- 2 days ago
🔗 Save $6,000 a year with my complete Amish home-saving method that I teach: https://eliasyoder.com
You've seen that little video telling you to drop a ball of aluminum foil in your toilet tank. I'm here to tell you the truth about that one — it does nothing, and it can even void your warranty — and then show you the honest things a one-dollar roll of foil will really do around your house.
In this one I walk you through it: lifting fresh mineral buildup off your faucets, brightening tarnished silver in minutes with nothing but hot water and a spoonful of soda, quieting a rattling toilet lid, keeping your bar soap from melting into slime before its time, and a few travel tricks besides — keeping necklaces from tangling and little bottles from leaking in your bag. Real things, for about a dollar, the way the women before us did it.
These are the small, true savings the women before us couldn't afford to forget. I learned them from my mother and grandmother, and I'm passing them to you the same way they were passed to me.
If you want my complete method — the whole way we keep a household for so much less — I've put it all in one place. 🔗 Save $6,000 a year with my complete Amish home-saving method that I teach: https://eliasyoder.com
Tell me down in the comments: what county do you live in, and how old is your house? Hard water runs different everywhere, and the older houses carry it different than the new. I read what you write.
You've seen that little video telling you to drop a ball of aluminum foil in your toilet tank. I'm here to tell you the truth about that one — it does nothing, and it can even void your warranty — and then show you the honest things a one-dollar roll of foil will really do around your house.
In this one I walk you through it: lifting fresh mineral buildup off your faucets, brightening tarnished silver in minutes with nothing but hot water and a spoonful of soda, quieting a rattling toilet lid, keeping your bar soap from melting into slime before its time, and a few travel tricks besides — keeping necklaces from tangling and little bottles from leaking in your bag. Real things, for about a dollar, the way the women before us did it.
These are the small, true savings the women before us couldn't afford to forget. I learned them from my mother and grandmother, and I'm passing them to you the same way they were passed to me.
If you want my complete method — the whole way we keep a household for so much less — I've put it all in one place. 🔗 Save $6,000 a year with my complete Amish home-saving method that I teach: https://eliasyoder.com
Tell me down in the comments: what county do you live in, and how old is your house? Hard water runs different everywhere, and the older houses carry it different than the new. I read what you write.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a sound a toilet makes when the water that runs through it is hard.
00:04And once you have heard it in your own house, you do not stop hearing it.
00:08The slow staining.
00:09The ring that comes creeping back two days after you scrubbed it down to white,
00:14like it was waiting for you to turn your back.
00:17The little rattle in the handle every time one of the children lifts the lid and lets it drop.
00:22The soap by the sink, sitting in a puddle of its own slime,
00:26half-melted, gone before its time.
00:29You wipe and you scrub and you buy the blue bottle and the green bottle
00:33and the one shaped like a gooseneck that promises to get up under the rim.
00:38And still it comes back, every time.
00:41And you start to feel like the house is winning and you are losing.
00:45I want to tell you this morning that the bottles are not the answer,
00:49and they were never going to be,
00:51and that the answer has been sitting in a drawer in your kitchen the whole while.
00:56I am Esther Yoder.
00:57I keep a house here with my husband and our seven children.
01:01And between the kitchen and the garden and the root cellar and the hen house,
01:05I have learned a few things from the women who came before me.
01:08My mother, my grandmother, the old women in our district,
01:12who never threw a thing away because they could not afford to and would not have wanted to.
01:18They did not have a cleaning aisle.
01:20They did not have a bottle for every job.
01:23They had a few plain things and a great deal of knowing.
01:27And the knowing was worth more than the things because the knowing is what you carry from one house to
01:33the next and from one mother to the next daughter.
01:36What I want to show you today is a roll of plain aluminum foil, the kind you can buy at
01:42any dollar store for about a dollar,
01:44and the handful of honest things it will do in your house, not the foolish things the internet tells you,
01:51the real ones.
01:52Now I will say plainly, before I show you a single good thing, because there is a video going around
01:58telling folks to drop balls of foil into the tank behind the toilet.
02:02That one does nothing, nothing at all.
02:05Some folks say it shines the water or keeps the bowl clean by some quiet magic, and it does not.
02:12Worse, those little balls can come apart and foul the working parts down in the tank, the flapper and the
02:18fill valve,
02:18and on many a toilet it will void the maker's warranty outright if a body comes to look at it.
02:24So you will have spent your afternoon making your toilet no cleaner and your warranty no good, and that is
02:31a poor trade.
02:32We will not be doing that.
02:33I would rather tell you the truth and have you trust me than sell you a trick that wastes your
02:38time.
02:39That is how my mother taught, standing at her own sink, and that is how I mean to teach you.
02:45Before I go on, let me say one thing, because I tell folks this early so it is said and
02:50done, and I am not interrupting myself later.
02:53If you want my complete method, the whole way we keep a household for so much less than the English
02:59pay,
03:00I have put it all down in one place.
03:03Save $6,000 a year with my complete Amish home saving method that I teach over at EliasYoder.com.
03:10The link is below this video.
03:13Now, the old ways only help if you actually use them.
03:17That is why we built our Amish home saving system and community,
03:21so you can work through the methods with us, ask questions,
03:24and stay consistent with other households doing the same work.
03:28The link is in the description.
03:30There.
03:31Now, let us get to the foil, because there is good to be had.
03:34Here is the thing you have to understand about that toilet stain,
03:38because it is the heart of the whole matter, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
03:43The stain you see is not dirt.
03:45You can scrub it like it is dirt all the morning long, and it will sit there and laugh at
03:50you.
03:51That ring is mineral, lime and iron carried in the water itself,
03:55settling out of the water and hardening onto the porcelain,
03:58the same exact way scale builds up inside a tea kettle you have boiled a thousand times.
04:04My grandmother understood this without anyone ever teaching her a word of the chemistry of it,
04:11because she lived with hard well water her whole life,
04:15and she watched it crust the inside of every pot and basin and kettle she owned.
04:21She used to say the water was not dirty.
04:24It was full, full of the ground it had come up through,
04:28full of the stone it had passed over.
04:30And you do not wash away a thing that is full.
04:35Washing is for what sits on top.
04:37This sits in.
04:39You have to loosen its grip, gently, a little at a time,
04:43and you have to keep ahead of it rather than waiting until it has dug in for years.
04:49This is where a little foil earns its keep,
04:52though I want to be honest with you about where it helps and where it does not,
04:56because that honesty is the whole point,
04:59and a body who oversells a thing loses your trust the first time it fails them.
05:05Aluminum foil will not dissolve a heavy old mineral ring
05:09that has been building up since before you moved into the house.
05:13Nothing dry will.
05:15If you have got a stain like that,
05:17that is a job for a long soak with something acid,
05:21and that is another video.
05:23But on a surface where the buildup is just starting,
05:26the lip of a fixture,
05:28the rim around a drain,
05:30the bright metal of a faucet base
05:32where that white crust first shows itself,
05:35a piece of foil, crumpled up and used gently,
05:38will lift fresh mineral deposit
05:40and light tarnish far better than any rag,
05:44and it will not scratch the way steel wool or a harsh pad will scratch.
05:49The reason is simple, and it is old.
05:52The foil is softer than the porcelain
05:54and softer than the chrome,
05:56but it is harder than the thin scale that is sitting on top of them.
06:00So it takes the scale and leaves the good surface underneath alone.
06:05You tear off a piece about the size of your hand.
06:08You crumple it loose so it has ridges and points to it.
06:12You dampen it under the tap,
06:14and you work it in small circles over the spot,
06:16no harder than you would rub a child's back.
06:19That is all there is to it,
06:21about a dollar for the whole roll,
06:23and the roll lasts a season and more.
06:26Now I will give you the silverware trick
06:29my mother used every single spring
06:31before the worship Sunday came round to our house,
06:34because this one is the prettiest thing foil does in all the world,
06:38and it costs you almost nothing.
06:41When our turn came to host the gathering,
06:43the good silver came down,
06:45and it had gone dark over the winter,
06:47that dull brown-gray film
06:49that creeps onto real silver
06:51and onto good plate when it has sat in a drawer.
06:55You do not need the polish in the jar
06:57that costs four dollars
06:58and smells like the dentist's office
07:00and turns your fingers black.
07:03You line the bottom of a basin with foil,
07:06the bright side turned up.
07:07You lay your silver right down on the foil
07:10so that every piece is touching it.
07:12That touching matters, so do not pile them.
07:15You pour over them water you have heated good and hot,
07:19and into that water you have stirred
07:21a heaping spoonful of plain washing soda,
07:24or baking soda if that is what your pantry holds.
07:28And then you stand there and you watch,
07:31because it happens while you are looking at it.
07:33The dark lifts up off the silver,
07:36and the foil takes it down onto itself.
07:39There is no scrubbing.
07:40There is no rubbing each fork by hand with a rag
07:44until your wrist is sore
07:45and your back aches from bending.
07:47The tarnish simply leaves the silver
07:50and goes over to the foil,
07:51because the foil wants it more.
07:54That is the plain, honest truth of what is happening,
07:57one metal drawing the darkness off the other
08:00through the hot soda water between them.
08:02A few minutes is all.
08:04A rinse under clean water,
08:06a soft cloth to dry each piece,
08:08and your silver is bright as the day it was given.
08:12My grandmother could do a whole drawer of it this way
08:15in the time it took her coffee
08:16to come up to a boil on the stove,
08:18and she would have it dried and laid back in its cloth
08:21before you had finished your first cup.
08:23A word of care there,
08:25because the care is part of the method
08:27and never apart from it.
08:29This works beautiful on solid silver
08:31and on silver plate,
08:33but it is hard on some things,
08:35and you must know which.
08:36It can dull certain soft finishes,
08:39the kind that are meant to look old,
08:41and it should never be used on anything
08:43with a coating or a lacquer over it,
08:45because it will lift that too.
08:47And it should never go on knives
08:49where the blade is set into a hollow handle with glue.
08:52You're good table knives,
08:53because the hot water will work
08:55that old glue loose over time,
08:57and you will have the blade coming away
08:59from the handle one supper down the road.
09:02So you use this on your spoons and your forks
09:04and your serving pieces, the solid ones,
09:07and you keep your good knives out of the bath entirely,
09:10and wipe those down by hand the slow way.
09:12Being honest about what a thing can do
09:15and what it cannot,
09:16that is how you keep trust at your own table,
09:19and how I mean to keep it with you.
09:21Now, the rattle.
09:22You hear it every time the lid of the toilet seat
09:24comes up or goes down,
09:26that little clatter of porcelain knocking porcelain,
09:29or the whole seat shifting loose on its hinges,
09:32no matter how many times you have gone at the bolts
09:34with a screwdriver.
09:36A small strip of foil folded over a few times
09:39into a firm little pad tucked up under the hinge
09:42where the seat meets the bowl
09:43will take up that loose play and quiet it right down.
09:46It is the very same idea as the folded scrap of cardstock
09:50my grandmother kept slipped under the short leg
09:53of her kitchen table
09:54so it would not rock when you set your elbows on it.
09:57You use as much or as little as the gap calls for
10:00until the wobble is gone.
10:02It costs you nothing at all,
10:03and it stops the noise,
10:05and you would be surprised what a quiet house feels like
10:08after you have been living in a rattling one
10:10and stopped noticing.
10:11The soap dish is the same kind of small mercy,
10:14and it is real money.
10:16A bar of soap left sitting down in its own wet
10:19melts away into slime
10:20and is gone in half the time it ought to give you,
10:23and so you are down at the store
10:25buying soap twice as often as a careful house needs to.
10:28Now folks will tell you to stretch a rubber band
10:31across the dish to hold the bar up,
10:33but then the soap rides up on top of that band
10:35and slides clean off into the basin
10:37the first time a child grabs at it.
10:39So do this instead.
10:41Take a square of foil and press it down into the dish
10:44to line the whole of it,
10:45then crimp the edges up around the sides
10:48so it makes you a little tray,
10:49and pleat a few ridges into the bottom of it
10:52with your fingers
10:52so that the bar of soap rides up high on those ridges
10:56and the water drains down into the channels between.
10:59The soap sits up out of the wet.
11:01It dries hard between washings instead of going soft,
11:04and a bar that used to last you a week and a half
11:07will give you near three weeks of use.
11:09That is real money over the run of a year
11:12on a thing most folks have never once stopped to think about,
11:15and that is exactly the sort of small leak
11:18a household springs without ever noticing.
11:20And here I will fold in a few more quick ones
11:23because foil is generous that way
11:25and there is no sense letting good knowing go to waste.
11:29If you travel to see family
11:30and your good chain necklaces always come out of the bag
11:33in one cruel knot you have to sit and pick at,
11:36lay each chain out straight and flat on a strip of foil
11:40and fold the foil over to hold it there,
11:42and it cannot tangle because it cannot move.
11:45If you have a little jar or a bottle in your wash bag
11:48that always wants to leak,
11:50a cap of salve, a bit of tooth powder,
11:53a small thing of oil,
11:54set a square of foil over the mouth of it
11:57before you screw the lid down on top,
11:58and it will seal and will not weep out all over your good clothes.
12:02And on a faucet base or a shower head
12:05where the hard water crust keeps coming back
12:07no matter how you clean it,
12:09once you have got it clean,
12:10you can wrap that spot up in foil
12:12to slow the new build up from settling in,
12:15much the way you would keep a cut apple from going brown
12:18by keeping the air off the face of it.
12:20None of these are miracles
12:21and I will not call them miracles.
12:23They are small, true savings,
12:25set one after another after another.
12:28And that, not any one clever trick,
12:31is how a household is actually kept through a lifetime.
12:35Now I want to tell you who profits
12:37from you not knowing all this
12:38because I think you ought to see it laid out plain.
12:41Walk yourself down the cleaning aisle at any English store
12:45and stand there and count the bottles.
12:47There is a bottle for the toilet ring
12:49and a bottle for the faucet
12:51and a bottle for the silver
12:52and a bottle for the tile
12:54and a bottle for the glass
12:55and a bottle for the wood
12:57and if you turn them round
12:58and read the small print on the backs of them,
13:01you will find they are mostly the same few cheap things
13:04dressed up in different colors
13:06with different smells
13:07and different prices
13:08and different promises.
13:10The company that fills those bottles
13:12and the store that stocks them
13:14do very well indeed
13:15when you have come to believe
13:17that you need twelve different products
13:18for twelve different jobs
13:20that one dollar roll of foil
13:22and one box of soda
13:23and a little patience
13:25would handle between them.
13:26And I do not say this to you
13:28as though there is a room somewhere
13:30with a long table
13:31where wicked men sit and plot
13:33how to keep you ignorant.
13:34It is not that.
13:36It is worse than that in a way.
13:38Because it is worse than a conspiracy.
13:40It is a system that nobody has to coordinate.
13:43Nobody ever sat down and planned for you
13:45to forget what your great grandmother knew with her hands.
13:48It just happened a little at a time
13:51over a hundred years
13:52as the bottles got cheaper to make
13:54and easier to sell
13:55and the knowing got easier and easier to let slip.
13:59The forgetting is the product they are selling
14:02whether they would put it that way or not.
14:04And the only way back from it is the slow way.
14:07One household at a time.
14:09One woman remembering on purpose
14:11and teaching the next.
14:13The old ways only help
14:14if you actually use them.
14:16That is why we built our Amish home saving system
14:19and community.
14:20So you can work through the methods with us,
14:22ask questions,
14:23and stay consistent with other households
14:26doing the same work.
14:27The link is in the description.
14:29It is one thing to sit and watch a woman on a screen
14:32lift the tarnish off a spoon
14:34and think to yourself,
14:35well, isn't that something?
14:37It is another thing entirely
14:38to stand at your own basin
14:40and do it with your own hands.
14:42And then go and do the next thing
14:44and the next,
14:45week after week
14:47until your house is run a whole different way
14:49than it was a year ago
14:50and you have got the savings ledger to show for it.
14:54That is what the community is for.
14:55To keep you at it
14:57after the watching wears off
14:58and the ordinary days come back.
15:00So here is what I would ask of you.
15:02And it is the same thing I ask every time
15:05because I am honestly curious about the houses you all keep.
15:08Go and look at your own water.
15:11Look hard at the ring in the bowl,
15:13the crust on the faucet,
15:14the scale down in your kettle,
15:16and then come tell me down in the comments
15:18two things,
15:19the county you live in
15:20and how old your house is.
15:22Hard water runs different from one place to the next,
15:25harder in some counties than others,
15:27and the old houses with the old pipes
15:30carry it different than the new ones do.
15:32I read what you all write down there,
15:34every bit of it,
15:35and it teaches me things I would not learn any other way.
15:38The midwife in our district,
15:40who had been into more houses than anyone,
15:42used to say you learn more sitting quiet
15:44and listening at other women's tables
15:46than you ever learn talking at your own.
15:48And I have found that to be true my whole life long.
15:52So take the dollar roll.
15:53Use it for the honest things
15:55and skip the foolish ones.
15:56And now you know which is which.
15:58Keep your silver bright and your soap whole
16:01and your faucets clean
16:02and your toilet lid quiet
16:03and do it for a dollar.
16:05And know when you do
16:07that none of it is clever.
16:08Not really.
16:09It is only remembered.
16:11The women who kept these houses before us
16:13were not one bit smarter than you and I are.
16:16They simply could not afford to forget.
16:18And so they did not.
16:20And everything they would not let go of
16:23is sitting right there on a one dollar roll
16:25in your kitchen drawer waiting all this while
16:29for you to reach in and pick it back up.
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