Your oil-cloth should never be scrubbed with a brush, and on no account use soapsuds or hot water. It has a bad effect on the paint, and the cloth will not last as long. After sweeping, wash with soft flannel and lukewarm or cold water. Let the oil-cloth get thoroughly dry; then prepare a small bit of bees-wax, softened with a little turpentine, and rub the cloth well with this preparation, using for that purpose a soft furniture polishing-brush. This need not be done every week, but whenever the oil-cloth grows dingy. Cared for in this way, it will last twice as long as with the ordinary scrubbing, and always look fresh and new. A less troublesome way, but not quite so effective, is to wash the oil-cloth, after sweeping and washing with flannel and warm water, with sweet skim-milk, and then rub very dry with a clean dry cloth. Wipe straight one way of the cloth, not round and round, as that will give a cloudy, unpleasant look to the cloth. When clothes have become yellow or of a bad color from poor washing or from lying unused some time, it is well to take them, after boiling, from the first suds and spread on the grass to bleach, while another boilerful is being washed. When the second is put on to boil, take up those that have been bleaching on the grass and rinse faithfully through two generous rinsing waters; the last water to be blued. Then pass through the wringer, starching such as need it in hot starch, unless you prefer to wait till you fold them, and hang up to dry. Then take the second lot from the boiler, and leave on the grass to bleach, while you get the coarser articles washed and on to boil. This done, take up the second, rinse and hang out, and so on till all the white clothes are on the line. Most servants object to the bleaching, and they wash all the white clothes and leave them wrung out in piles in the baskets till all are washed, before they hang up anything. This is poor work. The clothes become yellow and streaked by lying in coils as they come from the wringer, and under such management it is impossible to make them look clear and white. The sooner they are on the line after passing through the last rinsing, the clearer the clothes will be, and if well snapped as they are hung up, and pulled straight and evenly on the line, one finds compensation for the little extra trouble--and it is very little--in the greater ease with which they can be folded and ironed. It is well to bleach clothes while washing, all through the pleasant weeks of spring, summer, and fall, as it can be so much better done than in winter. One hour on the clean grass before rinsing is long enough. It is not well to leave clothes out overnight when it can be helped, as they are liable to be trampled over by cats and dogs during the night, or be spotted by the drip of the dew or fogs from the trees or vines.