Guide to Hotel Housekeeping

by Mary E. Palmer

How linen is laundered and to be able to give a scientific reason for each step are the very first things a housekeeper should learn. No housekeeper is worthy of the title if she is unskilled in laundry tactics. Yet how few housekeepers there are that could give even a recipe for making bleach, to say nothing of the most effective way to use it so as to cause the least injury to the fabric? Few housekeepers know little or anything of the benefits of the scientific researches that have been made to render laundering easy.

The linen must be carefully sorted and counted in the linen-room by the linen-woman. In hotels where the houseman gathers the linen from the different floors and carries it direct to the laundry, the laundryman has been known to dump it in the washer without sorting it. This is the source of many a lost pillow, blanket, nightshirt, and even pocketbooks and jewelry. Guests often put their valuables under the pillow or in the pillowslip and forget them. These valuables sometimes escape the chambermaid's eyes in her haste to strip the beds. Sometimes a new waiter in the dining-room will use a napkin to wipe his tray; these greatly soiled napkins should be rinsed out before they are put in the washer.

Why the Hotel Laundry Work is Discolored.

Is it any wonder that the sheets and table-linen soon get that brown color? All the soft water in the kingdom will not bring about the desired results if the linen is not carefully sorted. The napkins should be put in one pile, those that are badly soiled with mustard or gravy in another pile, and the table-cloths in another. Napkins and table-cloths that are stained with tea, coffee, chocolate, or fruit, should be laid aside and boiling water should be poured through the stains before they come in contact with soap, as the soap will help to set the stains permanently.

The laundryman should rise early and have the first washing from the extractor before the laundrygirls make their appearance, which is usually at seven o 'clock.

The table-linen should receive the first attention. It is the least soiled, the most expensive, and it may be needed before the bed-linen. The napkins and table-cloths should not remain long after they are shaken out. They will have a finer gloss if they are mangled immediately after being taken from the extractor.

One reason that linen gets that dirty brown color is because it has not been properly rinsed before adding the blueing. The soap should be thoroughly rinsed from the linen before the blueing is put in the washer. How many hotel laundries send the linen to the linen-room damp and steaming and smelling of soap? Is it any wonder that the linen is soon full of holes and worn out?

Two tablespoonfuls of kerosene in a washing will greatly aid in cleansing, though more soap must be used in this case.

In many laundries, there is not sufficient help. There should be at least two girls employed to shake out and two at the mangles, in a 200-room house. Where there is bundle-washing it will require even more help than this.

The kitchen-linen should be washed by hand on the board and not put in the washer.