HOUSEHOLD HINTS

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 89, 22 November 1935, Page 3

HOUSEHOLD HINTS

MORE USES FOR CONDIMENTS

Your cruet is very much in evidence with summer salads, but the contents are more useful to you than just as condiments.

When cleaning clothes with spirit or cloth cleaner, add a little salt to it, and so prevent the ugly "highwater mark" usually left round the stain. Use salt and water to clean straw matting, and it will never turn yellow. The same mixture sweetens dirty bottles, if poured in and well shaken.

We all know that salted water improves a flabby lettuce, but the next time you have any soft, overripe tomatoes, put them in salted water and they will emerge fresh and rejuvenated. Damp salt cleans enamelware beautifully, while soot can be swept from the carpet when first covered thickly with dry salt. White marks on furniture, due to hot plates, should be treated with salt and olive oil mixed. Leave this on for two hours, then wipe off and polish with furniture cream. Lacquered trays should never be washed or tiny cracks will appear. Instead, clean them with a soft rag soaked in olive oil. Aluminium saucepans will last longer if they, too, are wiped over with the oil rag after washing.

Pastry will be feather-weight if a teaspoonful of olive oil and a squaeze of lemon juice is added to the mixing water. Varnished wallpaper which has become dingy will gleam anew if washed with soap and water and polished afterwards with warm oil and vinegar in equal parts. This same mixture, when cold, will conceal scratches on furniture. Rub it in until the scratches disappear, and then polish. Should your permanent wave become frizzy, try a shampoo of warm olive oil every fourth night for a week or so. Next morning, wash and set the hair, adding a cupful of vinegar to the last rinse but one. This is also an excellent cure for dandruff if used regularly once a fortnight. A little vinegar in the final rinsing water when washing dainty underwear and silk stockings gives tbem a wonderful finish and prevents ladders. Vinegar also helps when utring glue, as the quickest way to soften it is to pour a little vinegar into the glue-pot.

Mustard will restore an indoor plant suffering from a worm at the roots. Give a pint of water in which a teaspoonful of mixed mustard has been stirred. This drives out the worm and does not harm the plant.

Mixed mustard, allowed to soak in before washing, will remove inkstains from sheets, or any other white material.