Motherly talks with young housekeepers / embracing eighty-seven brief articles on topics of home interest, and about five hundred choice receipts for cooking, etc.

by Mrs. H. W. Beecher

If there were no other reason for patient continuance in well-doing, notwithstanding all discouragements, the injury done to carpets and furniture would be a good and sufficient one. With the strong March winds the dust is so thoroughly sifted into the threads of carpets, and into the moldings and ornaments of furniture, that if not very often removed, it would be almost impossible ever to do it. The sharp grains of dust would sink into the carpets, and the friction of walking over them would wear out the material more in this month than in any two months of the year. Heavy brocatelle curtains and delicate lace are very easily defaced and injured by the dust, if not often shaken and freed from the constant accumulation.

It cannot be helped; through all this windy, unmanageable season, frequent usings of dusters and brushes are inevitable, and, if thoroughly applied, aside from the economy of it, will greatly lighten the labor of the spring house-cleaning.

A good beating with a furniture whip (two or three ratans, lightly braided or twisted together, and the ends united in a handle, found at any house-furnishing store) is an excellent thing to dislodge dust from chairs, sofas, table-covers, mattresses, etc., but the beating must be followed by the use of the feather-brush over all, and an old silk handkerchief for polished or highly varnished furniture.

Windows are very difficult to keep bright and clean at this season of the year. If there is rain or snow, it is usually followed by high winds, which dry the streets and very soon cover the damp windows with a storm of dust,—settling into the molding and around the sash to such a degree that it will require much time and hard work to remove; and even while washing them, the dust is still swept over the windows. It is wise, when windows are so quickly and easily defaced, to wet a clean, smooth cloth in a little whiskey or alcohol, and cleanse the glass with it. It removes the dirt much more thoroughly and gives a better polish to the glass than water can, and evaporates so quickly that the dust will not so readily adhere. This may be liable to objections on the ground of economy; but, for three or four weeks it is much more effective, and makes the work so much easier, that we are inclined to think it is not extravagant. Of course it must be used with judgment. A little will be sufficient.

Now, more than any other part of the year, the ashes must be removed from the cellar, if you have a furnace, faithfully every morning. If allowed to accumulate, a heavy wind will send them up through the flues and registers, to settle in the carpets or furniture, and do more injury than the dust, because the alkali in the ashes will eat the texture and injure the colors.

Then, again, it is important that on washing-days some attention should be paid to the wind. It is a great trial to a methodical housekeeper to put off the week’s washing for a day or two. It seems to derange all the work planned for other days, and makes one feel unsettled, as if everything was sadly out of joint. It is not at all pleasant to consent to such innovation, but March is a tyrant, and in the end it is better to submit to its caprices. To see all your clothes on the line at the mercy of a real March wind, would be worse than to defer the washing and wait for a milder day. The clothes will be more injured and worn by one day’s snapping on the line, in a very high wind, than in weeks of wear; and unless one has a good, roomy attic with windows at each end to admit free air, it is wise, if not agreeable, to put the clothes in soak, after washing, in plenty of clear water, and wait for the calm, or defer the entire washing to that propitious moment.

Yet a good, brisk March wind, with an unclouded sky, has its excellences. There is no better time to put blankets, carriage-robes, and heavy winter garments out to air. If not left out too long, such heavy articles will not be liable to so much injury, by whipping on the lines, as cotton and linen, and it is an excellent and effective way to free these cumbrous garments from dust and moths.

These are only a few of the reasons for the necessity of more than usual vigilance in this stormy month of March; they are but hints to call attention to the subject. Your own good sense, kept awake by the wild wind that is shaking the windows as we write, and bending the tall masts beyond, will enable you to carry them out more minutely and practically than we shall attempt at present to do.

III.
SPRING LABOR.

MOTHS.—The first few days of April are too near kin to March to warrant any decided steps toward the regular spring house-cleaning; but it is quite time now that special attention be paid to moths and their characteristic destructiveness.