CARE OF BROOMS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1019, 7 January 1911, Page 11

CARE OF BROOMS.

If it is desired • to keep down the übiquitous germ, surely attention must' bo paid to ensuring the cleanliness of the everyday but essential household bfooms, says a writer in an Australian, paper. Dusters and floorcloths can bo scalded, but it certainly dees not improve tho brooms to treat- them tho same way; yet they arc every bit as important as cither of the former, and a naif-hour sunbath each day would bo just as effective. Yet how little attention is ordinarily bestowed on them. Generally they are popped away .into some dark corncr or cupboard as soon as they have done their duty, and there they stay for twenty-four hours or more, with all the microbes clinging to them and multiplying as fast as they can, and that is very fast indeed. Then, next day, when they aro again used, those dca'dly little creatures aro deposited all through the' living rooms of the house in. far ■ largor quantities than is at all desirable or nccessary, and it is not infrequent to see small children, oven babies, playing with brooms, and then, as is always the way with the wee inites, afterwards putting their fingers into their mouths. If mothers only realised what this might mean to their little ones, they would bo very careful indeed to keep their babies and brooms apart/. Of course, picks off the fluff, etc., that is noticed hanging to tho hair or straw; but that is not enough, as the.germs work their way to the very centre, and I have seen a single hair from a broom under a niicroscopo, literally smothered with tlieso diseasespreading agencies. Of course, there are a thousand and one other, ways of spreading disease; but I onco heard a doctor say that brooms, especially hair ones, were tho greatest germ collectors and breeders in a house. Therefore, taking that into consideration, it seems, indeed, worth while to give the brooms their regular sunbath, as tho sun is one of the most effective germ-destroy-crs, and is particularly fatal to the germs which spread consumption.