- 10 minutes ago
The smartest cleaning buys are often the plain ones, and this calm home-keeping narration makes the case for a few good tools over a cupboard full of expensive machines. Drawing on old household wisdom, it walks through the cleaning kit that can handle floors, cobwebs, driveways, ovens, spills, and everyday messes without cords, chargers, or constant replacement.
A sturdy broom, a hand brush, a long-handled duster, a bucket of hot soapy water, washing soda, open windows, and a basket of soft rags do most of the work here. The advice is practical and detailed: sweep with short strokes, blot stains instead of rubbing them, use washing soda paste on baked-on grease, and let fresh air do the job of an air cleaner. It is a thoughtful look at low-cost cleaning products and old-fashioned cleaning methods that still make sense today.
For anyone searching for budget cleaning tips, simple home cleaning hacks, traditional household cleaning, or a narrated guide to effective cleaning products, this video fits that search well. It is also useful for viewers interested in frugal living, practical homemaking, and cleaning routines that save money and time while keeping a house clean.
A sturdy broom, a hand brush, a long-handled duster, a bucket of hot soapy water, washing soda, open windows, and a basket of soft rags do most of the work here. The advice is practical and detailed: sweep with short strokes, blot stains instead of rubbing them, use washing soda paste on baked-on grease, and let fresh air do the job of an air cleaner. It is a thoughtful look at low-cost cleaning products and old-fashioned cleaning methods that still make sense today.
For anyone searching for budget cleaning tips, simple home cleaning hacks, traditional household cleaning, or a narrated guide to effective cleaning products, this video fits that search well. It is also useful for viewers interested in frugal living, practical homemaking, and cleaning routines that save money and time while keeping a house clean.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Go and stand in the cleaning aisle of any big store and look at what they tell you a
00:05clean house costs now.
00:06A machine for the floors that runs $300 or $400, another machine for the spills, a roaring
00:13machine for the driveway, a machine humming in the corner to clean the very air, a machine
00:19for the stains, each one with its cord and its charger and its own basket of dust to
00:25empty, each one wanting money to buy and money to run, and in a few years, money to replace
00:31when it gives out.
00:32And here is the thing that would have made my grandmother laugh out loud.
00:37Every single one of those machines does a job that a handful of plain tools, a good broom,
00:44a stout brush, a bucket, and a few rags, did just as well for a hundred years, and did
00:50it in a kitchen that never once paid the electric company for the privilege.
00:55So today, I am not going to show you a shelf of machines to buy.
00:59I am going to show you the whole of the old cleaning kit, the few good, plain, lasting tools
01:07that clean a house, top to bottom, cost almost nothing, outlive you if you treat them right,
01:13and never once need charging.
01:15Stay with me, for this is the list the machine sellers would rather you never saw.
01:21Quick word before we go further.
01:23My name is Esther Yoder, and the old household ways handed down to me, the kind I am sharing
01:29today, and a great many more besides, are far more than I could ever fit into one video.
01:36I have gathered the whole of them into a book, and you will find it at EliasYoder.com.
01:41If today's tips serve you, that is where the rest of what my mother and grandmother taught
01:47me lives, all in the one place.
01:49Now to it.
01:51My grandmother taught me the whole of this the day I admired a neighbor's fine new gadget
01:56and wished aloud for one.
01:58She set down her broom and said, Esther, that thing will be in the rubbish heap in five years,
02:03and you will be buying another.
02:05This broom was my mother's.
02:07Buy few things, buy them good, and keep them your whole life.
02:11That is the only cleaning secret worth the knowing.
02:15And that is the thread through everything I am about to give you.
02:19The machine is sold to you as a thing you will buy again and again.
02:24It breaks, it wears out, its little parts fail, its charger dies, and back you go to the store.
02:30The old tool is the opposite.
02:33You buy it once, good and well made, you keep it clean and dry and mended, and it serves
02:39you and your children after you.
02:41A handful of such tools is the whole kit, and here they are, one by one.
02:47First and above all, a good broom.
02:49Not a cheap thing of plastic bristles that splay out in a month, but a proper broom of
02:55stiff, natural fiber, corn or broom corn, well bound.
03:00A good broom will gather the dust and the crumbs off any floor there is, the boards, the stone,
03:06the rug beaten and laid back down.
03:09And it will do it quiet, in the early morning, without waking a soul, where a machine fills the
03:15whole house with its roar.
03:17And here is the way to sweep so it truly cleans, for most folk only chase the dust about.
03:23Sweep with short, gentle strokes, not great wild swipes, for a hard, fast stroke throws
03:29the fine dust up into the air to drift back down the moment your back is turned.
03:34Short and low and patient, gathering the dust ahead of you into one growing pile, and the
03:41fine stuff stays down where you can take it up.
03:43And now and again, dampen the floor or the broom just lightly, for a touch of damp holds
03:49the finest dust to the broom instead of letting it fly.
03:53Beside the broom, keep a stout hand brush, a stiff little scrubbing brush for the work
03:58the broom is too big for.
04:00The corner of a step, the grout between the tiles, the dried spill ground into the floor,
04:05the tub, the pot that will not come clean.
04:08The hand brush and a little elbow is what the folk with the $300 scrubbing machine are
04:14really paying to avoid, and the brush costs a dollar or two and lasts for years.
04:20Stiff bristle for the hard surfaces, a softer brush for the gentle ones, and between the
04:26broom and the brush there is scarcely a floor or a surface in the house they cannot see to.
04:31Now for the high places, the cobwebs in the ceiling corner, the dust along the top of the cupboard,
04:39the beam you cannot reach.
04:41The store sells a special domed duster on the long pole for this, and I will not fault the shape
04:48of it,
04:48for it is a sensible tool, but you can make its twin in two minutes for nothing.
04:54Take a long stick, a broom handle, a length of cane, and tie to the end of it a soft
05:01rag,
05:01or a bundle of soft wool, or lash on an old soft brush.
05:06That is your long-handled duster, and it reaches every high corner the store's pole does.
05:14For the cobweb especially, here is the trick.
05:17Do not swipe at it, for it only breaks and drifts and resettles.
05:23Set your rag end gently to the web and give it a slow turn, a twist, and the whole sticky
05:30web winds itself up onto the cloth and lifts away clean.
05:34Then you take the rag off and wash it, and your duster is new again, where the store's
05:41one you must buy a fresh head for.
05:44Reach, twist, lift, the high corner's done, for the cost of a stick and a rag.
05:52Now the outside, the driveway gone green, the siding streaked with grime, the porch and the steps.
05:59The store would sell you a great roaring pressure machine for this, costing hundreds.
06:06And I will tell you honestly, it is a powerful thing.
06:09But I will also tell you what the seller will not.
06:13That machine, in an unpracticed hand, will carve stripes in your concrete, drive water up under
06:21your siding where it rots the wall, and strip the paint clean off your boards.
06:26Its very power is its danger.
06:29The old way is a stiff deck brush on the long handle, a bucket of hot water with a good
06:36soap
06:37or a scoop of washing soda in it, and an honest hour's work.
06:41You wet the surface, you lay on your soapy water and let it sit and soften the grime a while,
06:49and then you scrub, the brush and your arm doing what the machine's water blast does,
06:55but doing it evenly and gently enough that it harms nothing underneath.
07:01Rinse it off with a plain hose or a poured bucket, and your drive and your siding come up clean
07:08and whole,
07:08with no stripes carved in, and no water driven where it should not go.
07:14It is more of your own labor, yes, but it is no money, no engine to fuel and fix,
07:21and no risk to the very surface you are cleaning.
07:25Match the force to the thing, and a brush and hot water will outlast and outcare any machine.
07:32And wear your gloves for the washing soda, mind, for it is a strong alkali
07:38that stings the skin, and keep it from the little ones.
07:42Now the oven, the one with the years of baked on grease, for which the store sells a fierce chemical
07:49in a bottle that warns you off your own skin and lungs. You do not need it.
07:55The old cure for baked grease is washing soda again, and it is far gentler on you.
08:02Make a thick paste of washing soda and a little water, and spread it over the cold oven floor and
08:09walls,
08:10thick on the worst of the baked on spots. Leave it sit overnight, the long hours doing the work
08:17your arm would otherwise do. The soda softening and lifting that hardened grease while you sleep.
08:25In the morning it wipes away, grease and paste together, with a damp cloth and only a little
08:31scrubbing for the very worst. For a spot that will not yield, lay on fresh paste and leave it longer.
08:39Gloves again, and keep the windows open for the air. Not because the soda is a poison like the bottle,
08:46but because good air is always wise when you clean. Strong enough to lift years of grease,
08:53gentle enough it will not have you gasping. That is the trade the harsh bottle never offers.
09:00Now here is one the machine age has forgotten entirely. The store sells a humming box to stand
09:08in the corner and clean the very air of your house, to take out the dust and the stale funky
09:15smells.
09:15And do you know what cleaned the air of every house for all the long years before that box? The
09:23window.
09:24Open your windows, even a crack, even in the cold of the year, for a few minutes. Throw them open
09:30on
09:30opposite sides of the house and let the air draw clean through, out with the stale and the dust and
09:36the cooking smell, in with the fresh. This is the oldest cleaning of all, and the air box only does,
09:43with a motor and a filter you must buy and clean and replace, what a thrown open window does for
09:49nothing in ten minutes. Air your rooms, air your bedding in the sun, and your house smells sweet
09:55and feels fresh in a way no humming box ever truly gives. Keep a green plant or two in the
10:01window
10:02besides, for they freshen a room in their quiet way. The window is the air cleaner, and it was always
10:08free. And last, the humblest tool of all, and the one that does the most, a good pile of soft
10:15rags.
10:15Not a thing you buy, the worn out sheet, the old shirt past mending, torn down into squares and kept
10:22in a basket. These are your cloths for every wiping, every polishing, every spill in the house, and when
10:29they are dirty, you wash them and use them again, where the store would sell you a roll of paper
10:34to throw
10:35away. And for a spill or a stain on the carpet or the chair, the thing the store sells a
10:41whole powered
10:41machine to suck up, here is the old way, and it is better than the machine for one reason. You
10:47blot,
10:48you never rub. The moment of the spill, you lay a thick dry rag over it and press, hard, and
10:54let the
10:55cloth drink the wet up out of the carpet. Press, lift, a fresh dry part of the rag, press again,
11:02drawing it up
11:02and out, never grinding it in. Rubbing only drives the stain deeper into the fibers and frays the carpet
11:09besides. Blotting draws it back out the way it came. For what the blotting leaves, a little cool water and
11:15a
11:16dab of soap worked gentle and blotted again. Cool water, mind, never hot on a stain, for hot sets it
11:22fast. A pile of rags and
11:24the patience to blot will lift a spill cleaner than any machine, and the machine was only ever a faster
11:30way to do the very
11:31same drawing out. And let me set it in the larger truth, for by now you see the shape of
11:37it plain.
11:37Count what the machine kit would cost you, the floor machine, the spill machine, the driveway machine,
11:44the air machine, the stain machine, hundreds upon hundreds of dollars, and that only to buy them.
11:50Then the power to run them, the parts that fail, the filters and the bags, and the certain day each
11:57one
11:57dies and sends you back to the store for the next. It is no plot, and no one sat and
12:02schemed it.
12:03It is only that a machine that breaks and is replaced can be sold to you over and over your
12:09whole life
12:10long, while a good broom and a stout brush and a bucket of rags, bought once, kept for 40 years,
12:16years, can be sold to you but the once. There is no fortune in a tool that lasts. So the
12:22lasting tools
12:22get quietly left out of the telling, and the breaking machines get the bright aisle and the glowing word.
12:28The house full of machines is what they sell. The handful of good plain tools, kept and mended and
12:34handed down, is what the old folks simply had, and kept a whole house spotless with, and never thought
12:41it any hardship. So there is the whole old kit and not a court among it, a good stiff broom
12:47and a stout
12:48hand brush for the floors and the scrubbing, a rag tied to a long stick for the high cobwebs, a
12:54deck
12:54brush and a bucket of hot soapy water for the drive and the siding, a paste of washing soda for
13:00the greasy
13:00oven, a thrown open window for the very air, and a basket of soft rags and the patience to blot
13:07a stain
13:07instead of rubbing it. Buy few, buy them good, keep them your whole life. Now, I want to hear from
13:14you.
13:14Tell me down below, which county are you watching from and how old is the house you keep? And tell
13:20me,
13:20is there a tool in your own house that was your mother's or your grandmother's still doing its work
13:26after all these years? For those are the ones worth having and I should dearly love to hear of them.
13:31I read every word. It is a quiet freedom, is it not, to learn that a clean house never needed
13:38a house
13:39full of machines to buy and run and throw away, only a few good plain tools kept and cared for
13:47and handed down. The old folk owned little and what they owned they kept for life and their homes shown
13:55for it. We very nearly traded all that away for a cupboard full of cords. But it is a plain
14:02old
14:03wisdom still. And it is a thing, I think, we are only just starting to remember.