cool name so I thought I'd mention it. It's a fine clay powder which can be made into a slurry with water that's painted onto metal items before heat treating to reduce oxidation or attempt to control heat flow.
Does CO2 and Propane count? The CO2 is for recharging my fizzy water machine, propane is to run the forge and various torches and sometimes just to warm the place up in the winter.
The chemical I use most though is.. H2O. Water. As close to a universal solvent as exists, a great way to move heat around (ideally away from my skin) and at a push, you can drink the stuff too (although it's better made into tea).
Borax is great as a laundry additive, and it's an effective ant poison! It's a lot safer than the can of acetone in my shed or even the chlorine granules for the hot tub.
I'm honestly struggling to tell if a sentence containing both "great laundry additive" and "effective ant poison" is meant sincerely..
Personally I don't want something with this kind of safety data sheet (link goes to PDF) anywhere near clothes I put on my body. Especially when I can just use a tablespoon of standard detergent and my clothes get perfectly clean.
It is true that acetone isn't all that pleasant either but on the other hand I don't wear fabric soaked in it.
Took a quick look at that safety data sheet, and doesn't seem to suggest it's all that dangerous? Maybe avoid use if you're pregnant, but a lot of common household chemicals can be harmful if you get them in your eyes or ingest them.
There is a huge difference between "safe as a laundry additive" vs "safe to apply directly to your skin." It seems pretty absurd to dismiss something's efficacy as a laundry additive based on safety factors that do not apply to its use on clothes. Chlorine bleach is more dangerous than borax in terms of avoiding contact directly, but it's still totally safe to wear clothes or sleep on sheets that have been bleached. It's used as a disinfectant even! The way a chemical is being used matters.
That's a fair point. I don't know what kind of residues borax does (or doesn't) leave. You could well be right.
However I think really the issue is that given the choice between a substance which is known to be not that safe to handle and is known to be toxic in various circumstances (ie, how you treat the wastewater from your borax-y laundry is important) and something which is not that. Modern laundry detergent is perfectly safe and perfectly good at it's job - so why would you add something that safety agencies say you should be wearing a respirator to handle in powder form?
I don't add chlorine bleach to my laundry either. That also seems fairly bonkers, although chlorine compounds tend to break down and evaporate off things fairly quickly (hence why bleach is so stinky!), but I have no idea if boron salts do the same. I do occasionally add oxygen bleach to very dirty clothes but that stuff is much safer.
In the Olde Dayes, detergent and enzyme based laundry products were considerably less effective, so adding harsh and dangerous chemicals perhaps made more sense. But in the 21st century it's not a risk - however small - most people need to take.
I principally use just laundry detergent and oxygen bleach myself, as that's also usually all I need. But I think it's important not to fear-monger about using chemicals that are effective for a particular task without good evidence that there are actual safety concerns when it's used that way.
If laundry detergent on its own is all you need, more power to you! No need to use more than what's effective for the job. But that's not necessarily the case for every other person, and it's not really honest or effective to insist that something is dangerous to use as a laundry additive based on a fact sheet that warns you not to get it in your skin or eyes. Having those warnings doesn't mean it's unsafe to use to wash your clothes -- my normal laundry detergent has warnings against those same things printed on it, and I bet yours does too!
But there is evidence. The EU considers borax a dangerous enough substance that it's not on general sale. One can purchase the stuff but not in supermarkets, it requires a specialist supplier. That's why it's different to bleach or oven cleaner. It's not me "fear mongering", the agencies entrusted with the safety of the public have assessed the risks and found them too high for the benefits the substance offwrs. And sure, they could be over reacting, but there is science here.
Here's the ECHA assessment of borax. It's considerably more dangerous than bleach or detergent. The ECHA/REACH doesn't just list things for funsies.
If there genuinely is evidence, that's one thing. The comment of yours I initially replied to did not cite any. It said things like:
and
I'm not an expert on chemicals and I'm perfectly willing to accept that Borax is indeed dangerous based on actual evidence. I don't use it (unsurprisingly, if your info about it being banned in the EU is accurate). I'm not arguing for Borax here. I really don't care that much about Borax specifically. My problem has been with the rhetoric you've used in the comments I initially replied to, which operated on a vibes-based rejection of something that seems dangerous based on things that are more or less unrelated to whether it's safe to use as a laundry additive or cleaning product.
Regardless of whether there is other evidence for or against a given chemical's safety, I think this type of emotional analysis of a product's safety is underlyingly the same thing as the fear-mongering that people use to argue plenty of baseless, unscientific bunk. It's coming from the same place as my mom not wanting me to get flu shots because she heard they contain mercury. If your initial comment had cited the EU legislation as evidence that Borax is unsafe, I would've probably upvoted it and moved on, because that type of legislation tends to be based on at least somewhat solid scientific evidence and I thus feel I can rely on it to some degree. But I suspect if you'd already looked up that kind of evidence before you came to a conclusion when you left your initial comment, you'd have included it there.
This reply is very strange, because my initial comment linked to the SDS for Borax. That sheet contains information about toxicity and other risks, as well as the details of any restrictions under REACH and other regulations.
That's not "emotional", Safety Data Sheets are a core part of COSHH protocol. OK, it's been some years since I did COSHH officially, because I'm self employed now so the vibe is a little more chill in that I don't have to fill out and submit risk assessments - but I still practice a robust and entirely non-vibes based approach to material safety.
You might have read my comment as being baseless unscientific bunk, but the reason I linked that comment to a respectable information source is precisely because it was not that.
As I pointed out in my first reply to you, the safety sheet you linked was about safety working directly with the chemical, not whether it's safe to use as a laundry additive. The warnings against ingestion or getting it in your eyes or prolonged skin contact are all dangers is shares in common with other products that we know are safe to use as laundry additives -- including not only things like chlorine bleach, but also my oxygen bleach and normal laundry detergent, which both have warnings against those things on the container you buy them in. I wasn't even the only person that replied to your comment indicating that the safety sheet you initially linked seemed no different than normal warnings on a variety of cleaning products that are safe and effective when used in the appropriate way.
You yourself said in your follow-up comment that you didn't know what residues Borax leaves behind when used as a laundry additive, which indicates to me that the sheet you'd already linked (and thus presumably read) doesn't contain that information at a level that's clear or digestible to you (or at least wasn't upon a first or second read). I think the basis upon which I don't consider your initial comment a particularly evidence-based analysis of Borax's safety as a laundry additive should be more than clear given this.
Ah. That's an incorrect assumption I'm afraid, now I've had time to look up some more data sheets (sorry, busy weekend). While you are certainly correct that most washing detergent is rated as an irritant - although rather lower grade than borax, hence why you're not being advised to wear gloves and respiratory protection when doing a wash. Chlorine bleach is more irritating and it is recommended to wear more protection when handling that, to be fair. Nothing that I could find for sale in a European laundry aisle carries a cat 1B risk for Reproductive Toxicity. Borax does.
I say again, nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with quantified risk, assessed by people who are much better at doing this than I am. I trust the ECHA. They've probably saved my life several times over the years when it comes to producing safe handling protocols for nastier stuff than borax.
For what it's worth I suspect the reason that the SDS doesn't contain any information about using borax in laundry is that nobody is testing for that. Borax is already REACH restricted - there's no need to find out whether or not it's left on your clothes because why do you have a controlled substance in your laundry cupboard and what the merry jebus is possessing you to put the stuff in your washing machine? I don't know whether rat poison leaves residue on my clothes after washing either, for the exact same reason.
Maybe the borax does wash out enough to be no danger. Not sure why someone would take that chance though. Hence my original comment calling the practice of doing that "madness". If you want to talk about unscientific feelings based vibey bunk, I might submit that a very solid example of that is adding known toxic chemicals to your washing machine and hoping there are no ill effects.
To be clear, I'm just referring to the information that was on that first data sheet you linked. It's clear you've since learned more about the safety profile, but you obviously did not have that information when you left your first comment, and the rhetoric you used in that comment is what I'm taking issue with. I'm all for learning more and seeking out more evidence -- I feel a lot more knowledgeable about Borax thanks to your research -- but what I initially took issue with was the way you responded before you had that evidence.
Also, it would have been utterly negligent for the governments researching the safety of Borax more generally not to have researched whether it was safe to use as a laundry additive given its popularity as a laundry additive. It seems to me from what you've said and linked that the reasons it was banned were more to do with the dangers of working with it, which I can see especially being an issue when using it as a cleaning product, but I would be shocked if there was no research into whether it was safe to use in laundry given this is one of the primary ways Borax is (or was) used. As I live in the EU and never used Borax even when I lived in the US, the results of those studies aren't super relevant to me personally, but I'd be shocked if they don't exist.
Ah, I wasn't clear, sorry. I haven't read a word more about borax than when I made my initial comment. I don't need to. All the information I need to make an informed, evidence-based decision is on the SDS that I initially linked to (and I already knew that because I handle borax for work and y'know, COSHH is a thing).
If you don't have any experience of safety data sheets it might not be immediately obvious but I assure you, it's all there. What I needed time to read more about was laundry detergent so I could say - again, backed by evidence and not vibes - that borax and laundry detergent are not the same level of risk despite some of the safety warnings looking similar.
Oh, I'm sure someone did do that research. But it's not relevant to put on the current SDS, because on an up to date version of that document it's already a restricted substance. I know a lot of Americans (and Europeans, I'm sure) think that European regulations are 'nannying' but even the ECHA don't go as far as to actually write down "don't put this known toxic substance in your washing machine"!
Sincere. And those hazards apply to a lot of cleaning chemicals. Don't get it in your eyes, (potentially)pregnant women use extra caution. Borax helps with grease stains, hard water, and as a mild bleaching agent. And it doesn't stay in the clothes.
(And you have to mix it with jam or similar to trick ants into eating it.)
I'm a lot more worried about the oven cleaner than anything in the laundry room.
Oven cleaner is merely slightly corrosive, as is bleach and so on. Chemical burns hurt but they won't affect your fertility. Borax has more far reaching and dangerous effects. See the ECHA assessment here for more details.
Unless I'm missing something there's no data there about type, volume, or length of exposure. Looking elsewhere: ingestion is bad, and it's pretty alkaline so it will damage tissue with contact over time. Pretty standard precautions seem to curtail the risk. (Gloves, goggles, mask if handling. Keep away from kids) US regulatory laws tend to favor letting people make their own safety decisions unless the substance is used in drug or bomb production, or presents an ecocidal danger.
Wow, that’s quite a list. So, uh, I guess you have a lot of hobbies? Or is this a workshop in a professional context?
It's both. I'm a jeweller, occasional blade and blacksmith for money. I also make a lot of stuff just for funsies.
I realised today that I've missed out a LOT of stuff. This list should probably be about 30% longer!
I've got a kilogram of powdered bleach I bought off amazon. The plan was to mix up a solution and use a hose nozzle sprayer to lay waste to the moss on my property. The issue was that the product arrived with no material safety data so I have no idea how to determine the strength of any resulting solution.
I'm posting this hoping someone out there might weigh in with ideas on how to get from step 2. ??? to step 3. PROFIT...
You bought pool chlorine, basically. You can use a pool test kit to tell the chlorine level. That being said, when you first add chlorine to water you’ll have a lot of free chlorine in it that will dissipate over time, so the amount you put in it doesn’t matter so much as when you use it. If you put in about a tablespoon in a gallon it will be “a lot”, but your use case scenario is off-label so it’s hard to tell you how much to use.
Oooh man, I read the first comment and I was all "oh I even know who to ping to answer this" and then I scrolled and here we are with you already having answer it.
Edit: to be clear. It's you. You're the one to ping about powdered bleach / chlorine.
D: why do you want to kill the moss so bad? It's so nice and plush and good for your lawn eco-system
The moss on the lawn isn't even on my radar. The moss on the driveway and the roof though... KILL IT WITH FIRE (or bleach)
edit: wife doesn't let me kill plants with fire after I partially burned down the privacy fence... which is a shame. :( So. Very. Satisfying.
For the driveway, try boiling water. We did this to the sidewalk last winter and it worked beautifully.
Honestly I didn't even think about moss on the roof haha, you must live in a very different climate than me. The only place the moss can struggle to grow where I live is under the shady trees. It's a rare treat to have some nice plush moss in my yard for me.
Moss on wood leads to rot. We recently killed all the moss that had started growing on our retaining walls, walkway edging, shed, and lower deck for precisely that reason... And so we could then repaint/re-stain all the wood afterwards too.
Yeah but it's pretty rot. (Half joking)
Yeah, I genuinely like the look of moss too. It grows all over the trees and rocks in the ravine behind our house, and it looks magical. But despite being pretty, it's unfortunately not such a great idea to let it grow all over the wood structures on your property, especially important load-bearing ones like retaining walls. :P
Focusing on the hobby stuff instead of the home cleaning stuff, because it's more interesting:
(hi, my hobby is collecting stuff-making hobbies)
Not sure if this counts, but I buy liquid Castile soap paste (it has the consistency of peanut butter made out of jello, and is made out of olive oil, potassium hydroxide, and a little water) from a local craft store to dilute down and use for a lot of household cleaning needs. 1:7 has worked well in practice for foaming soap dispensers.
Buying a litre of the concentrate is about the same price as buying a litre of Dr. Bronner’s soap, so it winds up being around an eighth the price and without the morally ambiguously sourced oils in the commercial stuff. It’s admittedly more work, but I think I have the swing of things now, and I won’t need to buy soap again for a year (without sacrificing any additional storage space).
That sounds like a great way to save, since the Dr. Bronner's foaming soap dilution is only 1:3. Now I'm trying to figure out where I can find paste like yours.
Has DB's in particular come under fire for their use of oils? They say they started their own palm oil production pipeline because they couldn't find an ethical enough source, and I'm definitely curious to know if all is not how it's presented.
Ah! Sorry, I realize in hindsight that my perspective on this is rather unorthodox -- no, I haven't heard any online movements against them. I'm probably alone in this belief but, irrespective of the fair trade certification (source), sourcing tropical crops (e.g. coconut, palm, and jojoba) necessarily incentivizes poorer economies that are already suffering horribly to sacrifice more land and labour to produce a slightly cheaper product, that is potentially a few percentage points more luxurious (when researching this topic, mixing oils seemed like it was often done to improve textural properties of the soap).
Just using olives as a feedstock doesn't immediately improve the situation, but as far as I could tell, several of the more globally northern economies which produce it are much better off than their counterparts in the global south. Those regions (a bunch of European countries, and a handful of countries surrounding them) also don't have rainforests to protect anymore, so I'm a little less concerned about them choosing to dedicate long existing farmland to olive production. Furthermore, it's plausible that more developed economies have more access to labour saving devices, so I don't need to worry about e.g. child labour being used to harvest coconuts.
All of which is to say, you're good, I'm just crazy!
Thanks for the explanation! It doesn't sound crazy to me. :-)
You're not the one with a manifesto where a label should be, I don't think you're crazy for this.
It seems to have been discontinued, but Zo-Eze. It’s an adhesive remover consisting of Isopropyl Alcohol and 1,1,1-Trichloroethane. Very good at removing adhesive, but not too harsh on the hands. Could probably make your own if you order the chemicals in bulk.
If you're looking for skin friendly solvents, medical adhesive removers should be pretty similar in composition. Most of them are just Isopropyl Alcohol and/or Limonene. E.g. Goo Gone has an alcohol free (~4% limonene) one which works great.
Sometimes I give labels a quick shot with a heat gun and they will peel right off. Of course this only works if you can do that without melting the thing they are stuck to.
I was using this method on a cardboard box to remove old UPS labels before reusing a shipping box. It does leave a slight residue behind on the cardboard.
I find most light oils are pretty good at dissolving any leftover adhesive residue on non-porous surfaces. If I am in my shop I might use 3-in-1 oil, otherwise I will just use olive oil or whatever is in the kitchen cabinet.
Oooh, I’ll have to try this. Tearing off tape and stickers from shipping boxes for composting is a pain. Might melt some tapes, but I bet it’d work great on the paper tape that tears when you pull on it.
Hey thanks for the suggestion. I had never heard of this but it seems pretty good. Don't have any ticks where I live but cedarwood oil seems to also work well for ants, which are never-ending around here. I'll see if I can't find some to test out around the perimeter of my house and lawn.
Funnily enough, I'm going to need to do exactly this soon. I have a LaserPecker 4. Is there a specific powder::acrylic ratio you find works best, or is it just make it opaque and you're good to go?
I've not mixed any for quite a while now, unfortunately. The original ratios I got from this thread on the Lightburn Forums - https://forum.lightburnsoftware.com/t/bikemikes-white-tile-method/94823/
I had a lot of fun getting photos on tiles, with some really nice successes! But since I'm just doing the laser stuff for fun, and you can't really do much with tiles that's not just a plain image print (or you get really involved with stuff like making clocks out of them), it fell off. I like lasering stuff that I can then put together a lot more :)
I'd say definitely try to use an airbrush to apply the mix for the best coating, and really mix the mix together. Some of my early attempts were less good
Edit: Also holy crap that's an expensive machine :D Hope you have a lot of fun with it!
Here's a few I have in stock but I haven't heard mentioned yet:
Cleaners:
Adhesives:
edit: In addition to the usual isopropanol, acetone, etc:
Solvents:
This stuff is good for cleaning up oils without leaving any residue. I've mixed this with acetone in a squirt bottle to make my own brake kleen.
Lots of interesting things in this thread. Great question, OP. Two that I haven't seen mentioned are Diatomaceous Earth and Baby Oil (though someone did mention mineral oil which is basically the same thing).
Diatomaceous Earth, aka DE, is great as a pesticide. The food-grade stuff is non-toxic as long as you don't go inhaling it (though I'm sure that's true of most powdered substances). I spray it around windows and doors, and under/behind things like cabinets and appliances, and it works pretty well at killing bugs either before they come into your home or shortly after.
And baby oil, preferably unscented, is just mineral oil. I use it for keeping metal tools rust-free. Especially good for things like hair trimmers that get wet either directly (when rinsing off) or indirectly (via being in a humid bathroom).
Oh and both of these are relatively dirt cheap. I bought a bag of food-grade DE years ago and am still not even halfway done with it despite reapplying around the house every couple of months. Same with the baby oil, one large bottle costs maybe a couple bucks and can last years and years if all you use it for is protecting your tools.
Treadmill lube for the walking desk.
+1 citric acid.
Bar Keeper's Friend for abraisive cleaning.
Compressed air.
Do you use a silicone lubricant for your treadmill? I have to apply mine with a tiny squirt bottle which I have to fill from a bulk container.
Messy as all heck
Could you expand on why transferring silicone from a big container to the squirt bottle is necessary? I have a pressurized can of silicone lubricant that includes a straw. Works great to get the silicone into tight spaces. Seems like that's a much easier way than decanting from a bit bottle to a small bottle.
Because the treadmill came with a small squirt bottle to get under the belt, but it only lasted a few applications. So the obvious solution was to get a much bigger bottle and refill the small one :)
@dustylungs hah I also have Acetone - but it's because I paint my nails and am an impatient person :p
What an interesting question!
The following is from memory (and so probably incomplete), and doesn't include food.
Kitchen:
Bathroom:
Basement:
Shed:
Notably lacking are any solvents stronger than isopropanol, or any acids stronger than distilled vinegar. None of my hobbies require them, and I haven't found a need for general household purposes like cleaning.
I suspect this is what you're referring to, but to anyone who is not already aware, WD-40 is not a lubricant. It is a degreaser and for removing water (the name is literally Water Displacement-40). It has mild lubricating properties initially, but those are mostly in aid of allowing the liquid to penetrate gaps and loosen things that are stuck. It's good for getting stuff unstuck and getting grime loose, but it will not work for long term lubrication. We've got to break the myth that WD-40 is a lubricant even if that's part of what's on its label (cause technically it is a lubricant initially, even if that characteristic fades fast).
PB Blaster for getting things loose. It makes WD-40 seem like water in comparison. My most common use case for it is weather-beaten locks, it'll get them turning as smooth as the day they were made.
can you explain the descaling plumbing / appaliances? I use mine as a food additive to make things more sour. :|
alum and borax : growing crystals at home
muriatic acid (cheaper milder HCl) : cleaning mineral crystals (not currently in stock at home due to no new specimens)
butane : in compressed gas canisters for dessert torch, hot pot stove
mechanical watch lubricant oils and silicone grease in various tiny bottles (shamefully unused)
used to have a whole whack of stuff for fish keeping as well.
A solution of hot water and citric acid will break down mineral build up on plumbing fixtures, teapots, or other kitchen appliances.
Fantastic to descale coffee machines with too! Those expensive 'cleaning pads' they have for Senseo machines are literally just Citric acid in a pad
Industrial/Cleaning/Double-Strength/Concentrated (high acetic acid content) vinegar will also do the same and can be bought at most hardware stores. We have incredibly hard water where we live so we need to descale everything fairly often, and vinegar works a treat.
As someone with an intense sensitivity to the smell of vinegar/acetic acid, learning about the citric acid has been a treat.
Yeah, the concentrated stuff stinks something fierce. The smell thankfully goes away pretty quickly once you rinse it off with water after it's done its job, but I can see how someone with a sensitivity to it would much prefer citric acid. :P
I've got a bunch around the place, primarily related to my vehicles or tools. I don't keep track of exactly what exists in the shed but a general idea is as follows:
I have a big jug of white vinegar that I only use for cleaning my humidifier every week.
I'm not sure if this counts, it seems like a substance?
I have a shit ton of that sticky tack stuff for hanging posters or whatever. I originally got it for product photography (you often need to utilize objects in very specific positions/orientations).
Most recently though, I've been using it to clean my devices. I have a lot of animals, and their hair gets everywhere. I popped all the keys off my laptop and it was able to grab the hair and chunks that the canned air just couldn't get.
You can mold it into whatever shape you want, so you can reach anywhere, and it holds its shape pretty well, so you can get really creative with how you use it.
This whole thread has been a super interesting read, thanks for posting the question! Focusing just on hobby stuff, I have a bottle of mineral spirits I use to clean yoyo bearings. I also have a few tubes of flowable silicone I use to replace yoyo pads. There's currently a big jug of mineral oil under my sink because I like to use it to oil my pocket knives and wooden cutting boards. I've also used vinegar to force a patina on some of my knives, but I mostly use it for cleaning and as a laundry additive. After poking through my junk drawer, it looks like I also have a few tubes of thermal paste for my computer and apparently 5 half-used bottles of the gel style super glue. Might be time to clear those out lol