Skip to Main Content

Antique cleaning machine.

Idaho Polishes for World's Largest Cleaning Museum

For years, Pocatello, Idaho, has been known as a "The Gate City," because people pass through it on the way to somewhere more interesting. That reputation may be swept away in 2008, when businessman Don Aslett opens the world's largest Cleaning Museum. It will be housed in a five-story, 50,000 square foot building in the city's warehouse district, and Aslett is spending a reported $6 million on the project. "When you hear Pocatello," he told the Idaho State Journal, "you're going to think clean."

The Cleaning Museum will be in Pocatello because that's where Aslett began his cleaning business. He has become a multimillionaire as a result, and has been collecting cleaning antiques as a hobby since the 1980s. For years he's displayed a tiny fraction of them at his cleaning company headquarters, which is only eight blocks away from the new museum. His collection totals over 6,000 items, and it's time to give them a space that can be, well, properly cleaned.

This and more awaits at the Cleaning Museum.

The museum will be much more than exhibits of historic sanitizing equipment, according to curator Jerilynn Mecham. It will explore the evolution of cleaning, and trace the often difficult obstacles that humankind has surmounted in its relentless quest to be clean, or something like that. "I'm not real sure what's going into it yet 'cause we're still working on it," she told us. But the specifics, when we could pin them down, sound impressive.

Jerilynn spoke of a "huge steel ball, 28 feet in diameter" inside the building that will house Kid's World, where children will learn why and how to be clean. She mentioned a fine art room "dedicated to the theme of clean," and a giant model of Noah's Ark, because the purpose of the Flood was to "cleanse the earth" with water. "With our research," she told us, "we're learning that Noah just didn't take every animal, he took CLEAN animals."

The museum's "Walk of Time," according to Jerilynn, will include neck yokes so that people can feel what it was like to carry water. "Don has been fascinated that our World War II GIs cooked and bathed out of their helmets," Jerilynn said, so the museum will examine that as well. A "Where to Go When On the Go" exhibit will feature a ship's toilet from the early 1900s, a jailhouse toilet, an outhouse, and Queen Victoria's portable pot. "I went through quite a quest to get an airplane toilet," Jerilynn told us, and now the museum has several of them.

Don Aslett owns the largest pre-electric, hand-pump vacuum cleaner collection in the world -- over 300 -- and these will also be displayed, including examples the public can operate for themselves. Jerilynn is especially proud that the museum will exhibit the world's first powered vacuum cleaner, run by a propane motor (which still works) and hauled around on a horse-drawn wagon because it was so heavy.

The 90-year-old-building that will house Don Aslett's Cleaning Museum is being transformed into a state-of-the-art "green" facility, because conservation and recycling are "all part of the clean concept," according to Jerilynn. "We need to break away from using so much toilet paper," she told us.

The Cleaning Museum was originally scheduled to be open by now, but Jerilynn confessed that getting the proper permits, and cleaning out the old building in a responsible, green way, has taken longer than anticipated. Can we expect to visit the new Cleaning Museum by the summer of 2008? "Don is a huge optimist," Jerilynn said, "but I think we're a year out."

March 2009: The new museum is still not open, but Don Aslett promises that it "will likely open later this year." The old museum at Aslett's Cleaning Center is still open, but neatness freaks who want to see the new one will have to wait a little longer....

[12/09/2007]

Don Aslett's Cleaning Center

Address:
711 S. 2nd Ave., Pocatello, ID
Directions:
Southwest side of town near the train tracks. On the west side of S. 2nd Ave. between E. Carter and E. Lovejoy Sts.
Hours:
T-Sa 10-5 (Call to verify) Local health policies may affect hours and access.
Phone:
208-236-6906
Admission:
Adults $6.
RA Rates:
Major Fun
Save to My Sights

Latest from Trunkations, the RoadsideAmerica.com Blog

    More Blog

    My Sights

    My Sights on Roadside America

    Map and Plan Your Own Roadside Adventure ...Try My Sights

    Mobile Apps

    Roadside America app: iPhone, iPad Roadside America app for iPhone, iPad. On-route maps, 1,000s of photos, special research targets! ...More

    Roadside Presidents app: iPhone, iPad Roadside Presidents app for iPhone, iPad. POTUS landmarks, oddities. ...More

    Sight of the Week

    Sight of the Week

    Easter Island Moai in America (Mar 25-31, 2024)

    SotW Archive

    USA and Canada Tips and Stories

    More Sightings