Cleaning hacks often find us these days, thanks to our social feeds. However, the best cleaning advice often comes from a source that’s been with us from the start: our grandparents.

Grandparents have a wealth of wisdom that you can only acquire from years of experience. When most of them started keeping house, they relied on tips spread through word-of-mouth, magazines and books. With fewer cleaning tools and formulas advertised to them on a daily basis, they often utilized basic and affordable tools to keep their homes sparkling.

If you’re ready to bring things back to basics, these cleaning tips straight from the mouths of grandparents are a good place to start.

Lemon for Cleaning, Polishing, and Stain Removal

Domestic cleaning expert Petya Holevich’s grandma taught her that lemon juice is a triple threat when it comes to cleaning. Its natural acidity makes it great for cleaning and deodorizing just about anything.

Her grandma relied on it to clean glass, polish brass and copper, and especially for laundry purposes.

“Lemon juice was a natural whitener my grandma loved because it was inexpensive and affordable, and an ingredient we always had at home,” Holevich says.

Her grandma would soak faded or stained whites in one gallon of hot water with the juice of one lemon for a couple of hours before running them through the washing machine on a rinse cycle. For tougher stains, she’d rub on lemon with a bit of salt.

She’d wrap up the process by letting them line dry in the sunshine, which is another effective natural bleaching agent.

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Soaking Up Oil Stains With Flour

Oil is notoriously a stubborn stain to remove, but Holevich’s grandma had an easy fix for removing it from porous surfaces. Any time she’d spill a little oil on her apron, floor, or counter, she’d pull out the flour from her pantry and sprinkle it on the oil stain.

After letting the flour sit for a few minutes to soak up the oil, she’d wipe it down with a sponge or cloth.

Holevich uses this flour trick herself, and she finds that other powder products like baking soda and baby powder also work.

Sanitizing With Bleach

Growing up, cleaning expert Mary Gagliardi remembers her grandma reaching for the bleach to tackle mold and mildew in her bathtub and shower. Without a bathroom fan, she knew she needed to stay on top of this problem spot, and bleach never failed her.

“My grandma knew she could trust bleach to clean and kill germs because by the mid-’60s, it had already been doing that for fifty years,” she says. “Not to mention that it was also used by her grandma!”

Taking a page out of her grandma’s book, Gagliardi also swears by bleach for whitening laundry, disinfecting toilets, and sanitizing baby bottles and other dishware after hand washing.

Using Fabric Towels Instead of Paper Towels

Paper towels aren’t easy on the environment or necessarily cheap. You can save money and the environment by following the lead of Holevich’s grandma and using washable fabric instead. The best part is that you don’t even have to spend a dime to build a supply of cleaning rags.

“Instead of paper towels, my grandmother used to have lots of fabric towels and cloths, some even made from old t-shirts and pillowcases, that she could wash and reuse,” she says. “They lasted a long time and saved us on household costs.”

Vinegar, Water, and Newspaper for Cleaning Glass

As a kid, professional cleaner Karly Smith vividly recalls her grandma standing at the kitchen sink and spraying her homemade solution of vinegar and water onto the windows and using a crumpled newspaper to wipe them clean.

“She always said that using newspaper left the glass streak-free and added a little shine,” Smith says.

Smith’s grandma taught her how to make do with less and keep a clean house even when life gets busy, and these lessons have greatly influenced her work as a professional cleaner.

“My grandma Charlotte, who raised three boys on her own—including my dad—was always on the go,” she says. “Whether she was vacuuming, making a perfectly made bed, or peeling eggs for a church dinner, she embodied the importance of doing it right from the start because how will you ever have time to do it over again?”