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I frequently struggle with mould and condensation on my windows due to the age of my home. Having written about homes for quite some time, I understand that it's essential to wipe condensation from your windows or open them for a few minutes each morning to avoid the accumulation of dampness and mould in your house.

However, during the winter months, every window in my home is covered in a wet mist, and I always have to start my day wiping them down either with a window vac or just a regular run-of-the-mill squeegee to remove this excess moisture. While I do sometimes leave my dehumidifier running to reduce the humidity, I've been trying to save more money on energy bills. This led me to see how well kitchen ingredients would fare. According to a few cleaning enthusiasts, items like baking soda and salt act as an effective "natural dehumidifier".

I had both salt and baking soda in my kitchen cupboard, so I didn't even have to pop to the shop to buy anything for these hacks.

To make this a fair test, I used the exact amount of salt and baking soda (125g) and carried out the hacks on two nights that had the same temperatures.

I first started with tasting out the salt hack. As I only used about 125g of the 70p salt, this tip set me back just 12p. Given the low cost, I was hoping this would be as effective as many people make it out to be.

Unfortunately, as hyped as this affordable hack may be, I found that it didn't do much - or anything - to my dripping wet windows.

While the salt did fully harden, indicating that it absorbed moisture, the windows had as much condensation on them as usual.

Moving on to the baking soda method, just like salt, baking soda acts as a natural dehumidifier, absorbing excess moisture from the air and helping to reduce condensation build-up when placed on the windowsill.

Given how unsuccessful I was with the salt tip, I didn't have high hopes. Again, just like with the salt, I added 125g of the £1.19 baking soda, which worked out as 30p, to a small bowl and left it to sit in the same spot overnight.

Surprisingly, I didn't have to start cleaning the condensation off my window the next morning.

In fact, there was no condensation left on the windows and the powder only slightly hardened, meaning that it can be used more times before you have to change it, unlike with the salt.