Based on yesterday’s ASK BABCI series, a few folks were interested in what kind of cleaning products Babci uses, so I will do my best to give a rundown of her favorite products. Don’t be surprised if some of them are modern. (This is in no way a paid for or sponsored post. These are the actual products we use.)
First a little history. When Babci came to this country in the 60’s, one of her first purchases was a Washboard. Once she could afford to upgrade, she bought an ancient washing machine with the rollers on top. She used that thing until the drum rusted out (I was about 15). Finally, when I hit my teen years, she bought what most of us would call the modern washing machine of today. With each of these phases, Babci never looked back and embraced the change. When you live the simple life by necessity and not by choice, you are okay with a little lifestyle inflation. Would Babci go back to hunching over a tub and scrubbing her clothes with Naptha soap? Hell, no, especially not after her knee replacements. She also has no problem using electricity instead of candles or lanterns (as it’s much much cleaner), and she LOVES indoor plumbing.
Laundry Products
Growing up, Babci worked in a factory doing piecework. She assembled tools for what’s now Stanley Tools. She always reeked of grease when she came home. Whenever I go into see a mechanic and they smell of motor oil, it still reminds me of how Babci smelled growing up. If you combine the grease monkey she was during the day with the green thumb gardener she was in her off hours, you can imagine how filthy everything she wore was.
Babci never made homemade laundry detergent. It just wasn’t as good as the store bought stuff. At first she used Wisk, but then determined that Tide worked even better. She really needed heavy duty cleaning for the type of dirt she was tackling.
For really tough ground in stains, she would rub them down with Fels Naptha soap and give the stains a few scrubs on the washboard before throwing them in our ancient washer. She doesn’t have to do that nowadays as garden dirt generally doesn’t need any pretreatment to come out clean with the use of a normal washer.
I’m a big fan of Zout for pretreatment. It works much better than shout or oxyclean for those ground in grass stains, dirt and grease. I also use Tide free as my kids have super sensitive skin and it cleans much better than Purex. I used purex on my baby clothes, but once the kids start getting grimy, I had to upgrade to the tougher stuff. Babci also loves using baking soda in her laundry. She adds a 1/4 cup to every load and claims it makes the clothes softer (because she line dries) and takes the odors out of the clothing.
Dishes
Babci uses Dawn and Comet. She does not have a dishwasher but she recently discovered that if you soak caked on dishes in a tub of hot water with dish washing crystals, it melts caked on stuff off of pots and pans. She tends to wash some dishes with just water to use less soap, but that’s just really gross when you pick up a greasy spoon that’s supposedly clean. My aunt and uncle used the water method too. I guess growing up dish soap was a luxury and a certain amount of filth was okay. She washes everything thoroughly now that my kids are in the picture which is nice.
For Everything Else
For everything else, she either uses a window cleaner like Windex or a smelly floor cleaner like Pin Sol or Mr. Clean and Comet in the bathrooms. She likes the “clean” smell of these products vs the eye watering smell of straight ammonia or vinegar. She uses vinegar more to disinfect herself than her home. Whenever she has a cut or some kind of skin issue, she covers herself with Vinegar and Garlic. She smells like a dill pickle half the time but hey, at least she can also repel Vampires at will.
Yup, I’m sure you wouldn’t have expected it, but Babci is a modern gal when it comes to cleaning products. Do you think less of her knowing that she’s not mixing up a big vat of strange ingredients on a regular basis for her cleaning needs? It’s not to say that Babci wouldn’t go back to those methods if money got tight, but for now, it’s something she’s willing to splurge on.
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