SPRING CLEANING BY FRENCH WOMEN

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 133, 7 June 1937, Page 11

SPRING CLEANING BY FRENCH WOMEN

Not Such a Vice As in England. l \ i i (Bv ROSE PATTERSON.) ! PARIS, May S. ' Spring cleaning:, so dear to tlie heart of the English housewife, is not at all the same thing to her French counterpart.. The myriad of domestic uproars in cloudy disturbances of dust and the • piling high of furniture in every place j but the customary and comfortable one ; have almost come to an end across the Channel, to the joy of the English husband. Here, however, gentler disturbances of much the same seasonal nature are still under way. The French housewife, with her vacuum cleaner, brushes and dusters, erupts rather more violently once a week than the English, instead of becoming one ten-ible volcano each spring, but there is one matter, and that very important, in which the former has a great upheaval before summer comes. This is in the matter of beds. Workers i down by the Seine may be seen disentangling the stuffing of their clients' beds. The housewife generally weighs the contents before sending it to be freshly picked out, to ensure getting all the precious bedding back again, and the really careful household will not send away its beds, which last a lifetime once bought. Instead a room will be | set apart, as is done in the smaller hotels, for the process of remaking the i mattresses and sewing the wool up again in the cases. Even the humblest French bed represents annual hours and days of careful picking and teasing about with subsequent resewing, to ensure its comfort. The modern Frenchwoman, though she does not collect the quantity of housebold goods her grandmother did, overhauls her house linen at this time of year, sewing on tapes and buttons, counting out and tying up in beribboned bundles her napkins, sheets and towels, and relining daintily the shelevs of her linen cupboard. Even the smallest hole in a kitchen teaclotli is carefully darned. Every shabby chaircover is now the subject of grave inspection; where it cannot be exchanged for new it will be dyed and newly trimmed. The same process, too, will' be applied to the window curtains when shabby rooms have been redecorated and painted. China cupboards receive their share of inspection and the kitchen utensils down to the last saucepan, as well as every brush and duster, are scrutinised and their lease of life renewed or cancelled. (N.A.N. A.).