Where a regular maid is in charge of the linen room, she can usually, in addition to the general care of the linen, make up new material. The cutting of new goods is a matter for the housekeeper’s personal supervision. Each new lot of linen that is laid on the shelves for general use should be added to her inventory. Under the heading of “Discarded Linen” in her linen account book, she can mark each piece she lays aside as old linen, and by reckoning up each month the new linen that is added, and the discarded linen, can readily keep account of the amount in general use. In buying linen for a hospital it is questionable economy ever to buy cheap material. Towels and spreads should always be without fringe.
Shelf Management
In placing linen on the shelves of a general linen room some method will be found advantageous. If the rule is to lay towels and pillow covers on the shelves in piles of twenty, sheets and spreads and gowns in piles of a dozen, it is but the work of a few minutes to take an inventory of the contents of the linen room. If, in buying linen, the housekeeper has taken pains to secure glass towels with some distinctive pattern or coloring, it will be easy to keep the kitchen, diet kitchen and ward glass towels in separate piles. Red and white check toweling for the kitchen, blue and white check for the diet kitchen, and plain white toweling with a single stripe on the edge, for the ward glass towels, is a distinction easy to secure in any place. Face towels for patients can be secured with red border and for nurses and officers with blue.
Laundry Bags
Each nurse should be instructed to bring with her two laundry bags—one to be kept in her room to receive soiled linen, the other to be sent to the sorting room, to remain till the clean clothes are returned in it. A list of the articles contained should be pinned to each bag to facilitate the sorting of the clean clothes and for reference. It is needless to state that all nurse’s clothing should be marked with her full name. Initials may be sufficient marking in a home, but are useless in a hospital. If it can be brought about (and it can by insisting on it), it will be found that a uniform system of marking nurses’ clothing will be a great saving of time in sorting. To have a pile of thirty or forty nightdresses to sort and put in bags, and find no two marked in the same place, making it necessary to unfold every garment and look it over on all sides to find the mark, is an unnecessary trial and waste of time for whoever has the sorting to do. If each garment were marked on the under side of the front, which is usually folded on top, to sort them would be an easy matter. To return clothing without being washed, when the nurse has not marked it properly, is the only way to teach nurses, who are habitually careless in their marking.
Printed laundry lists should be furnished for the sorting room, duplicate lists of each lot of clothes sent to the laundry being made. One list goes to the head laundress, the other is retained in the sorting room for reference.
HOUSEKEEPER’S LINEN ACCOUNT BOOK
| Date | Supplies Purchased | Supplies Received | Value | Remarks |