Wiping down the stove and countertops was taught to me as part of the dishwashing task.

Perhaps someone already made this comment, but it’s a shame that quality products that last a long time are harder to come by these days. They are made to wear out faster. My older relatives would have appliances for 40-50+ years…use the same furniture for decades (maybe reupholstering)…but today, they flat out tell you at the appliance stores that if you get 7-10 years out of something, that’s pretty good.
For a world obsessed with “being green” it seems that creating trash more regularly is quite counter-productive!

Thank you for using "fewer" and "less" correctly! "Fewer products, less decision fatigue." My inner grammarian thanks you!

I did a lot of the housework for my mom when I was growing up, due to her health issues. There was just so much less stuff to manage, a much smaller house, and we had a foyer where we could leave our shoes and coats. I look around my 5 bed, 3.5 bath home and am not surprised that I'm having a difficult time managing it. If our laundry basket was full, we washed a load. No routine, or day of the week, just a visual reminder that it's laundry day and if the hamper was missing, it meant you forgot to change over the loads. We vacuumed, and cleaned bathrooms on Fridays because it was the day before the weekend, and the kitchen was always in use. I'm not sure where everything got so complicated along the way but I know the amount of junk we can buy online and in store adds to the mental load in a big way.

It’s funny you said Monday was laundry day.  My mom lived in a senior living apartment building and you should have seen the laundry area on Mondays!  Those old ladies were freaking gangstas around those machines

Clearing the sink during the day and not letting dishes pile up has been so helpful.

To pick a nit: part of the reason our grandmothers and some of our mothers were able to stay on top of the housework is because they didn't work full-time, and Parenthood culture was totally different.

My mother and her siblings didn't have anything like club sports, or learning therapies that so many parents have today. When my parents were growing up, there was baseball and children's activities that were very community-based and not so expensive and time consuming.

And for the last 30 years, my mother has been able to stay on top of her housework because she hires someone to do it, LOL.

But really, thank you so much for these systems. I love systems and I love learning about them!

Edited to add: I live in North Texas. There's absolutely nothing fresh or deodorizing about opening the windows for about 8 months of the year, LOL!

I have an empty drawer in my kitchen, from when I last decluttered, and I just leave it empty because it’s a soothing feeling to open an empty drawer.

Back then our mothers, well most mothers,  did not work outside the home.   These days moms work and are then expected to clean house too.   As a kid I didn’t get to play outside with other kids, there were always household chores to do.   Times have  changed!!

Some of my local libraries have a "library of things" where you can check out a weird tool or baking pan that youre going to use one time, which is GREAT.

So many women with children got to stay home so all day they kept busy.  Cooking, cleaning, tending to kids, shopping, friends, community events, etc.  They also had less clutter.  Kids had chores.  They were not allowed to leave clothes, toys, books all over the house.  Once kids were in school they came home to chores, homework, friends.  No one was walking around or sitting around with an electronic device in their hands and faces!  My mom was a stay at home mom, 6 kids, on a farm.  We did not have a lot of down time.  We figured out that laundry could be folded and put on hangers while the soap operas were on.  We did a lot of food preservation. We were always busy.  But, we didn't have electronic devices keeping us awake at night, first thing that had to be checked in the morning. No one checking what had been liked or commented on while we were sleeping.  Basic cleaning was done daily.  Beds made, floors swept. Mopped is something got spilled. Dishes washed after every meal.  Dried and put away.  Very seldom did dishes sit out to air dry.  We kept toys and other items in our bedrooms.  Put away when not being played with.  For you ladies who work outside the home and have children, you have to get everyone in on the cleaning.  Around two years old, kids can start being taught to take toys to their rooms, put away.  Putting away their clothes.  Helping gather up trash.  Etc.  It takes everyone pitching in.  Cleaning up behind themselves.

Ammonia is very harsh and unnecessary if you stay on top of cleaning and remove debris before it gets a chance to build up. My mom has COPD from using it to clean the floors but perhaps she used more than a splash in the bucket of water. I distinctly remember the harsh fumes as a kid and being upset on floor cleaning day if I couldn't go outside to avoid them. There was a study spanning decades done that showed, "For women, cleaning at home just once a week or working as a professional cleaner causes a decline in lung function equal to smoking 10 to 20 cigarettes a day."

"Apparently I enjoy creating scavenger hunts for my future self!" 😂😂😂 Me too!

❤I actually stopped to write these down for my “Mom knows best” cookbook.  I put notes into it hand written so when my daughters find it they’ll think I was an old fashioned genius. 😂 My mom cleaned this way.  We rarely had jars of a chemical to spray around the house.  Boil cinnamon and apples in winter months for a home scent.

Lots of people in those days lived in apartments and small houses. They also had a lot less STUFF!
We're trading our freedom for real estate and things.
I always try to "take care" of my future self. I live with her in mind. It definitely works. I'm always doing her "favors." Lol

My grandmother used to say “Don’t let your possessions possess you”. I never really understood what she meant until I got older and started possessing more things/clutter. Slowly my home started feeling less like a home and more like a storage unit.

👏“Your home should be medicine for your mind.”👏I love this idea! Not only does it apply to cleaning your home but it is a great thing to keep in mind while declutterring.

I wish you would literally take the transcript of this video, turn it into a little book, and publish it everywhere.

When I was a child and teen during the 1950s and 60s my mom used Joy liquid and comet was what my mom used for cleaning.She was a real clean person.She didnt have a vaccum cleaner.She cleaned with a broom mop and a dust mom to clean the house.She washed cloths with a wringer washing machine and hung the cloths outside.

I was born in 1955 in the UK. My mum (born 1920) worked so hard because few British home had electrical appliances. Mum didn't get a washing machine until the 60s, and even then it was a "twin tub" which you had to stand over - you couldn't go away and leave it. No way of drying clothes except to line dry - even in a British winter. I know mum made us wear much of our clothes for a whole week to minimise a huge wash day load. We had no refrigerator or freezer - just a "larder". So shopping had to be done everyday. And no car. Mum walked to the local shops and back again with full bags. She had no vacuum cleaner, but then she didn't have fitted carpets that needed vacuuming. I could go on, but I just want to enforce the point that laundry and housework took so much longer and was very labour intensive. I don't think our home was that clean because mum didn't have the time - but she WAS very tidy, and you can get away with a lot when you're tidy. I DO remember the cleaning products she used: Flash powder for floors, Ajax scouring powder for our old Belfast sink and down the toilet, Windolene pink cream for the windows, solid furniture polish in a tin, diluted pine disinfectant for surfaces, etc. I don't remember mum making any cleaning products of her own because even in the 50s there were products out there. The one thing from your list that mum used was solid bar soap. In the UK it was a big green block made by Fairy, and it was rubbed on stains prior to washing.