[PART I.]
HOME AND ITS EMPLOYMENTS.
House cleaning—Repairing Furniture—Washing—Mending Glass, China, &c.—Dyeing—Blacking for Boots, Shoes, &c.—To destroy Insects—The Kitchen, &c.
1. House Cleaning.—The spring is more particularly the time for house-cleaning; though, of course, it requires attention monthly.
Begin at the top of the house; first take up the carpets, and, if they require it, let them be scoured; or as carpets are sometimes injured by scouring, they may be well beaten, and if necessary, washed with soda and water.
Remove all the furniture from the room, have the chimneys swept where fires have been kept, and clean and blacken the grates. Wrap old towels, (they should be clean), around the bristles of the broom, and sweep lightly the ceiling and paper; or, if requisite, the paper should be cleaned with bread, as elsewhere directed. Then wash the paint with a flannel or sponge, and soap and water, and, as fast as one person cleans, another should follow, and with clean cloths, wipe the paint perfectly dry. Let the windows be cleaned, and scour the floor. Let the furniture be well rubbed; and the floor being dry, and the carpets laid down, the furniture may be replaced. The paper should be swept every three months.
2. To clean Bed-rooms.—In cleaning bed-rooms infested with bugs, take the bedsteads asunder, and wash every part of them, but especially the joints, with a strong solution of corrosive sublimate in spirits of turpentine; as the sublimate is a fatal poison, the bottle containing the above solution should be labelled "Poison;" it should be used very carefully, and laid on with a brush kept for the purpose. Bugs can only be removed from walls by taking down the paper, washing them with the above poison, and re-papering.