The Granny’s Ways Handbook by Granny Mae

What you get

Everything on this table, the moment you pay.

The Granny's Ways Handbook laid on a kitchen table beside its three printable sheets — The Handbook and the three sheets, made to be printed and kept in a drawer.

60day
guarantee

If it is not what you hoped for, you keep the book and I send the $50 back. Email me inside 60 days and the refund goes out the same day. I am not going to ask you why.

The Granny’s Ways Handbook. 234 pages, 37 chapters, one jar at a time$50
The Kitchen-Drawer Card. The 12 mixes you’ll use most, with the amounts, on one page$27
Don’t Do This. 15 old tricks that can hurt you, and what to do instead$32
The Shopping List. What to buy, what it costs, what one jar stands in for$22
Altogether$131

$79 $50 once · not a subscription

Launch price until Sunday night. One call-out you don’t have to make is worth four of these.

Get the Handbook · $50

Downloads arrive by email straight away. Read it on the tablet, or print it.

The math

What the cupboard under your sink costs you every year.

Pull out everything under there and add up what you paid. Here is what an average household spends on the part these four things replace: laundry and cleaning products, paper goods, and the odds and ends.

Every year	The bottles	The cupboard four
Cleaning and laundry products, paper goods, odds and ends	$617.30	$34.51
Wearing out a fridge and a washer on schedule One extra year each, from looking after them	$135.05	$123.93
This book, paid once, in the first year only	$0	$50.00
First year	$752.35	$208.44

That is a difference of $543.91 in the first year, and about $593 every year after, once the book is paid for.

Now the honest part, because you would find it out anyway. That figure depends on how many of these you actually do. I have left out heating, home repairs and anything to do with haircuts, because I could not find a straight number that ties them to what is in this book, and I am not going to invent one to make the total look better.

Or look at it the other way.

Here is what one call you don’t have to make costs, at this year’s prices.

The call you didn’t make	What it costs	Times the book
Washing machine repair	$220	4.4×
A drain unblocked	$246	4.9×
Chimney swept	$254	5.1×
Refrigerator repair	$275	5.5×
A plumber	$340	6.8×
A new refrigerator	$768.99	15.4×

Even the smallest line there is more than four times the price of the book. That is the whole argument. It does not need dressing up.

Get the Handbook · $50

What’s inside

Thirty-seven chapters, one jar at a time.

Not room by room. Ingredient by ingredient, the way you actually reach for them, because once you know what a thing is, you stop needing a separate spray for every surface in the house. It is the same way I film: one job at a time, start to finish. You do not have to do all of them.

Two chapters

Before you start

What’s actually in the cupboard, and what each thing is for
How I test a trick before I trust it

Five chapters

One box of baking soda

12 things one box replaces
The burnt pot, rescued
Smells: the fridge, the bin, the shoes, the drain
Scrubbing without scratching, and where soda is wrong
The laundry jobs soda does better than powder

Five chapters

One bottle of white vinegar

What 5 percent means, and when to water it down
Windows, kettles and shower heads
The stains it lifts and the three it sets
Vinegar in the wash
Never mix vinegar with these

Three chapters

A box of salt

Cast iron, and why soap was never the enemy
Spills, scorches and the red wine myth
Ice, drains and the jobs salt is genuinely best at

Four chapters

The jar of petroleum jelly

What it is, what it isn’t, and where I won’t put it
Hinges, zippers and drawers, and why the fridge seal wants wax, not jelly
Leather, patent shoes and handbags that crack
Heels, hands and lips, and what to use instead if you’d rather not

Three chapters

Old materials, modern substitutes

Newspaper is gone. What cleans glass now
Bar soap, candle stubs and a length of wool
The brands they trusted, and what’s left of them

Three chapters

The oils

Which oil for which job
Wood, furniture and the shine that lasts a week
Lashes, cuticles and skin, with the cautions

Four chapters

Making things last

Squeaks, sticks and things that won’t shut
Shoes, boots and the salt line
Pans, knives and the tools you’d otherwise replace
The ten-minute round that saves a repair bill

Two chapters

Warmth without the bill

Draughts, doors and the cost of a cold room
The house sweater, wool socks and warm feet

Four chapters

Skin, feet and hands at seventy

Cracked heels that come back every winter
Hands that wash twenty times a day
Itch, dryness and when it is not a home job
What the doctor actually said about it

Two chapters

Things I won’t tell you to do

Old tricks that were never safe
When to stop and call somebody

Why you can trust the rest of it

Four places this book argues against itself.

A book like this is easy to write badly. You list forty tricks, you promise they all work, and you never mention the ones that don’t. I would rather lose the argument on a page than have you find out at your own sink.

The scouring powder is cheaper than baking soda. Per scrub, it genuinely is. So the case against it in this book is bleach and scratching, not money.
The fridge seal does not want petroleum jelly. It is the tip I get asked about most. The rubber does not get on with it, and the people who make fridges say wax. Your instinct to look after the seal was right; the jar was wrong.
The open box in the fridge was an advertising idea from 1972. Not something your grandmother did. What actually works is the paste, on the thing itself.
Salt does not lift red wine. It has been tested properly, and salt is what the dye trade uses to drive colour into cotton.

A cupboard under a kitchen sink crowded with a dozen half-used branded cleaning sprays — A dozen bottles, most half used, and four of them doing a job one box already did.

What people say

Sixty years of housekeeping, and they still add to it.

Word for word, from people who grew up with these tricks. The loudest thing under every video about the old ways is somebody adding the part the video missed. That part is what this book is made of.

Marlene K. · Ohio

★★★★★

“Thanks. I remember these. But you forgot one that we always used. Put a little Vaseline on pattern leather shoes, and purses. It saved them from cracking.”

Chapter 18 is that trick, with the amounts.

Vona T. · Kentucky

★★★★★

“Brought back many memories. The only remedy for drawers that wouldn’t slide easily we used and still use is a candle rubbed along the slide. I’m still smiling at 93.”

Cheryl A. · Missouri

★★★★★

“My GMA always said ‘it takes grease to cut grease’ so she put a small dab of Vaseline on any grease spot rubbed it in real good and the grease spot came right out.”

Blanca R. · Texas

★★★★★

“Burnt pots and pans. I have learn use vinegar and baking soda instead all these cleaners you buy. Money is to hard to come by. Thank You.”

Andrew M. · Oregon

★★★★☆

“Good stuff, but it still is petroleum.”

He is half right. Chapter 16 gives him the whole answer, including the number most people leave out.

Judy P. · Maine

★★★★★

“Nope! newspaper for glass cleaning! coffee filters are WAY TOO EXPENSIVE!”

So I priced all three. Store-brand filters come to about 22 cents for twelve windows.

Comments left under videos about the tricks in this book, quoted word for word.

Granny Mae at her kitchen sink, scrubbing a burnt saucepan with baking soda

Who is telling you this

I’m Granny Mae.

I’ve kept house for fifty-odd years, and I’ve never once paid somebody else to do it for me. I’ve been writing down how I do every job in this house for near on forty years, and my family finally made me put it in a book. This is it.

My videos show you the job. The book is the part I can never fit into one: the amounts. A video can tell you baking soda cleans a sink. It cannot easily stop and tell you it is two level tablespoons, that a one-pound box does about eight sinks, that it will not touch heavy baked-on grease, and that it is the wrong thing entirely for an aluminium pan.

Every price in it was checked this August. Every warning in it is there because somebody got hurt doing the thing without one.

The offer

$50 once. No subscription. Yours forever.

You have spent enough of your life paying monthly for things that used to be one-off. This is not one of those. You buy it, you download it, it is yours, and nobody bills you again.

$79$50once

The Handbook, 234 pages, 37 chaptersPDF
The Kitchen-Drawer Card1 page, print it
Don’t Do This1 page, print it
The Shopping List1 page, print it

Get the Handbook · $50

If it is not what you hoped for, email me inside 60 days and I send the $50 back the same day. Keep the book. I am not going to ask you to delete a file.

Questions people ask

Before you buy.

Isn’t all of this free on YouTube?

Most of the tricks, yes, and my videos will stay free. The amounts, no. A video tells you soda cleans a burnt pan; it does not tell you two to three inches of water and a quarter cup, simmer, switch off, and leave it. This is my channel with the measurements put back in, in order, in one place, with the warnings attached to the tricks that need them.

Is this a book, or something on a screen?

It is a PDF you download the moment you pay. Read it on a tablet or a computer, or print it. It is set 6 by 9 inches like a real book, and the three bonus sheets are made to be printed and kept in a drawer. There is no app and nothing to log into.

I’m not handy. Is it going to be over my head?

No. It is written the way I would say it across a kitchen table. Where a job genuinely needs a licensed person (gas, anything inside the electrical panel, a roof, old pipe lagging) the book says so plainly and tells you what the call costs, rather than talking you into something on a ladder.

I rent. Is it still worth it?

Most of it, yes. The cleaning, the laundry, the pans, the skin chapters and the draught-proofing all work in a rented place. The parts about appliances and gutters are for whoever owns the building.

I’m on a fixed income. Talk me out of it.

Fair. Do not buy it if you already own the four things and already know your amounts. You would be paying for tidiness. Do buy it if your cupboard is full of bottles you re-buy, or if you have ever thrown out a pan, a boot or an appliance that a ten-minute habit would have kept. If it does not earn the $50 back, ask for it back inside 60 days.

Is there more coming?

Yes. A laundry volume and a kitchen volume, and a printed edition that will lie flat on a counter. Buy this one and you get first word and a lower price on those. This book stays yours either way.

Four cheap things do the work of forty bottles.

Everything on this table, the moment you pay.

What the cupboard under your sink costs you every year.

Or look at it the other way.

Thirty-seven chapters, one jar at a time.

Before you start

One box of baking soda

One bottle of white vinegar

A box of salt

The jar of petroleum jelly

Old materials, modern substitutes

The oils

Making things last

Warmth without the bill

Skin, feet and hands at seventy

Things I won’t tell you to do

Four places this book argues against itself.

Sixty years of housekeeping, and they still add to it.

I’m Granny Mae.

$50 once. No subscription. Yours forever.

Before you buy.

Stop re-buying forty bottles that four could do.

Before you go, the smallest number on the page.