Don Aslett reflects on a long and storied career as Pocatello’s ‘professional cleaner’
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POCATELLO — When Don Aslett got into the cleaning business, he’d never even made his bed before. Despite this, he put out an advertisement in the local paper that said, “Don Aslett: Professional Cleaner.”
Sixty years later, the 88-year-old Pocatello man has written numerous books about cleanliness, appeared on numerous national media outlets and is the founder of the Museum of Clean at 711 South 2nd Avenue.
In a conversation with EastIdahoNews.com, Aslett says cleaning is intrinsic to our lives, but it often goes overlooked.
“Cleaning is a (hard sell),” Aslett said. “(But) I made it fun.”
Today, he’s looking back on a long and storied career and what led him to lead a clean life.
How Aslett became ‘Mr. Clean’
It all stems back to his boyhood on the family farm in Twin Falls. Here, he learned from his mother and father to keep the farm clean.
“My mother and dad are the very clean type,” Aslett said. “The corral was clean and the chicken coops were clean and everything.”
He later worked at a bottle factory for a time. His wage, combined with the type of work, left him unsatisfied, and he realized he hated working for someone else. That’s when he and his two friends started a cleanup and repair team. It became a profitable venture.
Following a brief stint at Idaho State University in 1953 and a church mission, Aslett returned home and got back into the cleanup and repair business. The advertisement he posted eventually turned into Varsity Facility Services, which provided janitorial work.
A ‘hard sell’
Throughout his career, Aslett has published 40 books on a variety of subjects related to cleaning, and he said that he’s almost done with four more. As he published book after book, he attracted attention from all kinds of media personalities, including Oprah Winfrey.
In his life, he’s made a staggering 6,000 seminar, workshop and television appearances to talk about cleaning. He said that during these appearances, interviewers would sometimes try to get off the subject of cleaning.
In some instances, interviewers would lower their voice and say “You’re a janitor?”
Aslett said the message he was promoting — how to clean faster and better — is a “hard sell.” But it’s what he was there to talk about.
“I found a way to clean faster, better and then go tell people about it on the stage,” Aslett said.
Today, Aslett’s museum is dedicated to the unappreciated history of cleaning. It’s been in its current building for 12 years, but Aslett’s collection of cleaning artifacts goes back even further than that.
‘The best collection in the world’
His collection started when he saw an exhibit at a museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which is a suburb of Detroit. About 20 years ago, he took a troop of Boys Scouts on a road trip. They were at the Fort Myers Edison Museum when Aslett saw a vacuum that didn’t need electricity to run.
Aslett was enamored with it. Collecting vacuums became a hobby. It started with only two or three, then it became 15.
“I’m gonna do this big time,” Aslett decided.
By this point, Aslett was a published author of widespread books and had a hugely successful cleaning company. He eventually ended up paying $300,000 for a Swiss man’s vacuum collection.
The more cleaning artifacts Aslett acquired, the more people heard about what he was doing.
“I had the best collection in the world,” Aslett said.
But Aslett never predicted how word would spread. People started to say there was a “crazy old man in Pocatello collecting vacuums and so people started to send me more.”
Aslett built his collection overtime until he was finally ready to unveil it. He opened up the Museum of Clean in 2011 and people from all over the world have been able to witness it.
When people first hear about his museum, he says they underestimate it. That’s partly because the development of cleaning has gone unappreciated for most of history.
“That’s what most people don’t expect. They come here and think there’s gonna be some mops and brooms,” Aslett said. “Instead, they find a whole different theme in here.”
Something Aslett has been sure to inject into not just his museum, but also his books and public speaking is humor.
“I made people laugh,” Aslett said. “I sold cleaning to people and I made it funny.”
When people walk through the museum, they’ll see more than 6,000 historical artifacts, all related to cleaning in some way. But none of this is designed in a stuffy way people might expect. Every exhibit has a quirky quality to it, that Aslett says oozes with life and character.
“You go through this museum, you’ll have a laugh all the way through it,” Aslett said.
In the future, Aslett sees expansion for the Museum of Clean. He thinks this is fitting because “there is no subject bigger than the word clean.”
“That’s the center of our universe, or center of our reason for existence — It’s got to be bigger and better,” Aslett said.
But despite his plans, it’s not clear when any new expansions would happen.
It’s been a long time since Aslett first started advertising himself as a professional cleaner. The difference between then and now is that today, he knows that he actually is one.
As Aslett walks through these halls, he’s thankful for what led him here, and excited for the growth that will come in the future.
And if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that cleanliness extends beyond the physical state of a room. It’s a principle he applies to every aspect of his life.
“Be clean — morally clean, clean language, clean arteries,” Aslett said. “Clean is a behavior problem.”