REAL SPRING CLEANING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20252, 11 May 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

REAL SPRING CLEANING.

OVERHAULING OCEAN LINERS TURNING OUT 400 CABINS. Three people are usually sufficient to spring-clean a British home —the housewife, a maid and a charwoman. It takes 1500 men to overhaul and clean a big passenger liner such as the Olympic or Mauretania.

There are something like 400 cabins in a great ship of this type, and every single one of them is turned out. Tho mattresses and pillows are examined, and, if need be, restuffed; all the furniture is thoroughly cleaned and polished, and much of it reupholstered. About forty bath-rooms are overhauled. Acres of carpets are taken up and cleaned electrically. All the cabins, as well as tho stato and assembly rooms, have to be repainted. The amount of paint used is about five tons—enough to paint all the woodwork in 150 houses of ordinary size. The electric plant of a first-class liner is as powerful as that for a town of 10,000 inhabitants, and this occupies the energies of a large staff of electricians. More than 5000 lamps have to be taken down and examined, and tho elaborate telephone system gets a complete overhaul.

The entire stock of linen has to bo examined, and every piece that is at all frayed or worn to be renewed. Since tho number of pieces carried in the presses of a liner is 36.000, this is 110 light task. Knives, forks; spoons, salt-cellars, sugar-basins, and the like number 25,000 to 30,000 All these have to be inventoried, and repaired if necessary, while any losses must be made good. The losses would horrify any house-wife, for they amount to between fifteen and twenty per cent in the course of a year. Some passengers have no conscience whatever in the matter of what they call " souvenirs.'!

So much for tho furnishing of a ship. While this work goes on the dock resounds with the clang of hammers, for the whole hull -is inspected and repaired as thoroughly as the cabins. The bottom is scraped and cleaned and coated with anti-fouling solution; the whole machinery is overhauled; the boilers are carefully cleansed.

The bill for all this is naturally heavy. Besides, cleaners' wages and cost of materials, there are dock dues, tho wages of the crew, and the overhead loss causad by £1,500,000 lying idlo for two or three weeks.