VIII
IN THE LAUNDRY
WHETHER or not a housekeeper expects to do her own washing and ironing, she should know in every detail how it is to be done. The occasion may not arise for her to put her hands into the wash-tub or to wield a flat-iron, but she should understand the operations and know how to correct intelligently the errors of her laundress.
There has been a good deal said of the burden of laundry-work, and yet I have known many women who preferred undertaking it themselves to trusting it to the charge of an ignorant or untrained washerwoman. This is sometimes the only variety that can be secured in the country or in small places, but the laundry, which is the resource so often of dwellers in the city, is frequently far more injurious to clothing than the treatment of the poorest laundress. In such circumstances or when economy seems necessary the housekeeper who has the ability to do up the clothing of her family and the bed and table linen possesses a power which means not only comfort, but saving of wear and tear as well as of money.
In the effort to provide the A-B-C of laundry-work a beginning must be made with directions for sorting and preparing the clothes for washing.
The first step is to separate towels and bed-linen from starched white garments and place them in different piles, with flannels and stockings in a third gathering. This should be done on the evening preceding wash-day, as the labor is much lessened by putting the clothes into soak overnight. The method—or lack of method—of the careless laundress is to throw those garments to be submitted to this preliminary treatment into a tub of warm water to which has been added some washing-powder or detersive and leave them thus all night.
Instead of this the clothing should be looked over carefully, dipping the worst-soiled portions into warm water and rubbing the spots well with laundry soap. Each garment should then be rolled up with the soaped side inward, and all the rolls thus made packed down into a tub of lukewarm water to which has been added a small quantity of borax, household ammonia, or other equally good and harmless detersive.
Just here it is well to make a slight digression on this subject. I have already spoken of the injurious effects of washing-soda in laundry-work. It cuts and perforates the linen on which it is used, but it is so potent in taking out dirt that I have known laundresses to bring it with them in their pockets when its use was forbidden by a housekeeper. Washing-soda is possibly the most destructive of these agencies, but there are others on the market, sold as patented preparations, which are hardly less harmful. Of a number of them it is true that they are helpful if used in moderation. The trouble is that the unskilled worker is likely to imagine that where a little is good much would be better, and to apply the powder or fluid with a liberality that has disastrous results.
Even when borax or ammonia—probably the least deleterious of all detersives—is used, it should be in small quantities when the clothing is to be left with it for any length of time. Therefore there should be very little put in the tub in which the raiment is to be soaked.
Woolens, cotton and wool, or silk and wool, colored clothes, and stockings are not given this soaking, but left to one side until the next morning.
When the actual washing begins flannels should have the first attention. They should be given especial care, since upon this depends their coming from the wash smooth and soft instead of thickened and rough. Soap should not be rubbed upon them unless there are badly soiled spots, and then these should be soaped without applying soap to the rest of the garment. A little ammonia should be added to the water in which they are washed, and this should be lukewarm and made into suds by the addition of shaved soap before the flannels are put in. They should not be rubbed on the board but between the hands, with frequent dipping up and down in the water until they look clean.
The flannels are then squeezed between the hands until as much water as possible is gone from them, when they are thrown for rinsing into water of the same temperature as that from which they were taken. This is essential. Water which is either colder or hotter will thicken and shrink the flannels. After a thorough rinsing they are again wrung out and hung to dry at once, in the shade, if an outdoor drying-place is used. They look better if they are ironed while still slightly damp. When both colored and white flannels are to be washed the latter should come second, that specks of lint from them may not disfigure the colored articles.
The second water from the flannels will answer very well for the first washing of the other clothes. It is not necessary to practise this economy in a flat furnished with hot water from the cellar, but the fact is worth recalling when the supply of warm water is insufficient.
Too many pieces should not be put into the tub at once, as the clothes cannot be washed properly if crowded together, and plenty of water is demanded to get them clean. The water should be warm and the clothes which have been soaked overnight will require little rubbing on the board in order to make them clean. It may be mentioned that clothing which is worn long enough to become badly soiled will need an amount of hard rubbing which will wear it out much sooner than garments that have been thrown into the wash before they are very dirty.
The boiler, half full of cold water, should be at hand. Colored clothes are never boiled, and they may be washed separately if this seems more convenient. After the soiled spots on the white clothes have been well soaped the pieces should be dropped into the boiler. The addition of a tablespoonful of kerosene to the water is beneficial. The boiler should be put on the stove and the water brought to a boil, stirring the clothes up from the bottom with a clothes-stick from time to time. The boiling should not continue long, but the clothes be removed as soon as the water has fairly boiled. Too long on the fire yellows the clothing.
Clean hot water should be at hand and into this each article should be dropped as it comes from the boiler. Careful rinsing is one of the secrets of having clothes a good color after washing. Each piece should be turned inside out to rinse it sufficiently. The garments to be blued should be transferred from the rinsing water to cold water to which a few drops of bluing have been added. Judgment must be used in this addition or the clothing will be too blue. A favorite trick of careless laundresses is to save themselves the scrubbing which would make the garments clean, and cover their fault by making them very blue.
After the bluing the unstarched pieces may be wrung and hung out to dry. The other pieces must be starched as will be directed a little further on.
The rinsing water in which the clothes were dipped after coming from the boiler will serve for the first washing of the colored garments. As these need no bluing, such of them as do not require starching may be rinsed and hung out at once to dry. Those that must be stiffened may be dipped into the starch, wrung out, well shaken, and dried.
For boiled starch, a half-cupful of the dry starch is needed in proportion to a quart of boiling water. The starch is made to a paste with cold water, the boiling water poured upon it, and the mixture stirred over the fire until it is clear and smooth. Some laundresses insist upon boiling the starch an hour, but good results may be gained with the preparation made as just directed. This starch is of the right consistency for shirts, aprons, etc., but it must be thinned to use for either table-linen or for delicate underwear until it is little thicker than single cream. If shirt bosoms or cuffs or the cuffs of shirtwaists are to be stiffened, raw starch must be added to the boiled. Raw starch is prepared by moistening a handful of the raw starch to a paste with a little cold water, increasing the water until a quart of it has been used, and stirring it with a piece of fine white soap.
The pieces which have already been passed through the boiled starch may be dipped into the raw starch for additional stiffening, after the first starch has dried in them. They are well moistened in the raw starch, rolled up and left for half an hour or so, and ironed while damp. The quantity for which direction has just been made is rather large for a small family, but the proportions may be used in smaller measure.
Cheap soap and starch should never be employed; they are an extravagance in the end. The soap should be bought, in a small family, about a dozen cakes at a time and dried. One cake is enough for a small wash, unless left floating in the tub after its use is over.
All stains should be looked to before the clothes are washed at all. Fruit and wine stains, like those from coffee and tea, may be taken out by stretching the spotted part over a basin and pouring boiling water through the fabric. The process should be repeated several times or until the stain is gone. Soap will often “set” a spot which would come out if washed in clear water. Fruit stains, rust stains—such as iron-mold—and sometimes ink stains may be removed by wetting the spots with lemon-juice, sprinkling salt upon this, and laying the article in the sun. The operation must be done more than once before the spot will come out entirely. The same treatment will sometimes obliterate mildew stains, but if these prove obstinate, boiling in buttermilk the article marked will perhaps take them out. Turpentine will remove paint stains, and oil marks must be washed with cold water and a good white soap. Grass stains are sometimes taken out by rubbing with butter and then washing this out. All spots or stains are far harder to get rid of after they have once been put through the regular wash.
Fine pieces of linen like doilies, centerpieces, embroidered and lace-trimmed handkerchiefs, or very delicate lingerie underwear should never be washed with the ordinary clothing unless the housekeeper gives her special attention to them. They should under no circumstances be rubbed on the wash-board, but rubbed between the hands in a good suds made of warm water and a fine white soap, and rinsed very carefully. If they are to be stiffened at all the starch water through which they are passed should be no heavier than milk. While still warm such articles should be pressed on the wrong side; and if embroidered, a thick woolen cloth must be laid under the ironing-sheet. By this method the work on the article stands out well.
A little experience with ironing is worth more than instruction. When the clothes have been well sprinkled and folded, the work done evenly, and each piece rolled up tightly when dampened, a strong arm and steady, smooth strokes will give good results; but practice is needed to make the work entirely satisfactory. Experience will tell when the iron is the right heat. For starched clothes a greater heat is needed than for flannels; the iron must be tried on a piece of paper to make sure it is not too hot. Each piece pressed should be ironed until dry to make a smooth finish. Table and bed linen should be ironed lengthwise. Always the irons should be well wiped off before using, and when not in service they should stand on end on a shelf. Never should they be left on the range when not in use; this roughens the surface.
The electric iron is a great aid, but this must be used with care or it will be short-circuited and burned out. Always the power must be turned off when the iron is laid aside for even a few minutes.
No advice as to laundry-work would be complete that did not speak a word relative to mending. The woman who does her own work will be on the alert for breaks or thin places in any article and will lay pieces thus damaged to one side as they are pressed. As a matter of course it is well to make repairs before the washing is done, when this is possible, but many garments are far pleasanter to mend after laundering than before. Stockings do not gain enough harm by being washed before darning to offset the unpleasantness of having to mend them while they are still soiled.
When possible, fine articles which have to be darned or carefully mended with a patch or by piecing are best repaired before they are ironed. After they have been washed they can be put aside until the housekeeper has time to mend them properly, and they can then have an iron run over them and the mended spot smoothed.
The life of fine table-linen can be prolonged indefinitely by attention to the first break in the hemstitching, the first wear of a thread in the fabric, the first hole in lace. After the material once begins to go, even long and careful mending will scarcely save it, but watchfulness for the earliest symptoms of wear will postpone the evil day.