SPICANDSPAN

Spic and Span

Spic and Span is a major U.S. brand of all-purpose household cleaner, invented by housewives Elizabeth "Bet" MacDonald and Naomi Stenglein in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1933. The women experimented until they came up with a formula that included equal parts of ground-up glue, sodium carbonate, and trisodium phosphate. Stenglein observed that all the testing in her house made her home spotless, or "spick and span," which is an idiomatic term for "clean". They took the k off Spick and started selling the product in brown envelopes to local markets. From 1933 to 1944, both families helped run their "Spic and Span Products Company." ...

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