You only need a few old fashion products to clean your home the old fashion way.
I have to admit I like being a homemaker and I love to clean my home the old fashion way! There’s only one job I am not too fond of, and that’s dusting! Right now my granddaughters are young enough that I’ve made a game out of dusting, so until they get old enough to know they are helping me with dusting.
For me I don’t look at homemaking as endless hours of drudgery, I see it as a domestic art that I enjoy!
As a housewife, I take pride in keeping my home fresh and sparkling clean. I thought it might be interesting to do some research and find out what women of our past used to do to keep their homes clean. What amazed me in my research about homemaking the old fashion way was that many of the things they used to clean involved no chemicals or harsh detergents.
I found many of these old fashion cleaning tips in the book, “My Favorite Yankee Miracles” by the editors of Yankee Magazine.
- Window washing – When you are drying freshly washed windows use vertical strokes on the outside and horizontal strokes on the inside. That way if you leave any streaks you can tell if they are in the inside or outside.
- Wall washing – Add 1 tablespoon of baking soda and a mild soap like Ivory liquid to a pail of warm water.
- Grease spills on wooden floors – Pour cold water on it right away. The grease will congeal before it has time to penetrate the wood.
- Furniture wax – Shoe polish is a wonderful way to wax wooden furniture. Shoe polish makes an excellent touch-up for covering nicks and scuffs on your furniture.
- Dusting – Pour 1/4 cup lemon oil (found at hardware stores) into 1 pint of hot water in a bucket. Soak four- or five pieces of cheesecloth squares in the mixture. Wring out the cheesecloth and hang them in a cool, dry place for 24 hours. These make perfect pre moistened dusting cloths.
- Spilled candle wax – To remove candle wax from woodwork put ice cubes in a plastic bag and hold against the melted wax. Once the wax is frozen it will be easy to scrape or chip off.
- Polishing silver – Stand silver in an aluminum pot and fill to cover with boiling water. Add a heaping tablespoon of baking soda. Always test this method on a small piece of silver before proceeding. Do not use on silver that has a lacquer coating.
- Cleaning brass – Paint on a good layer of ketchup and let sit overnight. Wash and dry to a nice shine.
- Clean toilets – Pour 1/4 cup of bleach in the toilet and let sit for 15 minutes. Scrub the inside of the bowl with an ordinary toilet brush before flushing away.
- Deodorize a garbage can – Wash it with a solution of 1/2 cup borax and a bucket of warm water. After can is washed, and dry sprinkle borax in the bottom of the garbage can to fight odors.
Growing up a never remember my mother or grandmother buying cleaners from the grocery store.
We always had bleach, borax and Murphy’s Oil Soap, and that’s all we ever used. To this day I still do not buy cleaners and the only thing I use more of than what my mother did was baking soda. I use that in all my cleaning from bathrooms to my kitchen sink and even in my laundry soap.
Are there any old-fashion cleaning tips you learned from your mother or grandmother that you still use today? Please share them with us in the comments section below.
Thanks for stopping by!
Tracy Lynn
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“For me I do not look at homemaking as endless hours of drudgery, I see it as a domestic art that I enjoy!”…me too!
This was a fun post to read Tracy with all the old fashioned cleaning tip. I don’t remember my mom or grandma buying cleaning products at the store…except for pledge, my mom loved lemon fresh pledge for her wood furniture! 🙂
I forgot about Pledge…my Grandma’s house always smelled like lemons. I wonder if she used it?
Hi Tracy,
So lovely to meet you! I really enjoyed this post on using homemade cleaning supplies and tips, and although I was familiar with most of them, the ketchup for brass was a surprise! I have two antique brass beds that need a cleaning, and I have been postponing this chore as I don’t like using the product that I have since it’s very messy, etc. I will definitely try your ketchup tip as I am very curious about the results!
Thanks for visiting Poppy View and hope to see you there again soon!
Poppy
Thanks for stopping by and I hope the ketchup works for you…that would be such an easy fix!
Hi Tracy. What kind of meat chickens do you raise? We have been raising Cornish cross but the last time the meat was tough. What are your thoughts?
Beth
We raise the Cornish Cross as well and we butcher at 8 weeks. I have not had any trouble with them be tough? I always bake them whole until the meat falls off the bone. Once I remove all the meat I then simmer the bones and skin for 2 hours to make broth. I wish I had a clue why yours are tough!
I enjoyed reading your post Tracy. My mom used a paste wax on our hardwood floors when we were kids, and there was always a lineup to use the floor polisher! As for the ketchup, we have a brass doorknob that will be getting the Heinz treatment.
Hope you have a great day!
Val
Mom taught me to use Comet on just about everything, and vinegar/baking soda in the drains. I’ve learned to use Fels Naptha soaps (or the homemade laundry soap) on a lot of things to cut grease, it works very well on floors too when diluted down. I learned to make my very own mustard gas by accident using commercial cleaners (forgot Comet and the offbrands have bleach powder and added in my favorite scented general cleaner we keep on hand for the kids to spray down tables) when I cleaned in the bathroom. The tub/sink/toilet is still white from that endeavor 2 weeks ago!! LOL Hubby doesn’t like the vinegar smell so I don’t use it much for cleaning in general. Mom was brought up with Depression Era standards, so she taught me a lot of elbow grease, a bit of comet and water, and a good brush/sponge goes a long way.
We use a lot of elbow grease here on the farm and there is little I cannot get cleaned with baking soda and once in awhile some borax. Thanks for stopping by!
Loved your tips. Just learning how to clean. Well, just making myself do it! I knew how, just wouldn’t.
Thank you for saying they took pride in having a clean house, and that’s not a drudgery for you. I needed to hear that.
If you try to take pride in your daily cleaning chores and do the best you can then your outlook on cleaning will change. You don’t have to be perfect or have the cleanest house you just have to make your house a home for you family.
Hi Tracy, back again! I must really crave your tips, because until I saw my name, I’d forgotten I’d commented, much less read this!!
I love that your Bible is well worn! Mine is too, and I keep it by my recliner in the living room.
Friday Frivolity
These tips are all good. Mom’s, Grandmothers and Great Grandmother’s have been passing down great advice for all of time, haven’t they!
I like the way you get your dusting done!
The shoe polish trick is cool since it comes in so many different colors.
Thanks for sharing with us at The Home Matters, we love your blog!
I remember my grandmother using a couple of these tips and I love trying to figure out how my mother and grandmother did things without the access to run to the store everyday!
I love the smell of Murphey’s OIl Soap. My mother used it and I do, too. She also used Jubilee for the white cabinets. I haven’t seen that around for a while but I’d love to sniff it. These are great tips and I’m breaking out the shoe polish tomorrow! ~Pamela
I love Murphy’s as well! It has such a clean smell to me and I feel like my house is clean when that smell lingers in the air! I have never heard of Jubilee…what was that used for?
Thank you for sharing these homemaking tips on the Art of Home-Making Mondays! I enjoy these kind of articles 🙂
And I love all the things you write about!
I loved reading this post. It brought back so many memories. My grandmother used nothing but soap and water to clean. That’s all she had and her house was always clean as a whistle.
My grandmother as well…she always said a little soap and elbow grease was all you needed!
Just FYI” if you have a septic tank, bleach, comet, and other commercial cleaners may be harming you tank and field. Use baking soda, vinegar, and other ‘natural’ cleaners instead.
Also, if you are going healthy as well as ‘green’, fels naptha and murphys oil soap contain ingredients that are harmful both to health and our planet: petroleum based oils, anti-freeze (murphy’s) and fels naptha gets C’s and D’s from EWG, on 1/2 it’s ingredients, the other half are for ingredients found naturally in ALL soaps..like lye, which in soap processing is necessary and after being processed, is changed chemically into soap, leaving no lye residue.
This info is being given for those of you trying to help your health as well as the planet, and using fewer commercial products that are expensive in favor of those that are household staples and clean and natural.
We do use a lot of homemade cleaners here on our homestead and vinegar and baking soda is my best friend! Thanks for the great information!
You’re right. I once ruined a toilet with bleach. Now I only use vinegar.
I am a huge fan of natural cleaning. Like you, mom never used those store bought cleaners. Good old fashioned bleach (clorox) is what we probably used!
Beside the health factor about using natural cleaners I get a kick out of walking down the cleaner isle in the grocery store and just smile at all the money I am saving.
I love these old fashioned tips and tricks! It just goes to show that new is not always better. I have gone back to a lot of the old cleaners over the last year or so myself, and I am loving it! Thanks for sharing these… PINNED! 🙂
Stopped by from Home Matters Linky Party
~Lorelai
Life With Lorelai
Thanks for pinning this post and I love old fashion tips as well!
Great tips! The companies that produce cleaning products have been smart in their marketing so it seems you need to buy specific products to accomplish just one task, and it’s both overwhelming and expensive! I love that these tips go back to the basics, where a few simple products cover a multitude of jobs! One product I do use (and love!) is Bon Amie. It’s an all-purpose powder cleaner that uses just a few ingredients and has been around since the late 1800’s. It can be a little hard to find (the big box stores don’t usually carry it), but I can get it at my mom & pop hardware store, and they do sell online. It’s really cheap too!
It is crazy what marketing makes us believe! I use only a couple things to keep my whole house clean and save so much money in the process. I have never used Bon Amie…I will have to look for it and give it a try.
I am a TERRIBLE homemaker. I should maybe wash the walls today with your tips………..
Yes, it sure brings back memories of an easier time. Things were so much simpler then when we used just a few things instead of run to the store.
I’m not a very good homemaker! I’m all for an easy life and I am very ashamed that I’m using all these chemicals! #FridayFrivolity
I don’t necessarily see housework as drudgery, but I’m not always in the mood to do it. Rainy days, especially, put me in the nesting mood. I just need more of those! LOL! I loved your post!