Success in washing well, depends very much on the abundant use of water, and it is very important to employers, who are anxious to have their clothes well washed, that they provide easy modes of getting water and of heating it. In the work of mine on Domestic
Economy, which I have before alluded to, is a plan by which, at a trifling expense, water can be raised, conducted about, and heated with far less labor than is commonly used.
Common mode of Washing.
Assort the clothes and put the white ones in soak over night, as it loosens the dirt. Next day, wash the fine clothes first, and then rub them again in a second suds, turning all wrong side out. Put them in a bag and boil them half an hour, and no more. Then rinse them in a plenty of water and throw them into the bluing water. The nicest washers use two rinse waters before the bluing water. Starch those to be stiffened, and bang them out. Then wash the common white clothes, then the calicoes, then the flannels.
Never leave calicoes long damp, or standing in water; do not wash them in very hot water, and when the water looks dingy, change it or they will look dirty. Never rub on soap, but mix it in the water so as not to have any lumps, and use hard soap. Never let calicoes freeze in
drying, and dry them wrong side out and in a shady place. All these cautions are needful to preserve the colours. Wash flannels in two suds, as hot as the hand can bear, and rinse in a hot suds. If not very dirty, two hot suds will answer.
If they are to be blued, then the rinse water must not be suds, as it makes the bluing go on in specks. Never put flannels in any but very hot water. Starch and shake them before hanging out.
Soda Washing.
This mode saves just one half the work done by the common mode.
Make the soap thus: Boil six pounds of common soda with six pounds of bar soap in thirty quarts of water two hours. Then let it grow cool, and set it away for use.