COMMON SENSE IN HOUSE-CLEANING.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 43, 24 October 1891, Page 519

COMMON SENSE IN HOUSE-CLEANING.

BY

HELEN JAY.

greatest amount of worry and ill- -- health can be avoided if the house-wife fff'' exercises common sense and system in her spring cleaning. There is a homely old saying which gives this advice : * Let your head save your feet.’ An ounce of planning saves pounds of anxiety. Before anything is attempted, provide the sinews of war, so that the campaign need not be interrupted by lack of means to prosecute it. Supply yourself with soap, sapolio, household ammonia, borax, lime, copperas, tar-paper, brushes ; cleaning, drying, and polishing cloths. Early in the season engage a man to shake your carpets and clean the garden or diminutive city yard ; fever germs and all manner of bacilli lurk in even a tiny pile of rubbish exposed to the spring sun-light. Have every inch of your out door domain carefully cleaned before you begin in the house. No muddy foot-prints and droppings from wheelbarrow or basket will then mar the result of your in-door purification. The cellar is almost invariably the best point at which to place the lever of renovation. It should be as immaculate as the drawing-room, for in it are the lungs of the house ; bad air—caused by decaying scraps of vegetable matter rising as all air does—poisons alike ‘the qneeninthe parlour and the maid hanging out the clothes.’ Therefore after the walls, ceiling, and floor have been swept, scrub them with soap and water in which a pound of copperas has been dissolved. When dry whitewash the ceilings and walls, adding to the lime another pound of dissolved copperas. It is a good plan to have a bucket of chloride of lime constantly in the cellar ; mice run away from it and it is a wonderful atmospheric purifier. From the cellar go to the garret or store-room. On some unpleasant day, long before the calendar says it is time to begin house-cleaning, look over the magazines, papers, disabled furniture, discarded garments, and household ornaments, which even twelve months accumulate so wonderfully. Be brave, and do not save an indiscriminate mass of articles against the possible needs of the seventh year of which we hear so much. Give away the best of the old garments and sell the remainder. The magazines and papers which you do not intend to have bound or to utilize in your scrap book, will be eagerly read in some hospital or other institution. Even the furniture and ornaments will greatly brighten the dreary surroundings of some poor family. A large share of the health and comfort of the home depends upon an orderly store-room where one can turn about without danger to limb and temper, and where moth and dust do not generate. Have the courage of your convictions in dealing with the contents of trunks and boxes. Dispense with non-essentials and systematize the remainder, and your reward will be a delightful sense of space and a feeling of almost physical relief. The closets should be next attended to, beginning at the top of the house and working downward to the kitchen cup boards. This work may be so interwoven with the tegular household tasks by taking one at a time as to cause no dis comfort to any member of the family. At this stage of the work it is a good plan to attend to repairs. Before the upholsterer has more than he can do, send him the mattresses which are to be remade, and the furniture which needs mending. The bedrooms can now be cleaner!. A day or so beforehand, arrange all the drawers, cleaning every ‘get-at-able ’ lurking place for dust. Wash all the washable brie abrae, and do what gilding, varnishing and polishing you deem necessary ; you will not then be so exposed to draught

and over fatigue as will fall to jour lot if you leave everything to be done at once. The first thing in the morning send the (redding and mattress into the fresh air; then clean the bedstead thoroughly with ammonia ; dust the furniture and place it in tire nearest room, and shut the door, leaving the hall free from temper trying ami timewasting obstructions. When the wood work and floor are cleaned, it will Ire sueh a comfort to feel that the furnishings are ready to be put back in their old quarters. By a little sum in division you can manage so that only part of your carpets needs beating in the spring, and it will not be necessary, as in your grandmother's day, to live on bare boards for a week. After the sleeping rooms are in order, clean the sitting-room, parlour, dining-room and, lastly, the kitchen. One factor in household comfort is too often overlooked, namely, the keeping of the range in good working order. Have it cleaned thoroughly by a man who understands the business ami can be trusted to investigate the condition of the chimneys as well. The furnace and stoves should also receive attention. A good blacking will protect the latter from summer dampness, which quickly generates rust, and a furnace in perfect condition enables you to avoid much discomfort when the autumn tires are started. Do not follow the ancient but dangerous practice of cleaning all the beds at once, then flying after all the carpets, then after all the furniture, and all tne china, from the baby’s dog to the best platter. Never disturb more than one room at a time. In brief, employ common sense.

TO CLEAN MATTING AND CARPETS. MATTING is washed with salt and cohl water, and carefully dried. Rub the very dirty spots first with water and corn-meal. If white matting has turned to a had colour it can be washed over with a weak solution of soda, which will turn it a pale butter-yellow. L’se a pint of salt to a gallon of water. Use a flannel cloth, not a brush. If a carpet is wiped over now and then with a flannel cloth wrung out of warm water and ammonia (a pail of water and a tablespoonful of ammonia), it will always look bright. It must be wiped dry with a clean cloth. After a carpet has been well shaken, it will clean and brighten it to wipe it over with a flannel cloth dipped in high-proof kerosene, and well wrung out; until perfectly dry, say for forty-eight hours, no matches or fire should be allowed in the room. Tealeaves and wet bran, sprinkled over a carpet before sweeping it, are wonderfully cleansing; but if the carpet is of delicate tints either of these will stain it. If ink is spilled on a carpet, cover it immediately with blotting paper, and renew it as soon as soiled. A velvet carpet is cleaned by sprinkling it thickly with damp bran and brushing it off with a stiff broom. Another plan for cleaning carpets after they have been beaten and laid down again, is to wash them with one pint of ox gall to a full pail of warm water. Soap a piece of flannel, dip it in the pail and rub a small part of the carpet ; then dry with a clean doth before moving to another spot. Before laying carpets have the boards scrubbed with two parts of sand, the same of soft-soap and one part of limewater. This will kill and keep away insects. To remove grease from carpets, cover the spots with flour or dry corn-meal, and pin a paper over it. Repeat the process everj’ six hours until the grease is drawn out, brushing the old flour off each time. HOW TO AIR A BED. IT is not everybody who can make a bed well. Beds should be stripped of all belongings, and left to air thoroughly. Don’t, however, leave a window open directly upon the bed and linen with a fog or rain prevailing outside. It is notuncommon to see sheetsand bedding hanging out of a window with, peihaps, rain not actually falling, but with ninety per cent, of humidity in the atmosphere, anti the person sleeping in that bed at night wonders the next day where he got his cold. A room may be aired in moist weather, but the bedding and bed must not absorb any dampness. WHEN YOUR SHOES ARE WET. GIRLS and ladies, and for that matter their husbands and brothers, are all liable to get their feet vei y wet. Then they come home, throw off their boots, forget them, and when next they are wanted, they are hard and dry, or mouldy, and only fit to be thrown away. Even if they are remembered, very few know what to do with them. Stand them up, put them in shape, and then fill them with oats, such as they feed to horses. This will, in a few hours, draw all the moisture out of the leather, keeping the boot in shape meanwhile, and leaving it soft and pliable. The oats can be used again and again. This is a relic of the days when no railroads existed, and travelling was done under difficulties, and in weather the present generation has no conception of.