Household Hints

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 2 March 1935, Page 9

Household Hints

Things Worth Knowing

If you place onions in a pan and cover with boiling water before peeling them, your eyes will not smart. Peel them at once after doing this and you will suffer no discomfort. 'Once onions are peeled they should be cooked or used at once. A peeled- onion should never be left about for use the next day, for it has a great attraction for germs. When butter is too hard to spread, cut it up and mix it with a few tablespoonfuls of boiling milk. This softens the butter at once without oiliness. If children are'troubled with sties on the eyes, increase animal fat, such as butter, in their diet, and let them have plenty of green food. Pepper, unlike salt, gives a more piquant flavour if added to a dish just before serving instead of before cookingj

When buying soap, choose a good make. Like everything else, the best is cheapest in the end. Buy it some time before it is to be used, so that it may become dry and fairly hard. It should ke kept in a cool place. Remember that soap deteriorates if subjected to heat.

Mould is sometimes caused on jam by cooking the jam in a deep, narrow pan. instead of a wide, shallow one, so that the water more quickly boils away. Recipes are usually arranged for large, flat preserving pans. If an ordinary saucepan is used tne jam must be boiled longer. > . : j

Kitchen Curtains. Curtains in the kitchen should be made of a, material that washes well and -is" easy ’to ’ iron. .Choose a colour that is cheerful, and a patterned or checked design that does not show every stain. Strengthening Mats. Mats of ton fray at the ends through the strain of shaking. They will be strengthened if a small portion is cut off each end and the edges bound on the wrong side with carpet binding to tone, using thin string and a carpet needle. Damp the edges and press on the wrong side with a hot iron.

Brick Pireplaces. In many houses, Ted tiles and cut bricks are used for fireplaces, hearths and kitchen- floors and pantries. They look very nice when freshly put down, but in many cases they get dirty, lose their colour, and then - they are not nearly so attractive. The usual method of cleaning them, by hard scrubbing with soap and water, does not always produce the. desired result, and often takes a long time. A great improvement on the old method consists in getting the bricks perfectly clean first wflth soda water and soap, and then, when they are thoroughly dry) putting on a •coat or two of clean linseed oil with a brush. Let this dry in, and the bricks will then keep clean for a long time. They only need rubbing over with a damp leather occasionally to keep them quite bright. The linseed oil treatment •should be applied to all new bricks to keep them in good condition. Old ones will need plenty of elbow grease on them before you get down to the clean surface, when the oil can be . put -on, making them as good as new tiles.

An Economy. It sometimes happens that when two single beds are wanted in place of a douole one the change has to be dispensed with or indefinitely postponed on account of the cost. The inquirer is, in fact, surprised to learn how expensive divan beds can be, especially as the bed 'in whose place they are required has, <one is told, no purchase value. "Where the change is essential, as when it is necessitated by illness, hardship often results from the continued use of the double bed. One woman in whom a limited income has bred an almost unlimited resourcefulness found a clever way out of the difficulty. She discovered that the feet or supports for divan- beds could be bought reasonably at a cabinetmaker’s shop, and on her explaining the plan to the' cabinetmaker, he also supplied her with two lengths of twoply wood cut to the measurements of head boards. These she stained to match her bedroom suite. Two spring mattresses v/cre then bought, ana on to the frame of each of these she screwed two brackets, supplied by the cabinetmaker. -She returned the hair mattress that had served for the double bed to the makers who, with the addition of a little extra hair, made it up into single mattresses. In this way two divan beds were obtained for the

price of one, and a real economy was effected.