Boxy Colonial On the Road

Family RV Travel with Four Boys and Three Dogs

  • About
  • Boxy Colonial Travel Posts
  • Contact
  • The House Blog
  • Where We’ve Been

Visiting the Museum of Clean in Pocatello, ID

February 14, 2018 by kokotg Leave a Comment

Pin43
Share
Tweet
43 Shares

Travel date: June 23, 2017

Way back when we first started planning our cross-country trip, we put two quirky-sounding museums in Idaho on our tentative itinerary: the Idaho Potato Museum and the Museum of Clean. I’m not kidding when I say that my kids were as excited about the Museum of Clean as they were about pretty much anything else on the trip. At some point we had to shift things around and the potato museum didn’t make the cut. This made the kids a little sad. But when we talked about also cutting out the Museum of Clean there was an all out revolt. Okay, FINE! we said.

We had a 282 mile drive that day, leaving Grand Teton and heading for Arco, Idaho. The Museum of Clean closed at 5. But we left early and made good time, and we were on track to have a good 2 1/2 or 3 hours to spend at the Museum of Clean.

Until we hit the traffic. Now, we’re not new to traffic. We live near Atlanta. We used to live in Boston. We were recent veterans of a two hour bison jam in Yellowstone. But our introduction to Idaho featured the worst traffic we’d ever seen in our lives.

As near as we could tell, some sort of planned closure had one lane shut down, but then an accident of some sort happened and shut down the remaining lane, so there was nowhere for anyone to go for a good long time. It was terrible. It was also very, very hot that day, and our van’s AC–which works just great under normal circumstances–is fairly useless when the van’s not moving. UGH.

By the time we made it to the museum (after some nerve-wracking maneuvering through town. Don’t trust your GPS!) we had only about an hour until closing time. Fortunately, the fine people at the Museum of Clean did their best to help us pack as much into our hour as possible, and we had a fabulous visit.

The website specifies that they have RV parking; the parking lot out front was mostly empty while we were there so we were able to just park off to the side in the main lot. I think they might have a separate lot to direct people to when things are busier.

Museum of Clean, Pocatello, ID

So the Museum of Clean is…exactly what it sounds like: it’s a museum dedicated to all things clean and cleaning related. Like, for example, the world’s largest privately owned collection of vacuum cleaners. It’s a labor of love from museum founder and, clearly, lover of clean things, Don Aslett.

Admission is $6 for adults, $5 for kids 3-11, or $20 for a family of 2 adults and 3 kids.

Your museum admission includes a guided tour, and I highly recommend you take advantage of this rather than just wandering amidst the vacuums on your own, wondering what exactly you’re looking at. Museum director, Brad, gave us our tour, hitting just the highlights since we had so little time. The tour was full of interesting anecdotes, audience participation, and terrible jokes. We even won one of Don Aslett’s books! (I think everyone wins one).

Abe and Gus were vacuumed:

vacuum me at the Museum of Clean

More vacuums:

worlds largest vacuum collection

A band made out of cleaning things:

world's only orchestra of clean

There’s a floor devoted to more kid friendly stuff, with lots of hands-on activities:

Plus another kids’ play area inside this giant green globe thing:

And, of course, a photo opp with the world’s largest janitor:

worlds largest janitor at the museum of clean

After more than a week spent soaking up majestic mountains and impressive geysers and whatnot at Yellowstone and Grand Teton, the Museum of Clean was a charming change of pace. We loved it so much that we all bought T-shirts in the gift shop (Abe’s features the World’s Largest Janitor himself). Highly recommended stop if you’re passing through the area (even better if you don’t have to battle the World’s Largest Traffic Jam to get there!)

Visiting the museum of Clean in Pocatello, ID

Share this:

  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
Pin43
Share
Tweet
43 Shares

Filed Under: 2017 Cross Country Trip, idaho, museums and attractions

« Colter Bay RV Park in Grand Teton National Park: Campground Review
Craters of the Moon National Monument and the Arco KOA »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badgeShow more posts

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Welcome! Stick around for posts about family travel, mostly of the RV variety, with our 4 boys and 3 dogs

Want to know when there's a new post?

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. I won't bug you with anything else--just a quick note when there's a new post!

Categories

  • 2017 Cross Country Trip
  • 2018 East Coast Road Trip
  • 2019 UK/Ireland Trip
  • 2021 New England
  • 2021 New England (et. al) Trip
  • 2022 Mountains
  • 2023 Newfoundland Trip
  • 2024 Canadian Cities Trip
  • 52 Hike Challenge
  • Alabama
  • and More Mountains Trip
  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • beaches
  • california
  • Campground Reviews
  • Canada
  • caves
  • Colorado
  • connecticut
  • DC
  • Disney
  • England
  • florida
  • Georgia
  • hiking
  • idaho
  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • iowa
  • Ireland
  • kentucky
  • London
  • maine
  • massachusetts
  • MIchigan
  • missouri
  • montana
  • museums and attractions
  • national parks
  • Nebraska
  • New Brunswick
  • New Hampshire
  • New Mexico
  • new york
  • Newfoundland
  • north carolina
  • North Dakota
  • Nova Scotia
  • Ohio
  • Ontario
  • oregon
  • pennsylvania
  • Prince Edward Island
  • restaurants
  • RVs
  • South Carolina
  • south dakota
  • summer 2016 east coast trip
  • Tennessee
  • Texas
  • Trailer mods and decorating
  • Trip Planning
  • Uncategorized
  • Utah
  • Vermont
  • virginia
  • West Virginia
  • Wyoming

Copyright © 2025 · Metro Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in