Copperas Water: Dissolve a heaping tablespoonful of copperas in a gallon of boiling water. Pour through drains, sinks, or into gutters. Sprinkle bad-smelling places plentifully with it and spray it over green-scummed pools. It is an ideal disinfectant—cheap, odorless, and effectual, withal safe.
IV
CHINA, GLASS, AND FURNITURE
Washing Fine China: Never soak fine china, never wash it with scouring-soap, soap powder, nor yellow-resin soap. Unless very greasy clean with borax water. Wipe and scrape off as much soil as possible before washing. Have the water pleasantly warm—boiling water is ruinous. Rinse water should be a trifle hotter than the suds. Except in emergencies, never put on any sort of soap. Put only a few pieces at a time into the suds, wash, rinse, and stand to drain. Have a thick cloth on the draining-board—with very thin ware have another thick cloth over the pan bottom. Change suds as they grow dirty. Add hot water from time to time. Even temperature is the thing. Wipe with soft clean towels after draining well, but before the ware is dry. Wash things in sets; as dried lay a paper napkin between, and set away the pile upon something soft. Squares of Turkish toweling are excellent.
Use a soft thick brush for relief or incised decorations or lace edges. Dip it lightly in powdered borax or white soapsuds and rub steadily but not too hard. Set things which have held milk, creams, thick soups, sauces, or gelatine compounds in clear warm water for three minutes, and rub away as much of what sticks to them as possible before putting them into the suds. Soap combined with milk or gelatine makes the water slimy, the ware sticky. Boiling water sets either milk or gelatine. If possible, rinse and wash things soiled with them as soon as empty. In wiping do not rub gilt borders—rather pat them dry.
Burnish half yearly with a swab of sifted whiting tied in soft silk. Intricate gilding may have the whiting sifted on while damp and brushed off after drying. In storing keep sets and sizes together. Set things so they will not jostle nor clatter nor tip. Stand platters on edge in a special grooved shelf, the biggest at the back. If piled, put something between, less to save breakage than to prevent a possible chipping of glaze. Things bought in cases should be stored in them, the cases set in drawers or on low shelves. High setting invites dropping and ruinous breakage.
Ironstone and Majolica: Wash in warm (not hot) suds, with a clean soft cloth, rinse in hotter water, and wipe almost immediately. Beware of chipping, beware also of cracking glaze by setting in heat or boiling water. Such ware is porous enough to take up grease and other things. Cracked or chipped dishes should not be used except to hold things like raw fruit, bread, sandwiches, or dry stores.
Gilt and Cut Glass: Remove cream or jelly with a quick rinse, wash in suds or borax water, a little more than blood-warm, using a clean soft brush on the cuttings. Have a cloth on the pan bottom if the cutting is deep, the article of good size. Use white soap—resin soaps get into fine lines and stay there. Pass from suds into a hotter rinse water, turn over and about, lift, turn upside down, then plunge into another water a very little hotter. If the ware is very white, the third water should have salt in it—a tablespoonful to the gallon. With glass less white, put blueing in the third water, turn about, and set upside down upon a thick cloth for three minutes, then put in a box and sift over hot fine sawdust—“jeweler’s sawdust” if possible, else dust with fine whiting, set in a warm (not hot) place and leave till dry. Brush off sawdust or whiting with a stiff brush, polish lightly with soft old silk, and store when fully cool.
Glass with silver inlay or incrustation must be rubbed after washing with a chamois skin dipped in whiting. Clean decanters and claret jugs by putting inside either a few buckshot and shaking them about in a cupful of tepid water dashed with ammonia, or else lightly folded squares of stiff brown paper with barely enough ammonia water to moisten. These remove wine incrustations. If the stains are obstinate, fill the decanter with tepid water, add a pinch of borax, and let it stand. Tiny pills of whiting wet up with alcohol and ammonia, dried, dropped inside, and shaken about, then dissolved out with tepid water, leave the insides clear and bright. So do crushed egg shells.
Wash gilt and Bohemian glass—indeed, any fancy glass—with a very soft brush and tepid white suds, rinse in hotter water, drain almost dry, then polish with absorbent cotton dipped lightly in powdered whiting. Iridescent and bubble glass should not be wiped. Drain instead, and polish when ready to use with a wisp of cotton. Cameo glass, or any with patterns in relief, must be washed with a stiff brush, in weak suds, rinsed thoroughly, and dried in gentle, steady heat rather than wiped.