Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home and Me

I'd like to introduce you to the book that's given me new hope that even I can have a clean home.

A few years ago my mom gave me a fun, hip, bright-green book entitled, Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-nonsense advice that will inspire you to CLEAN like the DICKENS. Written by Mrs. Thelma Meyer and her daughter Monica Nassif, founder of the addictive Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day cleaning products line as well as the gorgeous Caldrea soap brand, the book shares Mrs. Meyer's cleaning and organizing tips that she's employed during fifty years of housekeeping with nine children under the roof.

For the first two years, I picked it up occasionally to read the fun vignettes from a happy family of eleven, from the emergency surgery Mrs. Meyers had to perform on her son who had jammed a carrot far under his fingernail right before passing out to the rules she set in place to organize the children's chores:

You need to make work fun for kids so that they're inspired to get things done. Every Saturday morning, I'd put a list of chores on the refrigerator door. Whoever got up first got to pick the job he or she wanted to do. And the last guy had to take what was left. They all had to sign their names next to the chores they picked so I knew who was responsible for each task. (p. 39)

My husband teased me good-naturedly about my attraction to reading about cleaning. Recently, though, the green cover pulled me back, this time to see if I really could employ her sage cleaning advice. Her love of keeping her home clean and her delight in the simple things, like freshly-washed sheets, is both contagious and a mysterious call from the past to regain something lost in today's concept of keeping a home.

Organized by room and with tips, instructions, and schedules on how and when to clean everything from light switches and lampshades to garages and attics, this book really is made for someone like me who never would have thought to clean the heat registers in the first place.

Read for fun and then be inspired and equipped to give your family a clean and happy home.

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