Nothing should be put into ashcans except ashes. Garbage is the waste from food, or any substances which are wet or subject to decomposition. Trash is papers, cans, bottles, egg shells, glass, hair, dust, broken objects of all sorts and kindred things. This class may have to be subdivided several times for the convenience of people who remove it, but the three main divisions in house waste are made not on account of requirement but for the sake of neatness and decency.
For all these things it is preferable to have covered cans; for garbage it is necessary. In a house, ashcans will usually be kept in the cellar convenient to the furnace. Trash receptacles can be kept there also. They should be covered, and large enough to hold the trash without spilling. Garbage cans should be kept outside the house if possible. Often a little place can be built for them close to the back door, enclosed in an area or on a back porch. Such an enclosure needs some means of ventilation and should be periodically scrubbed, then disinfected with chloride of lime or some such thing. In flats or apartments, where the garbage can must be kept in the kitchen, it is a good plan to wrap the garbage in many thicknesses of newspaper and put these bundles into the can. When this method is employed the can is less unpleasant and less difficult to clean. This cleaning is disagreeable work but it must be done or the can will become exceedingly offensive. One is fortunate if such work may be done out of doors. First rinse the can with cold water and, if necessary, assist the process with a wad of newspaper tied on a stick. Pour the rinse-water on the ground or through a sink strainer. Then pour into the can a liberal allowance of hot water and put some strong washing powder into it. Rub the sides and bottom of the can with an old brush or broom kept for the purpose. Pour out the water, rinse the can with clean water and ammonia and begin its usefulness again by putting into it the contents of the sink-strainer or the scraps that you gather off the ground where the first rinse-water was poured.
The disposal of various forms of house waste in country places usually requires more care and attention than the same matter in cities and town. One gets little outside help, and the customary methods are often untidy and unsanitary.
Water may be poured on grass or flower beds or on the ground, if one is careful not to put it in the same place with any frequency. Soapy water thrown on garden paths will help to keep the weeds from growing. Water from an ice-cream freezer is good for the same purpose. Wash water, or water carried down from bedrooms should never be thrown on a vegetable garden. One cannot be sure that the earth, and the air, and the rain will take up the impurities soon enough to keep the vegetables from being contaminated.
Some garbage can be buried; some can be burned. A weekly bonfire is an excellent thing in places where there is no regular means for disposing of waste. Into it can go most of the trash and some of the garbage in the shape of vegetable husks and parings, and other things not very moist.
A little care on the part of the housewife will make an outdoor closet an entirely sanitary convenience. It should be made as cleanly as possible inside and out by means of paint or calcimine, and frequent scrubbing of all its wooden fittings. One of these fittings should be a good-sized box with a scoop or fire shovel to go with it. This box should be kept filled with earth—not ashes—of which a liberal quantity should be put down the closet whenever it has been used. An earth closet, as it is called, if carefully looked after, is never offensive. No waste water should ever be emptied down such a closet, and depth should not be obtained by digging out the ground under the building, because rain water will gather in the depression thus made. The interior of the closet should be shallow and earth-covered. These two characteristics make frequent removals of the contents necessary; this is troublesome but sanitary.
FIRES
To make and manage fires one must understand them. They are simple and easy to understand, but they are also capable of giving a person who is unacquainted with their ways great trouble and anxiety.
A Wood Fire.—A wood fire on the hearth is the simplest one in a house. Can you make it? One must have in the first place, a hearth, a flue and a draught. The hearth is merely a place in the floor laid with stone or brick to put the fire on. A flue is a chimney or a part of a chimney over the hearth to carry off the smoke and to increase the draught. The desperate aborigine who sprang up weeping and choking with smoke and chopped a hole in his new bark roof, discovered that it not only let out the smoke but made the fire burn better. It made a draught. The draught is the air that draws up the chimney. It is caused chiefly by the fact that warm air rises. The air in a room draws up the chimney if it is warmer than outside air, and when a fire is lighted and the air at the bottom of the chimney becomes very hot, it draws up hard and quickly. Sometimes when a fire smokes people say, "The chimney is cold," that is, the chimney is so cold that the hot air ascending becomes chilled and heavy before it reaches the top of the chimney, and does not draw out hard and quickly enough to make a strong draught. So the smoke stays down instead of going up, and the fire does not burn well. The remedy is to burn as much paper and light, dry wood on the hearth as you can until the chimney is warmed a little.
If there are a hearth, a flue and a draught, the next thing to observe is whether there are ashes on the hearth from a former fire. If there are a few, brush them together into a neat, flat pile under the flue and against the back of the chimney. If there are many, remove some, but never all unless you do not expect to have a fire again for a long time. Ashes hold heat. They are soon warmed by the new fire, and help to keep the coals hot. Just as a "cozy" keeps heat in a tea pot and a fur coat keeps heat in you.