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There is a brown ring in your toilet bowl that comes back no matter how hard you scrub — and the reason is simple: you are scrubbing dirt that is not dirt at all. In this one I show you what that ring is really made of, why the dishwasher-tablet trick everyone is sharing only half works, and the way my mother taught me to get a bowl clean and keep it clean for pennies. Three plain things off one shelf cleaned our whole farmhouse. They will clean yours too.
I walk you through the toilet ring step by step, then carry the same knowledge into your washing machine, your bathtub, your stovetop and oven glass, and even the scuff marks on your walls. Once you know what the dirt is made of, you stop needing a different bottle for every job.
The old methods my family uses run far deeper than any one video can hold. I put the whole of it together in a book over at eliasyoder.com if you want the long version.
Try the toilet ring this week and come tell me in the comments how old your house is and what county you are writing from. The older the house and the harder the water, the more these old ways earn the
There is a brown ring in your toilet bowl that comes back no matter how hard you scrub — and the reason is simple: you are scrubbing dirt that is not dirt at all. In this one I show you what that ring is really made of, why the dishwasher-tablet trick everyone is sharing only half works, and the way my mother taught me to get a bowl clean and keep it clean for pennies. Three plain things off one shelf cleaned our whole farmhouse. They will clean yours too.
I walk you through the toilet ring step by step, then carry the same knowledge into your washing machine, your bathtub, your stovetop and oven glass, and even the scuff marks on your walls. Once you know what the dirt is made of, you stop needing a different bottle for every job.
The old methods my family uses run far deeper than any one video can hold. I put the whole of it together in a book over at eliasyoder.com if you want the long version.
Try the toilet ring this week and come tell me in the comments how old your house is and what county you are writing from. The older the house and the harder the water, the more these old ways earn the
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a brown ring sitting in your toilet bowl right now.
00:03You scrub it on a Saturday and by Wednesday it has crept back, that same dull stain riding
00:09the water line like it never left.
00:11You put more bleach to it, you buy the blue stuff that hangs in the tank.
00:15You scrub until your arm aches and still that ring comes back, week after week, like the
00:22porcelain itself has gone bad.
00:24And somewhere along the way, somebody told you the answer was to drop one of those little
00:30dishwasher tablets into the bowl, let it fizz and watch the stain melt away.
00:35Maybe you have seen the videos, maybe you have a box of them under your sink right now.
00:40I am going to show you something better than that tablet.
00:45Because here is the truth nobody selling you those tablets wants to say out loud.
00:49That little packet is not magic.
00:51It is three or four plain things pressed together and wrapped in a coating.
00:57And you already have most of those things in your pantry, for a fraction of what that
01:02box costs.
01:03By the time we are done today, you will know exactly what is doing the cleaning.
01:08You will be able to make it yourself for pennies and you will never again pay good money for
01:14a stain that comes right back in three days.
01:17My name is Esther Yoder.
01:19My family came over from the Palatinate in Germany in 1838 and settled here in Lancaster
01:25County, where I keep house on 110 acres with my husband.
01:29I am raising my children in this house and there is rarely a quiet room in it.
01:34And in all the years I have kept house, through all that mud and milk and canning and washing,
01:40I have never once bought a tablet to clean a toilet.
01:44I did not have to.
01:46My mother did not have to.
01:48Her mother before her crossed an ocean with the knowledge already in her hands.
01:54Quick word before we go further.
01:56The old methods my family uses, the kind I am sharing today, and many more like it, it
02:03is too much of it for any single video.
02:05I put the whole of it together in a book at EliasYoder.com.
02:10The book is the long version.
02:12I will not bring it up again in this video.
02:15Stay with me.
02:16So let me tell you what is really happening when that tablet fizzes in the bowl, and then
02:22let me hand you the thing my grandmother handed me.
02:25The stain you are fighting is not dirt.
02:28That is the first thing you have to understand, because as long as you think it is dirt, you
02:33will keep scrubbing it like dirt, and you will keep losing.
02:37That brown or pink or rusty ring at your water line is mostly mineral.
02:42It is the hardness in your water, the iron and the lime, settling out and bonding to the
02:48porcelain wherever the water sits still.
02:50The pink tinge, if you have it, is a little bacteria that loves to grow on top of that
02:56mineral.
02:57But the ring itself, the part that will not scrub off, is mineral.
03:01And because it is mineral, scrubbing harder does almost nothing.
03:06You are trying to sand off something that needs to be dissolved, not scraped.
03:11The tablet works a little because it is alkaline and has a touch of bleach in it for the color.
03:16But it is fighting the wrong battle, the same battle you have been losing for months.
03:21Now here is where my mother comes in.
03:24I can still see her at the sink in the old summer kitchen, the one we used in the hot
03:29months so the cook stove would not bake the whole house.
03:32She had a way of cleaning that I did not understand until I was grown and keeping my own house.
03:37She kept three things on a shelf and from those three things she cleaned the entire house.
03:43Washing soda in a paper sack, a jug of plain white vinegar and a box of borax.
03:49That was it.
03:51No cabinet full of bottles, each one promising to clean one single thing.
03:56Three plain ingredients and she knew exactly what each one was for and why.
04:01She used to say a thing I have never forgotten.
04:04She said, Esther, you do not need a different bottle for every job.
04:08You need to know what the dirt is made of.
04:10And that is the whole secret.
04:12That is everything I am going to teach you today.
04:15The cleaning product company wants you to believe your bathroom needs 11 different sprays.
04:20One for every surface.
04:22My mother cleaned a farmhouse full of children with three things off a shelf.
04:27And her house was cleaner than most I walk into now.
04:31So let me show you what to actually do.
04:34Because I do not want you leaving here with a lesson and no method in your hands.
04:39For that toilet ring, the mineral stain at the water line, here is the way it is done.
04:45You will need washing soda, that is sodium carbonate.
04:48And you can find it in the laundry aisle for about $4 a box.
04:52And that box will last you the better part of a year.
04:56You will also want plain white vinegar, the cheap kind, a couple dollars a gallon.
05:01Do not buy anything fancy, the plainer the better.
05:05Fancy does not clean any better than plain, it only costs more.
05:09First, you bring the water down.
05:11The mineral sits at the water line because that is exactly where the water rests against the porcelain.
05:17So the first thing you do is get the water out of the way and expose the stain.
05:22Turn off the little valve behind the toilet, the one at the wall, and flush once.
05:27The bowl will empty most of the way and not refill.
05:30Now your stain is sitting there in the open air where you can finally get at it instead of working
05:35through an inch of water.
05:37Pour about a cup of white vinegar right over the ring, all the way around the bowl.
05:41The vinegar is an acid, a mild and safe one, nothing that will hurt you or your pipes.
05:48And the mineral stain is alkaline, and acid dissolves that mineral the way warm water dissolves a spoonful of salt.
05:55Then you let it sit.
05:57This is the part most people will not do, and it is the part that matters most.
06:02They want the stain gone in one minute, so they pour and they scrub and they give up.
06:06Give it a good while instead, half an hour at the very least.
06:11If the ring is years old and stubborn, take a length of paper towel or a rag, soak it in
06:16vinegar,
06:17and lay it right against the stain so it stays wet and does not just run down to the bottom.
06:22Leave it an hour. Leave it overnight if you have to.
06:26The longer the acid sits against the mineral, the more of it dissolves and the less you have to do
06:31with your arm.
06:32Then you take your washing soda. Sprinkle a couple good spoonfuls right onto the wet ring.
06:37You will see a little fizz where the soda meets the vinegar.
06:40That is just the two of them reacting with each other, and it works a bit of air and action
06:45down into the loosened stain.
06:47Now take your brush and scrub, and here is where you will feel the difference right away in your hand.
06:53The stain that fought you for months will give way and slide right off the porcelain,
06:57because you finally stopped scraping at it and started dissolving it instead.
07:02Turn the water valve back on, flush it through once or twice, and the bowl runs clean and bright.
07:08And here is the thing I want you to sit with for a moment.
07:11That same washing soda is most of what is inside the dishwasher tablet you are about to drop in your
07:17toilet.
07:17The tablet is washing soda and a little bleach and a surfactant pressed together and coated so it looks like
07:23something special.
07:24You just bought the working part of it for a quarter of the price, and you learned how to aim
07:29it.
07:30You are not behind these clever tricks now. You are ahead of them.
07:34Now let me tell you, while I have you here, that this very same knowledge runs straight through the whole
07:39house,
07:40because the dirt is almost always made of the same few things.
07:44Grease, mineral, soap scum, which is grease and mineral married together.
07:49Once you know what you are looking at, every room in your house opens up to you,
07:53and you stop needing a special bottle for each one.
07:57Take your washing machine. People write to tell me their machine has gone sour,
08:01a mildew smell that comes up at them every time they lift the lid,
08:05and they want to know which tablet or which pod to run through it to fix it.
08:09You do not need a tablet. The smell is mildew and old soap scum living in the parts of the
08:15machine you cannot see.
08:16Down in the gasket, along the drum, in the little pockets where water stands still after a wash.
08:24Run the machine empty on the very hottest setting it has, and pour two cups of plain white vinegar straight
08:32into the drum,
08:33and let it run a full cycle. The hot water and the acid together lift the old scum,
08:39and the heat handles the mildew. If the smell is deep and old, do it a second time,
08:46this time with a half cup of washing soda instead of the vinegar.
08:51Then, and this is the part the machine makers will never put on the box, leave the lid open between
08:58washes.
09:00Mildew needs three things to live, damp, dark, and still air. Leave that lid shut, and you give it all
09:08three. Leave it open, and you take them all away.
09:13My grandmother dried every wet thing in the sun and the open wind for exactly this reason,
09:19long before anyone could put a name to why it worked. The sun was her disinfectant, and it never once
09:26sent her a bill.
09:28Now the bathtub, that grimy ring around a tub where the soap, the body oil, and the hard water have
09:36all baked together into a band you cannot wipe off.
09:40That grime is greasy and mineral both at once, so you come at it with both your tools.
09:47Sprinkle washing soda right around the dry ring first.
09:51Then take a rag wet with warm water and a good splash of vinegar and work it into the soda
09:58in slow circles.
10:00It turns to a paste right there under your hand, gently gritty, just enough grit to lift the grime,
10:08and not so much that it will scratch the surface of the tub.
10:12My mother kept an old wool sock pulled over her hand for exactly this job.
10:18It held the paste against her palm, and it scrubbed at the same time.
10:23And when she was finished, she dropped it straight in the wash.
10:27Wipe the whole thing down with a clean, wet cloth after, and the tub comes up bright as new.
10:35For the stove top and the oven door, it is the very same idea again, because cooked on grease is
10:42nothing more than grease that has hardened with heat.
10:45Make a paste of washing soda and a little water, thicker this time like a frosting, and spread it right
10:53over the baked on spots.
10:54Let it sit a good twenty minutes so it has time to soften what is stuck fast.
11:01Then a wet cloth takes it off with hardly any effort from you at all.
11:06For the glass on the front of the oven door, that same paste and a little patience will clear the
11:13brown haze that no spray ever quite seems to reach.
11:17I have never bought a can of oven cleaner in my life, and I will tell you plainly, the fumes
11:25that come off the store-bought kind are not something I would ever want near the food my family eats.
11:31There is no need for it.
11:34And those scuff marks on the walls, the black streak where a child dragged a chair, the scrape where a
11:41boot caught the baseboard,
11:43a damp rag with the smallest pinch of washing soda on it, will lift those right off the paint, without
11:50taking the paint along with them.
11:53If your wall is a flat or a matte finish, test a hidden corner first, behind a door or low
12:01by the floor, just to be safe.
12:03But on most painted walls, it works clean and quick, and it costs you nothing you do not already own.
12:12Now I want to ask you a hard question, the one that sits underneath all of this.
12:18Who profits from you not knowing any of it?
12:22I want to be careful here, because I am not going to stand in my kitchen and tell you there
12:29is a room full of people somewhere plotting against your pantry.
12:33It is not that.
12:34It is worse than that, in a way, because nobody has to coordinate it at all.
12:40A cleaning product company makes a great deal more money selling you 11 bottles than it ever could selling you
12:49one paper sack of washing soda.
12:51So it makes the 11 bottles.
12:54It names each one for a single job.
12:57One just for glass.
12:59One just for tubs.
13:01One just for tile.
13:03One just for the toilet.
13:05And it spends an enormous amount of money teaching you, year after year, to believe that you truly need every
13:13one of them.
13:14Nobody had to sit down at a table and conspire to fool you.
13:18Every single company simply found, on its own, that the more bottles it could convince you to carry home, the
13:25more money it made.
13:26And so the simple knowledge my mother lived by, that you only ever need to know what the dirt is
13:32made of, just quietly slipped out of the world.
13:35Not because anyone hid it from you on purpose, because there was no money in teaching it, and so it
13:42stopped being taught.
13:44That is the system, and I want you to see it clearly.
13:48It is not a plot you can point a finger at.
13:51It is just what happens to good knowledge when that knowledge does not turn anybody a profit.
13:57It falls silent, and a generation later, nobody remembers it was ever there.
14:02And the only thing that has ever brought it back, the only thing that ever will, is one woman sitting
14:09down and teaching it to another, plain and free, the same way it has always traveled.
14:16So here is what I would ask of you before you go.
14:19Try the toilet ring this week, your own toilet, the one that has shamed you for months.
14:26Turn the water off at the wall, give it the vinegar, and give it the time.
14:30That is the part that matters.
14:33Then the soda, then the brush.
14:35And then come back here to me, and tell me, down in the comments, how old your house is, and
14:41what county you are writing from.
14:43Because the older the house, and the harder the water running through it, the more these old ways earn their
14:50keep.
14:50And I do dearly love to see where you all are writing in from.
14:54Tell me honestly whether that ring came creeping back in three days, the way it always used to, or whether,
15:01this time, it stayed gone.
15:03And let me tell you what I am bringing you next time, because it follows right on the heels of
15:08this one.
15:09Next, we are going into the laundry room proper, and I am going to show you the way my grandmother
15:15got her whites bright, and her clothes soft, with no fabric softener, and no bleach bottle anywhere in sight.
15:22Just two plain things off that same shelf, and the sun overhead.
15:27If you have ever stood there wondering why the old linens lasted 40 years, and the new ones go gray
15:34and thin in two, that is the video you will want to be here for.
15:38I have kept this whole house clean out of a paper sack of washing soda and a jug of plain
15:44vinegar, and I have never once needed a tablet to do it.
15:48The women who came before me knew a thing we have very nearly forgotten, that the answer was almost never
15:55a new product on a shelf.
15:57The answer was understanding what was sitting right there in front of you.
16:01Hold on to that one idea, and there is hardly a mess in your home you cannot meet and beat,
16:07for pennies, with your own two hands, the very same way your great-grandmother did before you.
16:13Hold on to that Zum
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