Thelma Meyer - Mrs. Meyers Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice that Will Inspire You to CLEAN like the DICKENS

COPYRIGHT 2009 by THE CALDREA COMPANY

ILLUSTRATIONS COPYRIGHT WERNER DESIGN WERKS, inc. TEXT BY NICOLE SFORZA

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

WELLNESS CENTRAL

HACHETTE BOOK GROUP

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NEW YORK, NY 10017

VISIT OUR WEB SITE AT www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

Wellness Central is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Wellness Central name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

First eBook Edition: March 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-55628-6

ILLUSTRATED and DESIGNED BY Werner Design Werks, Inc.

To my family.

To all the mothers in the world who love and sacrifice for their families.

To God. (Cleanliness is next to godliness, after all!)

And to Vern Meyer, my husband of fifty-four years.

Without Vern, nothing would be possible, least of all this book.

Hes made our house easy to clean, very comfortable, and spacious

by building, rewiring, refinishing, and enlarging it as we grew.

I cant imagine a better person with whom to build a home.

Dear friend,

Ever since my daughter Monica started Mrs. Meyers Clean Day, back in 2001, people are always asking, Is Mrs. Meyer a real person? Well, Im here to confirm it once and for all. My name is Thelma Meyer, and my daughter named her cleaning products after me to honor my good old-fashioned values. Nothing gives me more of a kick than when I introduce myself to someone who uses the products. Just recently I was waiting for a flight with a nice lady who was amazed when I told her who I was. What an honor!

Im proud of the products that carry my name. The Mrs. Meyers Clean Day products are powerful against dirt, grime, fingerprints, and the like. The philosophy is to make straightforward, honest cleaners that smell good and work like the dickens on dirt. They are also aromatherapeutic, which is a fancy word for healthy and good. But in my forty-plus years of cleaning house, Ive learned that its not just what you use to clean, its how you clean, too.

Keeping up a house in a small town in Iowa while raising nine kids was no picnic, but Ive discovered handy tricks for making day-to-day duties easier, monthly jobs seem like a cakewalk, and annual tasks a bit less grueling. Thats where this book comes in.

So no, Im not a cleaning superhero, but I really do exist. Grab your duster and follow meweve got some work to do.

Wishing you a CLEAN and HAPPY HOME,

Mrs Thelma A. Meya

My husband, Vern, and I got married in 1954. We lived in a trailer park in Des Moines with our twins until I got pregnant with our third child. Thelma, its time to get a house, Vern said. So we sold the forty-two-foot trailer and used the money from that as a down payment for a two-bedroom Cape Cod cottage-style house in Granger, Iowa.

We paid $12,000 for our new home, located about twenty miles northwest of Des Moines, in May of 1955. It was one of the first new houses in town.

And did we fill that house up! With nine kids, pets, kids friends, and neighbors all around, I had to stay on top of things, but not drive myself too crazy. I adopted a casually clean policy. I believe in having a clean house, but Im not one to have a perfect house. I like neatness and I like to see my home in an orderly fashionI dont appreciate clothes or towels lying aroundbut Im not a meticulous housekeeper either. Every day Ill do a little something, and when company comes, like my bridge friends, thats when Ill really get to work, making sure the windows are washed and all the fingerprints removed. But in general, the house just has to be clean enough and uncluttered. I like to focus on the big picturegetting the chores done daily so theres more time to enjoy life. Its all in the way you look at it. If you have a poor attitude, life is going to be a bear. You can look at your house and get overwhelmed and see all of the things that need tending to. Or you can tackle jobs little by little, whistling while you work, and know that even if your home doesnt shine from top to bottom, its good enough for you.

I also believe that when you stay on top of things its so much easier in the long run. Make a plan, and take the time to do chores right the first time. Dont stint once you commit to a task. That means throwing a little elbow grease into mopping up the bathroom floor and polishing the wood furniture. If you do it well, I promise you that theres pleasure to be had in that.

Theres always going to be confusion when youre running a household, but there will be less of it when you take an organized approach. Figure out what works for you: Do you hate waking up to a not-too-tidy house? Take a few minutes before bed each night to do a little cleanup. Rather use that time for sleep? Thats okay, too. I love freshly made beds, ship-shape surfaces and floors, and the smell of clean laundry. Some folks find ironing a soothing task. Do whatever suits your fancy.

In this book, youll find tips for cleaning every room in the house and tending to the garden and patio, too. Well go from kitchen to bathroom to office and every nook and cranny in between. Ive shared the down-and-dirty tricks that Ive been using for years! And since it never hurts to learn something new, I also asked friends and family to share their cleaning secrets with me. Youll find some great ideas in hereketchup for cleaning copper and denture tablets for the toiletthat I just learned about, too. There are some sneaky ideas in here, including ways to get out those inevitable stains and foolproof solutions for dealing with lifes little annoyances, from loosening a stuck drawer to getting bubblegum off a carpet. Youll also find that I have a lot of opinions on everything from clean curtains to parenting, in My House, My Rules.

My kids will weigh in with memories on what it was like to all live under one roof. (Boy, did it get crazy now and then.) Sometimes they remember things differently than I do, thats for sure. One thing they dont forget is how much they pitched in. Throughout this book, I mention how important it is to give your kids chores; it teaches them how to work hard and it will also make your life a little easier. My kids had to clean their rooms every Saturday, among other things. Be firm with your kids and tell it to them straight. Many parents just talk to their kids constantlytalk, talk, talkbut soon their kids will just stop listening. One of my favorite mottoes is SYE (save your energy). Dont ask young children if they want to clean their room. Just say, Time to clean your room now. This avoids any possibility for disagreement.

Im going to preach here what I practice: Use the least amount of water and energy possible. I was taught from an early age to save water. I was born in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, so water was hard to come by. My parents were Kansas farmers and hardly had anything to live on, and I remember my mom telling me that one winter we lived on nothing but tomato soup. We never had a lot, so we never consumed a lot. And that way of living was ingrained in me. Even today, Ill keep a bag in my purse and pick up litter as I see it. Ill reuse water too; Ill pour the water I use to wash my veggies into my houseplants. Waste not, want not. Its about respect for money and respect for our planet. Dont take what you dont need, and make do with what you have.