209 Fun Facts About Cleaning

Evidence of soap-like materials being made goes back to around 2800 BC in which ancient civilisation?

Babylon was making soap-like materials by about 2800 BC, and the recipe that survives from the region is simple: fats or oils boiled with wood ashes.

What is the name of the chemical reaction that turns fats and an alkali such as lye into soap?

Saponification turns fat and alkali into soap and glycerol, and it fights fires too: wet-chemical kitchen extinguishers work by converting burning cooking oil into a non-combustible soapy foam.

Ivory soap's famous slogan, introduced in 1891, was what?

'It Floats!' was Ivory's 1891 slogan, trading on bars whipped with air so they bobbed in the bath; its other tagline claimed 99 and 44/100 percent pure.

Sunlight, launched by Lever Brothers in 1884, is described as the world's first what?

Sunlight was the world's first packaged, branded laundry soap, sold as cut, wrapped bars; its success gave a name to Port Sunlight, the model village Lever Brothers began building for its factory workers in 1888.

Persil, launched by Henkel in 1907, took its name from silicate and which bleaching agent?

Persil fuses PERborate and SILicate: sodium perborate released oxygen bleach in the wash, letting Henkel sell it in 1907 as the first 'self-acting' laundry detergent.

Procter & Gamble's Tide, introduced in 1946, is recognised as the world's first what?

Heavy-duty synthetic detergent was a goal P&G had all but given up: managers told chemist Dick Byerly to drop the work, known as Project X, but he kept at it quietly for years until it became Tide.

Synthetic detergents were first developed in Germany in World War I due to a shortage of what?

Oils and fats for soap ran short in blockaded Germany and were wanted for other uses, so chemists built cleaners from naphthalene instead; the first, sold as Nekal, washed only fairly but wetted textiles well.

Before chemical bleach arrived in the 1780s, linen was whitened over several months by laying it outdoors in what?

Sunshine did the work on 'bleachfields', where cloth lay for up to six months; once Claude Berthollet's chemical bleach arrived in the 1780s, the same job took hours.

The first commercial bleach was named 'Eau de Javel' after a borough near which city?

Paris has since swallowed Javel, the riverside village where the bleach works stood, and the name outlived it: French speakers still call household bleach 'eau de Javel'.

Clorox bleach takes its name from chlorine and which other ingredient?

Sodium hydroxide supplies the '-ox': the name joins the bleach's two main ingredients. Annie Murray then built demand by giving away sample bottles at her family's grocery in Oakland.

From 1929, Domestos's door-to-door salesmen in Newcastle did what at each house?

Refilled the jar: Wilfred Handley sold his bleach in big brown jars that salesmen topped up from hand carts and bicycle carts; Lever Brothers bought the firm in 1961.

Lysol was introduced in 1889 by Gustav Raupenstrauch to help end an epidemic of which disease in Germany?

Gustav Raupenstrauch introduced Lysol, a cresol-and-soap disinfectant, in 1889 to help end a cholera epidemic in Germany; decades later it was also marketed, disturbingly, as a feminine-hygiene douche.

Which odour-trapping molecule is the active ingredient in Febreze?

Febreze's active ingredient is cyclodextrin, a ring-shaped sugar molecule whose hollow core traps odour molecules; it went into test markets in 1996 and grew into one of P&G's billion-dollar brands.

Which British engineer built the horse-drawn 'Puffing Billy' in 1901 and may have coined 'vacuum cleaner'?

Hubert Cecil Booth parked 'Puffing Billy' in the street and ran hoses in through windows; he had tested suction by sucking through a handkerchief on a chair, and he also designed Ferris wheels.

James Murray Spangler, who patented the first portable electric vacuum in 1908, had what department-store job?

A caretaker, or janitor, at a Canton department store, Spangler was asthmatic and blamed the dust his carpet sweeper raised, so he built a suction cleaner from a fan motor, a soap box and a pillowcase.

Spangler sold his patent to a local maker of what, whose name became Britain's verb for vacuuming?

Leather goods were William Hoover's trade, and with cars threatening his horse-harness business he wanted a new line; Spangler's cousin Susan, Hoover's wife, tried the machine at home and urged him to buy in.

About how many prototypes did James Dyson build before his bagless vacuum cleaner went on sale?

Dyson built 5,127 prototypes over about five years before the G-Force; the cyclone idea came from a sawmill's dust extractor, and his earlier invention was the Ballbarrow.

Where did James Dyson first launch his bagless cleaner after every UK manufacturer refused it?

Japan got the G-Force first, sold by catalogue in bright pink, because British makers feared a bagless cleaner would kill their trade in replacement dust bags; it won a design prize there in 1991.

Before the Roomba, iRobot built its PackBot robots for which customer?

The US military used iRobot's PackBot for bomb disposal in Iraq and Afghanistan; after the Roomba arrived in September 2002 the firm turned to the home, and in 2016 it sold its military business.

What was Josephine Cochrane's motivation for inventing the dishwasher?

Servants kept chipping her good china, so the Illinois socialite built a machine that cleaned it more gently; she showed nine of them at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where hotels and restaurants took notice.

Which German company made Europe's first electric domestic dishwasher in 1929?

Miele built Europe's first electric dishwasher in 1929; the firm had started out thirty years earlier making cream separators and butter churns.

Which solvent, known as 'perc', became the dominant dry-cleaning solvent from the 1950s?

Perchloroethylene, or 'perc', is a non-flammable chlorinated solvent that displaced petroleum-based cleaners from the 1950s; earlier cleaners had used gasoline and kerosene, with predictable fire risks.

America's first self-service laundry, opened in Fort Worth in 1934, traded under which name?

Washateria blended 'wash' with 'cafeteria', the cheap self-service eating places of the day; Texans kept the word, where Britons say launderette.

Which element's ions, together with calcium, make tap water 'hard'?

Hard water carries dissolved calcium and magnesium ions picked up from limestone and dolomite; they react with soap to form scum and drop out as limescale when heated, and softeners swap them for sodium.

Short of cash in 1913, the inventors of Brillo pads paid their patent lawyer, Milton Loeb, with what?

A stake in the business was all the cookware peddler and his jeweller brother-in-law could offer; Loeb took it and secured the patent under the name Brillo, just as easily blackened aluminium pans were filling kitchens.

Ettore Steccone named the single-blade window squeegee he patented in 1936 after which US political programme?

The New Deal was the name Steccone gave his 1936 design, made of light brass with a sharp, flexible rubber blade; built at first in his garage, it replaced the bulky two-bladed 'Chicago squeegee'.

Ostrich-feather dusters were developed in 1903 in which city?

Johannesburg is where missionary and broom-factory manager Harry S. Beckner found in 1903 that ostrich feathers were handy for cleaning his machines, and wound them onto broom handles; earlier American dusters used turkey feathers.

Which religious community invented the flat broom-corn broom and the broom vice?

Shaker brother Theodore Bates of Watervliet, New York, clamped round broom-corn bundles flat in a vice around 1798, giving a wider, more efficient sweep that the Shakers then sold widely.

The word 'mop', spelled 'mappe' in the 15th century, may derive from a Latin word meaning what?

Napkin, or cloth, is the sense of Latin 'mappa', the probable root of 'mop'; the same word gave English 'map', because early maps were drawn on cloth.

The word 'janitor' comes from the Latin 'ianitor', meaning what?

A Latin 'ianitor' was a doorkeeper, from 'ianua', a door; the same root gives January, the month named for Janus, the two-faced god of doorways.

Some trace spring cleaning to 'khaneh tekani', a tradition before which new-year festival?

Nowruz, the Persian new year on the first day of spring, is preceded by khaneh tekani, literally 'shaking the house': families give the home a thorough clean and buy new clothes and flowers before the year turns.

Before her tidying career took off, Marie Kondo spent five years as an attendant at what kind of place?

A Shinto shrine employed Kondo as an attendant maiden for five years, and she says the faith shaped her method: in Shinto, caring for objects and keeping them in order can be a spiritual practice.

Which name is on the cap of Numatic's best-known vacuum, the smiling cylinder cleaner still made in Britain?

Henry dates from 1981; founder Chris Duncan built his first cleaners from an oil drum topped with a washing-up bowl, and the oil-drum thread survives in the hose socket that forms Henry's nose.

Which reformer pushed the 1875 Act through Parliament that finally ended the use of 'climbing boys' in British chimneys?

Lord Shaftesbury acted after young George Brewster died in a hospital flue that February; his Act made sweeps register with the police, who could at last enforce bans passed decades earlier.

The first cancer ever tied to a job, described in 1775, struck chimney sweeps, who called it what?

Soot wart was the sweeps' own name for it; surgeon Percivall Pott traced the cancer to the soot the boys worked in and slept under.

Cif, the cream cleaner launched in France in 1965, is sold under which name in Australia and New Zealand?

Jif is still the name in Australia and New Zealand; Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands used it too until 2001, when Unilever switched them to Cif to align the brand across Europe.

Which detergent brand did Procter & Gamble sell from 1933, mainly for baby clothes?

Dreft was the first synthetic household detergent: it washed in hard water without leaving soap curds, but was too gentle for heavy dirt, so it stayed a niche product for delicates and baby clothes.

Which German brand, headquartered in Winnenden, is best known for pressure washers?

Kärcher, based in Winnenden since 1939, turns pressure washing into publicity: it has cleaned the presidents' faces on Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty and Rio's Christ statue as cultural sponsorship.

Nicholas McKay improvised a lint roller in 1956, before a school dance, from a cardboard tube, a coat hanger and what?

Masking tape wrapped round a toilet-roll tube on a wire hanger took the lint off his jacket; he patented the idea as the Lint Pic-Up and named his firm Helmac after his wife Helen.

Microfibre cloths become less absorbent if washed with which laundry product?

Fabric softener leaves a residue of oils and surfactants that clogs the cloth's fine fibres, so it soaks up less until the residue is washed out.

Which cleaning brand, launched in 1947, took 'Stronger than dirt!' as its slogan?

Ajax, from Colgate-Palmolive, made 'Stronger than dirt!' so familiar in the 1960s that Jim Morrison shouts the line at the end of the Doors' hit 'Touch Me'.

What is the primary active ingredient in the canned Bar Keepers Friend scouring powder?

Oxalic acid, also found in rhubarb leaves, shifts rust by binding the iron into a salt that dissolves in water; Bar Keepers Friend has been made around it in Indianapolis since 1882.

What does the logo of Bar Keepers Friend scouring powder depict?

Swinging saloon doors frame the name because the powder, invented by an Indianapolis chemist, was first sold to the city's bars, whose keepers gave it its name.

Which children's modelling toy began in the 1930s as a putty for cleaning coal soot off wallpaper?

Play-Doh was Kutol's wallpaper cleaner until cleaner heating killed the market for it; a nursery teacher who had read of children modelling with the putty persuaded the firm to relaunch it as a toy in 1956.

Which fellow pitchman co-starred with Billy Mays in the Discovery series PitchMen?

Anthony Sullivan, the British-born pitchman who started with the Smart Mop, co-starred with Billy Mays in PitchMen (2009), a series that followed them vetting inventors' products.

Who ran the Bissell carpet-sweeper company from 1889 to 1919?

Anna Sutherland Bissell took over the Grand Rapids firm when her husband Melville died in 1889 and ran it until 1919, making her one of America's first female company heads.

Which mineral, hauled out of Death Valley, was sold for laundry as '20 Mule Team'?

Borax left Death Valley in the 1880s behind teams that were really eighteen mules and two horses, hauling their wagons 165 miles across the desert to the railhead at Mojave.

What is Bon Ami's long-running trademark slogan?

Bon Ami's trademark slogan 'Hasn't scratched yet!' refers to its newly hatched chick, which has yet to scratch for food, a boast that the feldspar powder was gentler than other scourers; Bon Ami is French for 'good friend'.

Airborne compounds of which element tarnish silver, forming the black layer polish removes?

Sulfur compounds in the air turn the surface to black silver sulfide; resting the piece on aluminium foil in hot water with baking soda reverses the reaction instead of rubbing the metal away.

On a garment care label, what does a plain circle symbol mean?

Dry clean is what a plain circle means, with a letter inside telling the cleaner which solvents are safe; the pictograms come from GINETEX, a France-based body formed in 1963 to standardise care labels across borders.

The Automobile Laundry, considered the first US business to use the name 'car wash', opened in 1914 in which city?

Detroit, the Motor City, came first twice: early washes like the Automobile Laundry moved cars through each stage by manpower, and in 1946 the city saw the first semi-automatic wash, which pulled them along by pulley.

Which carpet-cleaning method works a solution-soaked absorbent pad over the surface with a rotary machine?

Bonnet cleaning spins an absorbent pad, the bonnet, under a rotary floor machine; it is fast but lifts only surface soil, so contractors use it as a quick clean between deeper extractions.

British chimney sweeps are hired to bring good luck at which occasion?

Weddings: it is thought lucky for a British bride to see a chimney sweep on her wedding day, so sweeps hire themselves out to attend, with a handshake for the groom and a kiss for the bride.

Which cleaning brand, launched in 1999, put disposable dust-trapping cloths on the end of a mop handle?

Swiffer followed a Japanese lead: Kao's Quickle Wiper created the market for electrostatic cloths in 1995, and its American maker modelled the mop on it without taking a licence.

The Electro-Alkaline Company, later renamed Clorox, made its bleach from 1913 by passing electricity through what?

Salt brine split by electricity gave the Oakland firm its bleach; five founders put in $100 each in 1913 to start what was America's first commercial liquid bleach factory.

Which lip balm brand is owned by Clorox?

Burt's Bees has belonged to Clorox since 2007, bought for a reported $925 million: an unlikely match of bleach maker and beeswax balm, made just as Clorox launched its own naturally derived cleaners.

What is the rotating drum of a clothes dryer called?

Tumbler is the name for the rotating drum: heated air passes through as it turns the load over, keeping air between the clothes; a non-rotating drying cabinet handles delicate fabrics instead.

Which appliance brand takes its name from an electric iron that Earl Richardson designed in 1905?

Hotpoint was the iron's nickname: Richardson put its hottest point at the front instead of the centre, and the name passed to the company he founded, later known for its cookers and toasters.

'Death cleaning', clearing out your belongings so your heirs need not, was popularised by a 2017 bestseller from which country?

Sweden: Margareta Magnusson's The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning spread the idea of 'döstädning', tidying done when you feel your time is coming, to spare loved ones the job.

The word detergent comes from a Latin verb meaning what?

To wipe or polish off is the sense of Latin 'detergere' (de-, away, plus tergere, to wipe); English took 'detergent' in the early 1600s, and the rare verb 'deterge', to cleanse, is still in the dictionary.

Under what name is the laundry brand Downy sold across Europe?

Lenor is Downy's name across Europe; the softener launched in America in 1960, and a plan to rebrand British Lenor as Downy was dropped in 2002.

What did Conrad Gaiser invent in 1969 to spare his wife trips to the laundry room?

Conrad J. Gaiser soaked cloth squares in softener so his wife could toss one into the dryer instead of catching the rinse cycle; he patented the dryer sheet in 1969 and licensed it to P&G, which launched Bounce in 1972.

Which man-made fibre holds up poorly when wet and is often best dry cleaned?

Rayon is regenerated cellulose, made from wood, and ordinary viscose rayon loses durability and shape when wet, which is why care advice so often steers it to the dry cleaner.

Which Swedish entrepreneur was the driving force behind Electrolux, named in 1919, and its early vacuum cleaners?

Axel Wenner-Gren, a salesman, steered the firm into vacuum cleaners and gave it the Electrolux name; the fortune later endowed what is now the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

The name Febreze is a portmanteau of which two words?

Febreze fuses 'fabric' and 'breeze', a nod to its original use as a fabric-refreshing spray; in many non-English markets P&G sells it as Ambi Pur.

The Great Stink of 1858 led London to adopt whose sewer proposal?

Parliament rushed through funding for Joseph Bazalgette's intercepting sewers within weeks of the 1858 Great Stink; work on the outfall sewers lasted from 1859 to 1875.

Which virus is poorly killed by alcohol hand sanitizer?

Norovirus is a non-enveloped virus, which is why alcohol sanitizers, recommended at 60% alcohol or more, tend to fail against it; washing with soap and water is the defence.

Official advice to scrub your hands for 20 seconds says to hum which song twice through?

Happy Birthday sung twice lasts about 20 seconds, the scrub time the CDC and the NHS advise; drying counts too, because germs pass more easily to and from wet hands.

Harpic toilet cleaner takes its name from which inventor?

Harry Pickup of Scarborough gave the cleaner the first syllables of his two names; Reckitt launched it across Britain in 1932, and he went on to patent a lock-and-lift manhole cover.

Which slogan did the lavatory brand Harpic use in British advertisements from the 1930s?

Cleans Round The Bend punned on the lavatory's U-bend and on 'round the bend', British slang for crazy, which is why 'Harpic' itself became a nickname for anyone thought a bit mad.

On which network did Hoarders debut in August 2009?

A&E launched Hoarders on 17 August 2009 and cancelled it in 2013; the show was revived for a season on Lifetime in 2015 and then went back to A&E.

A disastrous 1992 Hoover promotion in Britain promised buyers two free what?

Return flights, first to Europe and then to America, were worth far more than the £100 spend, so people bought Hoovers just for the tickets; the firm could not honour them all, and its European arm was sold off in 1995.

Which stain repellent grew out of a 1953 accident, when a chemical spilled onto a lab assistant's tennis shoe?

Scotchgard came from drops of a 3M fluorochemical meant for jet-fuel hoses; chemists Patsy Sherman and Samuel Smith spent the next years turning the spill into a fabric protector, on sale from 1956.

Which 1861 Victorian guide said the housekeeper is 'second in command in the house'?

Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management ranks the housekeeper 'second in command in the house'; for all its authority, many of its recipes were copied from earlier cookery books.

In Victorian England and Wales, domestic service was the second-largest category of employment after what?

Agricultural work alone employed more people in Victorian England and Wales; domestic service was also the commonest way for a woman, especially a poorer one, to earn a wage.

Which two experts starred in Channel 4's How Clean Is Your House?

Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie fronted How Clean Is Your House? on Channel 4 from 2003 to 2009, swabbing filthy homes for lab tests before scrubbing them.

Pure hydrogen peroxide is not quite colourless: which very faint tint does the liquid have?

Very pale blue is the colour of the pure liquid; the 3-6% solutions sold to consumers are too dilute for the tint to show, which is why most people know it as colourless.

What did Ignaz Semmelweis propose doctors wash their hands with in 1847?

Chlorinated lime solutions were his choice because they best removed the smell of the dissecting room from students' hands; deaths on his Vienna ward fell from about 18% to under 2%.

Handwashing pioneer Ignaz Semmelweis was nicknamed the saviour of whom?

Semmelweis was called the 'saviour of mothers' for cutting deaths from puerperal (childbed) fever in Vienna's maternity clinic; colleagues rejected his idea and he died in an asylum in 1865.

Ivory soap's name was inspired by a verse in which book of the Bible?

Psalms supplied it: Harley Procter took the name from Psalm 45, where garments smell of myrrh 'out of the ivory palaces', and trademarked Ivory for the firm's new white soap in 1879.

Who developed the inexpensive white soap that became Ivory in 1879?

James Norris Gamble, a trained chemist and the son of co-founder James Gamble, devised the formula; Harley Procter, the other founder's son, named it Ivory and sold it as 99 and 44/100 percent pure.

Joseph Lister introduced which substance as a steriliser at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary?

Lister began dressing wounds with carbolic acid, now called phenol, at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1865, cutting deaths from post-operative infection; Listerine was later named in his honour.

Which group, founded by can and bottle makers, made the 1971 'Crying Indian' advert?

Keep America Beautiful was set up by the American Can Company and a leading bottle maker; the weeping 'Indian' of its advert, Iron Eyes Cody, was later revealed to be an Italian-American actor.

Which tissue brand was launched in 1924 as a disposable cold cream remover?

Kleenex was first sold as a throwaway cloth for wiping off cold cream; by the 1930s its adverts urged 'Don't Carry a Cold in Your Pocket' and it had become the paper handkerchief.

Which company turned its wartime bandage wadding into Kotex pads?

Kimberly-Clark made Cellucotton in the First World War as a stand-in for scarce surgical cotton; army nurses found it worked as a sanitary pad, which led to Kotex in 1920.

What is the most littered item in the world?

Cigarette butts top the list: about 4.5 trillion are dropped every year, and the filters are not paper but a plastic, cellulose acetate, that lingers long after the tobacco has gone.

The word 'hygiene' comes from a Greek phrase meaning 'the art of' what?

Health: the Greek phrase meant the art of health, and its goddess was Hygieia, daughter of the healer Asclepius, so 'hygiene' meant staying well before it meant staying clean.

Which cleaning product, launched in 2003, is a block of melamine foam first sold as soundproofing?

Magic Eraser is BASF's Basotect, an insulation foam from 1984; a Procter & Gamble scout found it on sale as a household sponge in an Osaka shop in 2001 and sent it home for testing.

Melamine foam lifts scuffs by acting as a microscopic version of what?

Sandpaper is the right picture: melamine foam feels soft, but its hard microscopic strands scrape marks off like an ultra-fine abrasive, which is why it cleans with plain water and no solvent.

In Marie Kondo's KonMari method, which category of belongings do you tidy first?

Clothes come first: every garment in the house goes into one pile to be judged, and only then do books, papers, miscellany and finally sentimental items get their turn.

Which power-tool maker launched the Dustbuster cordless hand vacuum in the late 1970s?

Black & Decker drew on the low-power motor work it had done for an Apollo moon drill; the Dustbuster was an instant hit and took the toolmaker into household gadgets.

Maytag began in 1893 as a maker of farm machinery in which US state?

Iowa: Frederick Maytag's firm in Newton built feeders for threshing machines, and its first washer in 1907 was a sideline to keep the plant busy in the farm trade's slow season.

Which company has owned Maytag since April 2006?

Whirlpool paid about $1.7 billion for Maytag after a rival bid fell through, closing the deal in spring 2006; it later shut the main factory in Maytag's home town.

Ecover, the Belgian eco-cleaning company, was founded in 1979 to make what kind of products?

Phosphate-free washing powder was Ecover's first product, made because phosphates washed into rivers and lakes feed choking algal blooms; the Belgian firm bought San Francisco's Method in 2012.

A natural loofah, used as a bath and dish scrubber, is the dried fibrous inside of what?

A gourd: the loofah is the fruit of a tropical vine, left to ripen and dry until the flesh falls away and only the fibrous skeleton is left, so the 'sponge' grew on land, not in the sea.

Which Greek hero cleaned the filthy Augean stables in a single day by turning a river through them?

Heracles, the Romans' Hercules, flushed out King Augeas's cattle yard as one of his twelve labours, and the king then refused to pay him. 'Augean' still describes a job that is both huge and filthy.

What first name did a 1962 promotion give Mr. Clean?

A 1962 'Give Mr. Clean a First Name' contest produced 'Veritably', making his full name Veritably Clean; the promotion ran in newspapers and on television.

Cleaning influencer Mrs Hinch worked in what job before starting her Instagram account?

Sophie Hinchliffe was a hairdresser in Essex when she opened her account in 2018 to show off her home's decorating; the cleaning tips took over and drew millions of followers.

What was the title of the cleanfluencer Sophie Hinchliffe's first book, published in April 2019?

Hinch Yourself Happy was won by its publisher in an 11-way auction and sold 160,302 copies in its first three days on sale in April 2019.

A 'charwoman' takes her name from 'char', an old English word for what?

A chore is the same word: 'char' or 'chare' meant a turn of work, so a charwoman was hired by the job. The British slang 'char' for tea is a separate word.

Which Shakespeare character cries 'Out, damned spot!' while trying to scrub imagined blood from her hands?

Lady Macbeth sleepwalks through the castle rubbing her hands, sure they still smell of the murdered king's blood; the doctor watching her admits the case is beyond his practice.

Which active ingredient in OxiClean releases hydrogen peroxide in water?

Sodium percarbonate is washing soda and hydrogen peroxide locked together in one crystal; water sets the peroxide free, which is why the powder only starts bleaching once it has dissolved.

Which paper company launched Sani-Towels, the first paper towels, in 1907?

Scott Paper of Philadelphia launched Sani-Towels in 1907, supposedly after a schoolteacher complained that her pupils all dried their hands on one cloth towel; kitchen rolls followed in 1931.

Which cleaner did Harry A. Cole create in 1929 from oil distilled out of tree stumps?

Pine-Sol was the work of a Mississippi chemist, who built it on the pine oil in old stumps that loggers had left in the ground as worthless.

The bidet takes its name from an old French word for which animal?

A pony: 'bidet' meant a small horse in French, and the washing fixture borrowed the name because the user sits astride it as a rider would.

In which US city was Procter & Gamble founded in 1837?

Cincinnati is where a candlemaker and a soapmaker who had married two sisters were talked into going into business together by their father-in-law in 1837.

The 'Great Bath' of which ancient city is one of the earliest public baths?

The Great Bath at Mohenjo Daro, an Indus Valley city, is a brick tank about 12 metres by 7 that its builders made watertight with close-fitted bricks, gypsum plaster and a lining of bitumen tar.

Which kitchen staple dissolves limescale, which is mostly calcium carbonate?

Vinegar's acetic acid reacts with calcium carbonate limescale to give soluble calcium acetate, water and carbon dioxide, which is why soaking a kettle in vinegar clears its scale.

Engineer Joe Jones conceived the Roomba idea in 1989 while working at which lab?

Joe Jones was a staff engineer at MIT's AI laboratory in 1989 when he sketched a cheap cleaning robot; he later built the Roomba at iRobot, founded by MIT's Rodney Brooks, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner.

What did the S.O.S in S.O.S Soap Pads originally stand for?

A San Francisco aluminium-pan salesman named Cox invented the pads in 1917 as a giveaway to help sell his cookware; his wife proposed the name 'Save Our Saucepans'.

Which household item did Sarah Boone improve in 1892 with a narrow, curved design made to fit inside sleeves?

The ironing board in Sarah Boone's patent was narrow, with edges curved to match a sleeve's inside and outside seams, so each side of a fitted sleeve could be pressed in turn; Boone had been born into slavery.

Which palm wax from Brazil gives car and shoe polishes their hard shine?

Carnauba wax is scraped from the leaves of the Copernicia prunifera palm of north-eastern Brazil; the hardest natural wax, it gives car and shoe polishes their glassy shine.

Which company first sold Scrubbing Bubbles under its own corporate name?

Dow Chemical sold it as Dow Bathroom Cleaner; when its consumer brands changed hands in the late 1990s, the product was renamed after the brush-bottomed cartoon bubbles from its adverts.

Paul Winchell, the 1970s voice of the lead Scrubbing Bubble, was also the original voice of which Disney character?

Tigger was Paul Winchell's role from 1968; the ventriloquist was also an inventor, and in 1963 he patented an early artificial heart.

Seventh Generation credits its name to the Great Law of which people?

The Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee, are credited with the rule that leaders weigh each decision's effect on the seventh generation to come; the Vermont cleaning brand took it as its name in 1988.

A 1699 slang dictionary defined 'elbow grease' as a mocking term for what?

Sweat, said the 1699 dictionary, calling the phrase 'a derisory term'; it pictures the hard rubbing that polishing takes, and the poet Andrew Marvell was already writing of 'ink and elbow-grease' in 1672.

Which kitchen utensil did ShamWow pitchman Vince Offer also sell?

Slap Chop followed the ShamWow, yet Vince Offer told CNBC in 2009 that he was 'in the film business' and pitching was not his career; swap-meet sales of vegetable choppers had paid for his comedy film's adverts.

Puppet-maker Kermit Love, who created the Snuggle fabric-softener bear, built which Sesame Street character?

Big Bird was built by Kermit Love from a Jim Henson drawing; he made the bird shed a few feathers as it moved, like a tree dropping leaves, so it would seem more real to children.

In a grand Victorian house, which small room off the kitchen was used for washing dishes and scouring pots?

The scullery takes its name from an Old French word for a dish; it sat at the back of the house, nearest the water supply, and gave the scullery maid her title.

The term for long-running daytime serial dramas comes from radio sponsorship by which businesses?

Radio serials of the 1930s were bankrolled by soap manufacturers such as Procter & Gamble, whose Oxydol sponsored Ma Perkins from 1933, so the shows were nicknamed soap operas.

What is the chemical formula of sodium hypochlorite, the compound in household bleach?

NaOCl: Na is sodium and OCl is the hypochlorite ion. Household bleach is only a weak solution of it in water, because the pure solid is too unstable to keep.

Ancient Roman fullers washed togas in which liquid, collected from pots left on street corners?

Urine was the Romans' commonest cleaning alkali: fullers left jars at street corners for passers-by to fill and trod the cloth in the mixture, and the emperor Vespasian put a tax on it.

Ancient Greek athletes cleaned up by scraping their skin with a curved strigil after rubbing on what?

Olive oil was how a Greek athlete got clean: he oiled himself, exercised, then scraped oil, sweat and dust off together with the strigil, a tool often buried with its owner beside a flask of oil.

Which Thai April festival begins with cleaning homes and Buddha images before its water fights?

Songkran, the Thai new year in mid-April, opens with cleaning homes and bathing Buddha images; the street water fights grew from pouring water as a blessing that washes away the old year's bad luck.

Which seafaring novel compares a deck-scraping tool to a 'leathern squilgee', an early squeegee?

Moby-Dick (1851) says the whaleman's 'nipper', drawn edgewise along the oily deck, 'operates like a leathern squilgee'; squeegees scraped ships' decks long before they cleaned windows.

A pyrolytic self-cleaning oven chars residue to ash at roughly what temperature?

A pyrolytic cycle heats the oven to about 500 C, roughly twice normal roasting heat, so grease and sugar char to a fine ash that wipes away; the door locks until it cools.

The word 'surfactant' is a blend of which phrase?

'Surfactant' contracts 'surface-active agent': each molecule has a water-loving head and a grease-loving tail, so it loosens oily dirt and lets the wash water carry it away.

What is the Japanese name for the big house-cleaning done in the last days of December?

Osoji, literally 'big cleaning', sees homes, schools and offices scrubbed in late December; it grew out of an old soot-sweeping ritual that readied the house to welcome the gods of the new year.

Which Tide product, launched in 2012, drew poison-control warnings for its sweet-like look?

Tide Pods, launched in February 2012, drew poison-control warnings after toddlers mistook the bright, squishy capsules for sweets; the 2018 'Tide Pod Challenge' meme brought a fresh wave of warnings.

Which cleaner's bent-necked bottle, patented by a Swiss firm in 1980, squirts under the rim?

Toilet Duck's bent neck was devised by the Swiss druggist Walter Düring; his advisers wanted another name, but he insisted that a bottle that looked like a duck should be called one.

The first bristle toothbrushes, made in China, used stiff hairs from which animal's neck?

Pig bristles, set in handles of bone or bamboo, did the job for centuries; animal hair gave way only in 1938, when DuPont's nylon bristles went on sale.

Ancient Egyptian tooth powder is said to have included the powdered ashes of what?

Ox hooves, burnt to ash, are said to have gone into the Egyptian powder along with burnt eggshells; Greeks and Romans later sharpened the mix with crushed bones and oyster shells.

Unilever was formed in 1930 when Lever Brothers merged with a Dutch maker of which food?

Margarine Unie, itself a 1927 union of Dutch margarine makers, joined the British firm, and the new company's name simply fused Unie with Lever.

House dust mites, the tiny creatures that thrive in bedding and carpets, feed mainly on what?

Shed human skin is the dust mite's diet: the flakes we lose every day gather in bedding and carpets. Unlike bed bugs, the mites do not bite or burrow into us.

Before spin cycles, which machine squeezed wet laundry between two rollers turned by a hand crank?

A mangle, called a wringer in America, pressed the water from the wash between its rollers; anyone who has had a rough time is still said to have been 'put through the wringer'.

Which powder do launderers use to stiffen shirt collars?

Starch gives collars a crisp edge, and it had a second job: dirt clings to the starch instead of the fibres, so it rinses away with it in the next wash.

Which preacher's sermon gave English the line 'Cleanliness is, indeed, next to godliness'?

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said it in a sermon on dress, arguing that neatness was a duty rather than a sin; the idea itself is far older than his wording.

Which Roman governor's public hand-washing gave English an idiom for refusing all responsibility?

Pontius Pilate, in Matthew's Gospel, takes water and rinses his hands before the crowd to show that he will not answer for the execution of Jesus; hence 'washing one's hands of' a matter.

Which ridged laundry tool later became a rhythm instrument in skiffle bands?

The washboard's corrugated face, made for rubbing wet laundry, gives a rasping beat when scraped with the fingers; once washing machines took over, it became better known on stage than in the laundry.

Which fast-food chain became an early big customer for Wet-Nap moist towelettes in 1963?

KFC's Colonel Sanders took Wet-Naps to go with his 'finger lickin' good' chicken; inventor Arthur Julius had made the first ones on a converted portioning machine in a Manhattan loft.

Whirlpool grew from a small maker of wringer washers after which retailer began selling its machines in 1916?

Sears, Roebuck put the firm's washers in its mail-order catalogue in 1916 and later made it its only washer supplier, selling the machines under Sears's own brand names.

The 'vacuum' in vacuum cleaner comes from a Latin word meaning what?

Empty is the meaning of the Latin 'vacuus'. The cleaner pumps air out of its own body, and the outside air rushing in to fill the gap carries the dust along with it.

Which company has made Windex since buying it from the drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb in the early 1990s?

S. C. Johnson, the family firm behind Pledge and Glade, took Windex over from the drug maker, and in 2009 it began publishing the ingredients of its cleaners, the blue spray's among them.

In traditional window cleaning, which soft leather loosens the dirt before a final buff with scrim cloth?

Chamois, once the hide of an Alpine goat-antelope and now nearly always oil-tanned sheepskin, soaks up water without scratching; scrim, an open-weave cotton or linen, does the final polish.

Which traditional broom, a bundle of twigs bound to a pole, is the kind witches are pictured riding?

A besom is the old twig broom; the shrub called broom was often cut for the twigs, and it is the plant that gave the modern sweeping tool its name.

World Cleanup Day grew from a 2008 campaign in which country, where 50,000 volunteers cleaned up in a single day?

Estonia's 'Let's Do It!' drive cleared some 10,000 tonnes of dumped rubbish in about five hours; the idea spread worldwide, and the UN made 20 September World Cleanup Day from 2024.

Frank Zamboni mounted his early 1950s ice resurfacers on the chassis of which vehicle?

A Willys Jeep sat under his early production machines; the 1949 prototype had been pieced together from war-surplus parts at the ice rink he ran in Paramount, California.

What does HEPA stand for on a vacuum cleaner filter?

HEPA stands for high-efficiency particulate air: such a filter traps at least 99.97% of particles 0.3 microns across, which is the hardest size to catch; bigger and smaller ones are stopped even more easily.

Which company's planned $1.7 billion takeover of iRobot collapsed in January 2024?

Amazon agreed to buy iRobot for about $1.7 billion in 2022 but walked away in January 2024 after EU regulators signalled they would block the deal; iRobot cut about a third of its staff the same day.

What do Britons call the cloth used to dry dishes after washing up?

A tea towel, in soft lint-free linen or cotton, is the British name for the dish-drying cloth; Americans say dish towel, and a 'kitchen towel' in Britain is a paper towel instead.

Ammonia, the classic glass-cleaner ingredient, is a weak example of what kind of chemical?

Ammonia dissolved in water is a weak base, so it breaks down greasy films and evaporates without streaks, which is why it was the active ingredient in classic glass cleaners.

Which abrasive stone is ground into heavy-duty hand cleaners such as Lava?

Pumice is a frothy volcanic glass so full of trapped gas that it floats on water; ground to a fine powder it is a mild abrasive, which is why it goes into heavy-duty hand cleaners.

What does a pH of 7 tell you about a cleaning solution?

It is neutral: pH 7 is the value of pure water, with acids below and alkalis above; even clean rain is slightly acidic, at about pH 5.6, because of carbon dioxide from the air.

Which dishwashing liquid, launched in 1973, was used to clean oiled wildlife after the Exxon Valdez spill?

Dawn became the standard wash for oiled seabirds after rescuers testing detergents in the 1970s found it stripped the oil without harming feathers or skin; it was used again after Deepwater Horizon in 2010.

According to the son of Formula 409's inventor, the cleaner was named after what?

His wife's birthday, April 9, is the story told by the inventor's son; the brand's owner says instead that it was the 409th formula its two young inventors tested.

Which soap brand's radio adverts popularised the abbreviation 'B.O.' for body odour?

Lifebuoy's radio adverts sounded a foghorn and then boomed out 'B.O.', a routine familiar enough for Looney Tunes cartoons to parody it.

Which scouring powder did former child star Jane Withers pitch on TV as Josephine the Plumber?

Comet's Josephine was a 1930s child star who had bullied Shirley Temple on screen in Bright Eyes; she came back decades later as the plumber in a long-running series of television adverts.

Which John Everett Millais painting of his grandson became a celebrated Victorian advertisement?

Millais's 1886 painting Bubbles, of his grandson watching a soap bubble, was bought by Pears' Thomas Barratt, who added a bar of Pears soap and ran it as an advertisement for decades.

Which drain cleaner, launched in 1923, mixes lye with aluminium shards that fizz in water?

Drano's aluminium reacts with the lye to give off heat and fizzing hydrogen that churns the mixture through the clog; for decades its adverts urged 'Once in every week, Drano in every drain'.

Which streaming service's 2019 series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo was credited with a surge in charity-shop donations?

Netflix released the series on the first day of January, and within weeks charity shops in the US and the UK were reporting a jump in donated belongings.

In which film does Matt Damon play a university janitor who anonymously solves a maths problem left on a blackboard?

Good Will Hunting won Damon and Ben Affleck the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and Robin Williams the award for Best Supporting Actor.

Before which Jewish festival do families deep-clean the home, then hunt for leavened crumbs by candlelight?

Passover forbids leavened food for the whole festival, so observant homes are scoured first and the last crumbs are hunted down on the evening before the holiday begins.

US food-safety campaigns teach four kitchen habits: clean, separate, cook and which fourth step?

Chill completes the 'Core Four' taught by the Partnership for Food Safety Education: food stored cold enough gives bacteria no chance to grow.

Using one cutting board for raw fish and another for fresh produce guards against which kitchen hazard?

Cross-contamination is also the reason raw seafood and eggs are kept apart from other foods in the shopping cart, the grocery bags and the refrigerator.

Before which festival do families clean house, then hide their brooms on the first day so good luck is not swept out?

Chinese New Year cleaning symbolically sweeps out the old year's bad luck, so brooms and dustpans are put away on day one to protect the luck that has just arrived.

Scots traditionally give the house a thorough clean on 31 December, a day known in Scotland by which name?

Hogmanay cleaning is known as redding the house: when open fires were common, the old ashes were cleared out and a fresh fire laid so the new year began clean.

Which character opens The Wind in the Willows by abandoning his spring cleaning to explore the riverbank?

Mole loses patience with the job, leaves his burrow and comes up beside a river he has never seen, where he makes his first friend on the bank.

Orthodox Christians in Greece traditionally scrub the house during Clean Week, the first week of which fasting season?

Great Lent begins with Clean Week, a name that really refers to spiritual cleansing through fasting, prayer and asking forgiveness of one's neighbours.

Clean Monday, which opens the week Greeks traditionally spring-clean, is celebrated outdoors by flying what?

Kites fill the sky over Greece and Cyprus on Clean Monday, a public holiday of picnics, shellfish and lagana, a flatbread baked only on that day.

Indian homes are scrubbed before Diwali in the belief that a spotless house will be blessed by which goddess?

Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, is welcomed into freshly cleaned homes on Diwali night, and the scrub-down is also read as a re-enactment of the cleansing monsoon rains.

Mr. Clean cleaners are sold under which name in the United Kingdom, where a rival Mr. Clean brand already existed?

Flash is the British name, while the same mascot becomes Meister Proper in Germany, Don Limpio in Spain and Monsieur Propre in France.

Which hand sanitizer brand did GOJO Industries invent in 1988, nearly a decade before selling it to the public?

Purell reached shop shelves only in 1997, and in 2020 demand was so fierce that it was still hard to find by July even though output had more than doubled.

Which bathroom brand did Robert Taylor launch in 1980 after buying up 100 million pump bottles to block copycats?

Softsoap had the market to itself because Taylor's order was a full year's output from the only two American pump makers; he sold $25 million of it in six months.

Dial soap was launched in Chicago in 1948 by Armour and Company, a giant of which seemingly unrelated industry?

Meat-packing made Armour a natural soap maker: it had been turning tallow, a by-product of its slaughterhouses, into laundry soap since 1888.

Sapolio, a soap once called the world's best-advertised product, had which future razor magnate among its salesmen?

King C. Gillette sold Sapolio before inventing his safety razor; the soap's owners later cut back their advertising, and the brand vanished before World War II.

Safety labels warn never to mix bleach with ammonia-based cleaners because the pair give off which toxic fumes?

Chloramines form when the two meet, and ammonia also hides in some glass cleaners and paints, which is why bleach is safest used on its own.

Scotch-Brite scouring pads, tough enough in their strongest grade to scratch glass, are made by which company?

3M's Al Boese created the pads in the 1950s by bonding abrasive minerals to a web of nonwoven fibres, a material he had been experimenting with since 1938.

Vim, the scouring powder Lever Brothers launched in 1904, has a name thought to echo a Latin word for what?

Vigour is the sense of the Latin 'vim', and the powder itself began as an offshoot of Lever's Monkey Brand scouring soap.

Chloroxylenol, a compound on the WHO's List of Essential Medicines, is the germ-killer in which Reckitt antiseptic?

Dettol was developed by a scientist who joined Reckitt in 1929 from the rival disinfectant firm Jeyes; its chloroxylenol kills bacteria by disrupting their cell walls.

Which powdered household cleaner did two Michigan housewives invent in 1933 and later sell to Procter & Gamble?

Spic and Span got its name when Naomi Stenglein saw how spotless the testing had left her own house; the two families sold the brand in 1945 for $1.9 million.

In NSF's 2011 swab study of 30 household items, coliform bacteria turned up most often on which one?

Dish sponges and rags tested positive for coliform more than 75% of the time, against 27% for toothbrush holders, the worst item in the bathroom.

Restaurant hygiene codes require dishes cleaned by hand to pass through a three-compartment sink in which order?

Wash, rinse, sanitize: detergent goes in the first basin, clean water in the second and a sanitizer in the third, after which the dishes are left to dry.

What name do cooks give the baked-on layer of polymerised fat that keeps a cast-iron pan from rusting?

Seasoning starts with a scrub: a new, untreated pan is scoured with hot soapy water to strip the maker's protective wax, then coated with fat and baked.

Stainless-steel sinks resist rust because which metal in the alloy forms a thin, self-healing protective film?

Chromium, at 10.5% or more of the alloy, reacts with oxygen to form an invisible film that repairs itself whenever the steel is scuffed.

Which brand's 1972 advertising campaign persuaded Americans to keep an open box of baking soda in the fridge?

Arm & Hammer's odour-fighting pitch is a marketing classic: within a year, more than half of American refrigerators held a box.

Which kitchen appliance, credited to architect John W. Hammes in 1927, was illegal in New York City until 1997?

The garbage disposal was outlawed in New York for fear that ground-up scraps would damage the sewers; the city lifted its ban only after a 21-month study.

In European dishwashers, coarse salt is poured into a compartment to regenerate a built-in unit that does what?

Softens the water: the salt flushes trapped minerals out of an ion-exchange resin, and its coarse grains dissolve slowly so that they cannot clog the unit.

Which fantasy film follows Elisa, a mute cleaner who falls in love with an amphibious creature held at her workplace?

The Shape of Water, set in a secret government facility in 1962 Baltimore, won four Oscars and was only the second fantasy film to take Best Picture.

Richard Montañez, a Frito-Lay janitor who rose to executive, has long claimed to have invented which spicy snack?

Flamin' Hot Cheetos made Montañez's story the basis of a 2023 film, although a Los Angeles Times report found that Frito-Lay's own investigation did not credit him.

'Custodian', another word for a school janitor, comes from the Latin 'custos', which means what?

Guardian is the root sense, which is why the same word also covers anyone who looks after something, from museum keepers to the firms that hold investors' assets.

Which actor played the Janitor in the sitcom Scrubs, a hospital custodian who stays nameless for eight seasons?

Neil Flynn's Janitor finally tells J.D. his name in the last episode of Season 8; the actor went on to star as Mike Heck in the ABC sitcom The Middle.

Which 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon hero is secretly Penry Pooch, a mild-mannered janitor at a police station?

Hong Kong Phooey, voiced by Scatman Crothers, transforms by jumping into a filing cabinet, where he always gets stuck until his cat Spot frees him.

Which future US president entered Ohio's Western Reserve Eclectic Institute as its janitor and later ran the school?

James A. Garfield secured the janitor's job on arrival in 1851, was teaching while still a student, and later became president of the school, now Hiram College.

Justice for Janitors, the campaign over office cleaners' pay and medical cover, is run by which American labour union?

SEIU stands for the Service Employees International Union; its Los Angeles janitors went on strike in the spring of 1990 over low wages and minimal medical coverage.

High-rise window cleaners are often lowered down a facade in which rig borrowed from sailing ships?

A bosun's chair began as a short plank or strip of canvas slung from a rope for work aloft; window cleaners' versions add seatboards and controlled-descent devices.

Which janitorial machine lays down cleaning solution, works it into the floor and vacuums it up in a single pass?

An autoscrubber keeps its clean and dirty water in separate tanks, but most cannot reach edges and corners, so the mop still has a job to do.

On a garment care label, which shape gives the bleaching instructions and, when crossed out, bans bleach entirely?

A triangle is the bleach symbol: a plain one allows any bleach, while two slanted lines inside it rule out chlorine bleach only.

On a laundry care label, one or two bars drawn beneath the washtub symbol call for what kind of wash?

Gentler is the message: no bar means a full cotton wash, one bar the milder cycle for man-made fibres and two bars the minimal agitation suited to silk and wool.

Wool knits emerge from a rough wash small and matted because barbs on the fibres hook together, a process called what?

Felting is also how felt, one of the oldest known textiles, is made on purpose: the fibres are matted and pressed together until they lock.

Laundry detergents make whites look brighter with optical brighteners, which absorb which invisible kind of light?

Ultraviolet light is absorbed and re-emitted as visible light, so the extra brightness is a fluorescent glow added on top of the cloth, not dirt removed from it.

Which stain-digesting molecules did Otto Röhm bring to laundry in 1913, decades before they became a detergent staple?

Enzymes break down protein stains such as blood, egg and grass, but they only went mainstream once heat-stable versions made by bacteria became available.

Which old laundry additive, still widely used in India and Pakistan, whitens yellowed linen with a trace of dye?

Bluing works because its colour is the complement of yellow: a trace of it cancels the yellow cast, the same trick as the tint that some white-haired people put through their hair.

In a top-loading washing machine, what is the finned central post that twists the load back and forth called?

An agitator rolls garments from the top of the load to the bottom and back up; the two-part 'dual-action' kind, with a spiral upper section, appeared in the 1980s.

A 'Sanforized' label, named after the inventor Sanford Cluett, promises that a cotton garment will resist what?

Shrinking is dealt with in advance: Cluett's 1930 process stretches, shrinks and fixes the cloth before it is ever cut, so little is left to happen in the wash.

Chemist Ruth Benerito was said to have 'saved the cotton industry' by developing 1950s textiles with which quality?

Wrinkle-resistant 'wash-and-wear' cotton came out of her US Department of Agriculture lab in New Orleans, though she never believed she had invented it single-handedly.

Which US state, where the spring clothespin was invented in 1853, has been called the Silicon Valley of clothespins?

Vermont's David M. Smith of Springfield devised the sprung design, and Montpelier became the hub of an industry later undercut by cheap European imports.

In the candlelit search for leavened crumbs before the Jewish spring festival, finds are swept with a feather into what?

A wooden spoon is traditional because wood cannot be made kosher again, so the spoon is burned together with the crumbs it collected.

NSF's germ study ranked which damp, rarely cleaned part of a kitchen appliance among the ten germiest items in the home?

Coffee reservoirs are warm, moist and seldom scrubbed, ideal for bacteria, whereas cold, smooth things such as keys, money and game controllers carried far fewer germs.

In which cult horror-comedy does Melvin, a scrawny janitor at a gym, turn hero after falling into a drum of waste?

The Toxic Avenger leaves a mop on the faces of the criminals he defeats as a calling card, and the people of Tromaville end up hailing him as a hero.