Motherly talks with young housekeepers: embracing eighty-seven brief articles on topics of home interest, and about five hundred choice receipts for cooking, etc.Beecher, H. W., Mrs.
General
Motherly talks with young housekeepers: embracing eighty-seven brief articles on topics of home interest, and about five hundred choice receipts for cooking, etc.
Beecher, H. W., Mrs.
Cooking; Home economics
Windows are very difficult to keep bright and clean at this season of
the year. If there is rain or snow, it is usually followed by high
winds, which dry the streets and very soon cover the damp windows with
a storm of dust,--settling into the molding and around the sash to
such a degree that it will require much time and hard work to remove;
and even while washing them, the dust is still swept over the windows.
It is wise, when windows are so quickly and easily defaced, to wet a
clean, smooth cloth in a little whiskey or alcohol, and cleanse the
glass with it. It removes the dirt much more thoroughly and gives a
better polish to the glass than water can, and evaporates so quickly
that the dust will not so readily adhere. This may be liable to
objections on the ground of economy; but, for three or four weeks it is
much more effective, and makes the work so much easier, that we are
inclined to think it is not extravagant. Of course it must be used with
judgment. A little will be sufficient.
Now, more than any other part of the year, the ashes must be removed
from the cellar, if you have a furnace, faithfully every morning. If
allowed to accumulate, a heavy wind will send them up through the flues
and registers, to settle in the carpets or furniture, and do more
injury than the dust, because the alkali in the ashes will eat the
texture and injure the colors.
Then, again, it is important that on washing-days some attention should
be paid to the wind. It is a great trial to a methodical housekeeper to
put off the week’s washing for a day or two. It seems to derange all
the work planned for other days, and makes one feel unsettled, as if
everything was sadly out of joint. It is not at all pleasant to consent
to such innovation, but March is a tyrant, and in the end it is better
to submit to its caprices. To see all your clothes on the line at the
mercy of a real March wind, would be worse than to defer the washing
and wait for a milder day. The clothes will be more injured and worn by
one day’s snapping on the line, in a very high wind, than in weeks of
wear; and unless one has a good, roomy attic with windows at each end
to admit free air, it is wise, if not agreeable, to put the clothes in
soak, after washing, in plenty of clear water, and wait for the calm,
or defer the entire washing to that propitious moment.
Yet a good, brisk March wind, with an unclouded sky, has its
excellences. There is no better time to put blankets, carriage-robes,
and heavy winter garments out to air. If not left out too long, such
heavy articles will not be liable to so much injury, by whipping on the
lines, as cotton and linen, and it is an excellent and effective way to
free these cumbrous garments from dust and moths.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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