Grandma Pearl MaeSecrets of the Home
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Pearl Mae ——— Kept house in the South since she was eleven

Nineteen bottles under your sink. My mother kept six.

The methods I learned standing on a footstool at my mother's elbow — twenty-five chapters, forty-one stains, and the six things that replace nearly everything you are buying now. Written down at last, and told straight: where a method works, why it works, and where it will not do what folks claim.

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25Chapters
41Stains
6Jars
132Pages
Pearl Mae in her kitchen

“A house is not cleaned. It is kept.”

Ruby Mae, to her daughter

I · The Manual

Everything my mother kept under one sink, and everything I have learned since

I counted the bottles under my daughter-in-law's sink last spring. Nineteen. A spray for glass, a spray for granite, a spray for stainless, a spray for wood, and one whose label said — and I am not making this up — for surfaces. Most of them the same three or four things at different strengths, in different colors, at four dollars a bottle.

“My mother's cabinet had six things in it and a stack of cut-up bedsheets. That was the whole arsenal for a five-bedroom house with four children, a dog, and a husband who came home with the mill on him.”

This book is the whole of it. Not a book about how you ought to feel about your house — I have known women with spotless kitchens and terrible troubles. A working book. Every method in here is one I have done with my own two hands, most of them a few hundred times, and where a method has a real cost or a real limit, I say so on the page.

How every chapter is built

What the trouble is and how it got there — because a method you understand is a method you will remember.

What you need, with what it costs. Things you can buy at any grocery store in the country.

The work itself, written the way I would walk you through it standing beside you.

What it will not do, what it can damage, and when to stop and call somebody.

The rhythm of the thing — how often it wants doing, so it never builds back up on you.

“Where a method will not do what people claim, I say so. Where it can hurt you or hurt the house, I say so in bold, and I do not apologize for repeating myself.”

II · The Difference

The cabinet you have now, and the cabinet you will have

Nothing in this book asks you to buy a system, a subscription, or a machine. It asks you to keep six things and stop buying almost everything else.

The nineteen-bottle cabinet

  • A different spray for every surface, most of them the same thing in a different color
  • Four dollars a bottle, several times a year, forever
  • Two products used one straight after the other because the first seemed slow — the most dangerous habit in an ordinary kitchen
  • The drain that smells again by Wednesday, because nobody ever showed you where the smell actually lives
  • A cleaning Saturday that leaves the house splendid and you too tired to enjoy it — and by Wednesday it has crept back
  • Tips off the internet that quietly ruin a wood floor, a stone counter or a good tablecloth

The six-jar cabinet

  • Vinegar, soda, salt, lemon, peroxide, borax — and a stack of cut-up bedsheets for cloths
  • A few dollars a season, from the grocery store you already go to
  • One cleaner at a time, rinse between, open a window — the shortest chapter in the book and the one I would ask you to read first
  • The four inches of pipe where the smell lives, drawn open on the page so you can see it
  • Twenty minutes a day on a wheel, so the house never gets far enough away from you to need the Saturday
  • Every method with its limits printed beside it — including the truth about vinegar and wood floors
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III · What's Inside

Twenty-five chapters, grouped by room, so you can go straight to whichever job is bothering you most

Every chapter is short on purpose. You should be able to read one with your coffee and start on it before dinner.

Front Matter

  1. 01Three Things Before Noon

The Jars

  1. 02The Six Things My Mother Kept Under the Sink
  2. 03Vinegar, and the Whole Truth About It
  3. 04Baking Soda, and What It Actually Does
  4. 05Salt, Lemon, and the Rest of the Shelf
  5. 06What Never Goes in the Same Bucket

The Kitchen

  1. 07The Best Way to Clean a Smelly Kitchen Drain
  2. 08The Best Way to Clean Your Refrigerator
  3. 09The Oven, Without the Fumes
  4. 10Cast Iron, Copper, and the Good Silver
  5. 11The Grease Above the Stove

The Bathroom

  1. 12The Best Way to Clean Grimy Tile and Grout
  2. 13Hard Water, Rust Rings, and the Southern Well
  3. 14Mildew: The Southern Problem

Glass and Floor

  1. 15The Best Way to Clean Your Windows
  2. 16Wood Floors, and the Vinegar Myth
  3. 17Rugs, Carpet, and the Red Clay

The Beds and the Wash

  1. 18The Best Way to Clean Your Mattress
  2. 19The Wash: Whites, Yellowing, and the Line
  3. 20Ironing, Starch, and Putting Linen Away

The Air

  1. 21Why a House Smells, and What to Do About It
  2. 22The Pot on the Back Burner

The Stains & The Keeping

  1. 23The Stain Table: Forty-One Troubles
  2. 24The Rhythm of a Kept House
  3. 25The Four Seasons of a Southern House

Appendices

  1. AThe Recipe Cards
  2. BThe Cleaning Calendar

And the plates — diagrams drawn for this edition. A photograph of a sink tells you what a sink looks like, which you already know. A drawing can cut the pipe open and show you the four inches where the smell actually lives.

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IV · Reader Results

From folks who did the three things before noon

★★★★★

“I did the drain, the bin and one window on a Saturday morning the way she says, and my husband came in that evening and asked what I had cooked. Nothing. That was the kitchen not smelling anymore.”

Darlene H. · Alabama
★★★★★

“The stain table alone was worth it. Forty-one of them, each one telling you cold or hot and what it will not fix. I printed it and taped it inside the laundry cabinet.”

Marisol R. · Texas
★★★★★

“I had been mopping my wood floors wrong for eleven years. Chapter sixteen is two pages and it cost me nothing but my pride.”

Janet W. · North Carolina
Pearl Mae

V · About

I am Pearl Mae.

I have kept house in the South since I was eleven years old, standing on a footstool at my mother's elbow while she showed me how to wring a cloth so it would not drip. Her name was Ruby Mae. She learned it from her own mother, who kept a house with a well, a wood stove and no screen on the back door, and who buried two children before she was thirty.

Those women did not have a cabinet full of bottles. They had vinegar, soda, salt, lemon, a bar of soap and a great deal of sense.

Some of what is in this book has been on my channel. Most of it goes further than a video can go, because a video runs eleven minutes and a house takes a lifetime. A few chapters have never been anywhere but in my own kitchen.

I wrote it down for Ruby Mae, who taught me that a house is not cleaned once. It is kept.

Pearl MaeSomewhere in the South · First Edition, MMXXVI

VI · The Order

Grandma Pearl Mae's Secrets of the Home

What my mother kept, and her mother before her. A household manual in twenty-five chapters — the complete illustrated first edition, on your screen the minute you order.

Grandma Pearl Mae's Secrets of the Home — First Edition

The Complete First Edition

Illustrated · 132 pages · Instant PDF

  • All 25 chapters, grouped by room — the jars, the kitchen, the bathroom, glass and floor, the beds and the wash, the air, the keeping
  • The Stain Table: forty-one troubles, each with its treatment, its temperature and its limits
  • The plates — diagrams drawn for this edition, including the pipe cut open where the smell lives
  • Appendix A — The Recipe Cards: every mix in the book on one page, to copy onto a card for the cabinet door
  • Appendix B — The Cleaning Calendar: the day, the week and the Saturday list, on a wheel
  • Chapter 6, What Never Goes in the Same Bucket — the safety chapter, the shortest and the most important in the book
  • Reads on a phone, a tablet or a computer — and prints clean for a binder on the counter
$47$27
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VII · Questions

Questions folks ask me

Do these old methods really work, or is this nostalgia?

They work where they work, and I tell you where they do not. Vinegar is five percent acetic acid — that is why it takes hard water off a shower head, and it is also why it has no business on a wood floor or a stone counter, whatever the internet says. Baking soda is a mild alkali and a soft grit. Peroxide from the brown bottle is three percent. Every method in this book comes with the reason it works and a plain list of what it will not do. This is not a book of charming sayings; it is a working book with its limits printed on the page.

Your videos are free. Why buy the book?

A video runs eleven minutes. A house takes a lifetime. On the channel I can show you one job. In the book the twenty-five chapters lean on each other — chapter two lays out the six things under the sink and near enough every chapter after it assumes you have them; chapter six is the safety chapter and the rest of the book takes it as read. The stain table, the recipe cards and the cleaning calendar have never been on the channel at all, and a few chapters have never been anywhere but my own kitchen.

Why only $27?

Because it would be a strange thing to charge you a hundred dollars for a manual whose first lesson is that you can stop buying nineteen bottles at four dollars apiece. $27 is the launch price against the $47 the first edition is set at; it pays for the years of writing and the drawings, and it is less than one grocery run of the sprays it replaces.

What format is it, and how does it reach me?

A PDF — the complete illustrated first edition, 132 pages. The moment your order goes through, the download is on your screen and in your email. It opens on a phone, a tablet, a laptop or a library computer, and it prints clean if you would rather keep it in a binder on the kitchen counter, which is where mine lives. Instant download, yours forever, nothing to install and nothing to renew.

Is any of it dangerous?

Every method in this book is safe on its own. Every one of them becomes unsafe the moment you combine it with something else, which is why chapter six exists and why it is the one I would ask you to read first if you only read one. Bleach goes with water and nothing else, ever. One cleaner at a time, rinse between, open a window. Test on a hidden seam or a corner before you start. And where a job wants a licensed plumber or an electrician, the book says so, and you should believe it.

I am not in the South. Will it still help me?

Most of it, yes — a smelly drain is a smelly drain in Vermont. Some chapters are ours in particular: mildew in a humid August, rust rings from well water, red clay ground into a hall runner. Where a method depends on your climate, your water or your floors, I say so, and I give you the way to tell what you have before you begin.

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Pearl Mae

Wait — one thing

Less than one grocery run of sprays.

Nineteen bottles at four dollars apiece is the better part of eighty dollars a cabinet — and you buy them again. The whole manual — twenty-five chapters, forty-one stains, the recipe cards and the calendar — is $27 once, and yours forever.

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