system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5: why is baking soda oftenly used to clean stuff (especially stuff that is difficult to clean)? & what is it best used for?

Is there a kind of chemical reaction that makes the cleaning easier? 

I feel like I‘m missing a life hack because we never have baking soda at home.
gpt
The two main reasons are that it has a high pH value, which means it's very basic (the opposite of acidic on the pH scale). This makes it very reactive with organic materials like kitchen grease and oily dirt left behind by dirty body parts.

It's also slightly abrasive, just enough so that particles of dirt can get rubbed off dirty surfaces but not so much that it will leave scratches. You can get much the same result on that score with toothpaste, by the by.