SPRING CLEANING IN PARIS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9092, 23 November 1907, Page 3

SPRING CLEANING IN PARIS.

In the hot summer days Paris is making her beds. The work is not done in stuffy workshops or city warehouses, but out in the sweet air, under the poplars, on the little strip of beach so thoughtfully left by the builders of the handsome quays by the green, swiftly-flowing Seine. From early morning to sunset the bedniakers are hard at work. You may see them combing the crisp bundles of hair on the great steel combs, while the frame at their side holds the clean, fresh linen tick waiting to be filled or refilled. Every summer the Parisian housekeeper's last care before starting for her holiday by the sea is to send for her bedmaker and arrange for her beds to be carried away and re-made in her absence. Equally careful of her carpets is madame. Early in July her rugs and carpet-squares are picked up, shaken, beaten and brushed on the balcony for the last time this season, and then sent down to her cleaner, who will make them look like new for a very moderate fee, and deposit them at the Bon Marche or some other house for storage until the autumn. In every well-kept house the landlord, in the person of his trusted concierge, will do | the same by the stair-carpet. It is sent to be cleaned first, and then 6tored till the summer is ended. In its absence the stairs are polished and rubbed to a degree of slippery cleanliness which constitutes a menace to life and limb. With a very limited staff of servants, judged by the English standard at least, and a very moderate display of soap and water, it is wonderful how scrupulously clean and dainty are the appointments of a Paris bourgeois home. The kitchen is usually a very small and cramped apartment, but it suffices to contain all that the French 'bonne or valet de chambre thinks necessary for cooking and cleaning. No kettle stands on the stove. When tea ie wanted Ambroisine or Eugenic will boil a little water in a bright metal saucepan on a 6mall gas-ring, a proceeding that seems almost like heresy to a Briton. There are deficiences, too, amongst the brooms. The English carpet-brooms are lacking; their place is taken by a flat straw brush and a carpet-beater— a flat cane utensil, shaped like an unstrung tennis racket supplemented by a bunch of feathers or of long ends of list on the end of stick for flicking, instead of dusting furniture. Very little sweeping is, in. tact, done in a Paris apartment. The carpets | are never nailed down, and are seldom very large, so that for cleaning purposes they are generally hung two or three times a week on the balcony rail and there brushed with a short handbrush and beaten ivith a light canebeater. Between six and eight on any morning in the year in Paris the courtyards and, indeed, most of the streets resound with the noise of carpet-beat-ing and to those who like to sleep late the zeal of the Parisian housekeepers seems a little exaggerated. Very special attention, too. is given every summer to the lining of the ware-robes of a Paris flat. In madame s own dressing-room she finds very dainty devices for the interior of her .armoire a glace. II the room be furnished in hgnt, washing cretonne the wardrobe will be lined throughout with the same material. Each shelf will be neatly covered above and below with the cretonne, and all along the front edge will run a narrow frill. From top to bottom the cupboard will be lined with the cretonne, drawn full and stretched tignt over back and sides and roof. It the room be upholstered m silk or tapestry, the wardrobe will be lined with silk in the colours used m the room, applied in the same way as the cretonne. In the hanging cupboard, each drew on its wire suspender will be shrouded in a cleverly-made bag ot cretonne, effectually protecting it from any dust that might penetrate to the shrine. The material for all these plenishings is furnished by the summer gales, and during August, maids and sewing-women innumerable are busy remaking and renovating such things as Nor are the walls of her flat forgotten in the summer cleaning instituted by madame in August. In the handsomer and more expensive apartments here wall-paper is of lees invariable adoption than it is in England. Very many flats are hung throughout with some sort-toned cotton, wool, or silk cloth. With electricity for lighting purposes, and steam-heat instead of open fires, such hangings are less costly in use than might be thought. The French way of cleaning a room raises very little dust inside the walls; anything dirty is carried straight out on '

to the balcony, and the parquet ie rubbed with oily cloths, which take up the dust as cleanly as po6sible. In v the summer holidays all the walls are carefully and lightly brushed ; if necessary, the hangings can be taken down and cleaned and put back into' place, and all will be in apple-pie order by the time the family is back in town for the autumn season. Finishing touches ar© applied oy the french-polisher, who rubup everything of wood that is susceptible of taking a polish — tables and buffets, panels and chairs under his hands lose all signs of use and reflect the beautitui brilliance of the parquet.