Equipment: These things will make house-work easier by saving strength and temper. Being neither costly nor cumbersome, the simplest home may well find room for them or such part of them as it needs.
A Knee Pad: Make of stout cloth twenty inches by twelve, stuff two inches thick, tack in lines to hold flat, and sew oilcloth upon the under side.
A Foot Pad: Make two feet square, stuff an inch and a half thick, and tack flat. Stand on it when ironing, washing, or preparing food. It saves strength and prevents cold feet.
A Floor Pad: For rubbing waxed hardwood or stained floors. Get a block of wood, brick-shaped, hollow the upper edges on both sides so it can be grasped, put a strap across, then cover the lower face with many thicknesses of flannel and chamois skin. Alternate them and have leather outside. Keep dry and away from dust.
A Water Wagon: Screw castors to the corners of a board a foot square. A pail set on it can be pushed about much easier than lifted.
Broom Bags: Have a set of six—two each of crash, Turkish toweling, and outing flannel. Keep clean, and be sure the drawing-tapes are not left knotted or broken.
Brooms: Have at least two brooms—one stiff, one pliant. Choose fine straw of a greenish cast rather than yellow. Eschew painted handles; sandpaper is the remedy for rough places. Put a screw eye in the tip of the handles and hang the brooms from hooks. Wash before hanging up.
Floor Brushes: A weighted brush needs to be kept dry and clean and so set that the bristles do not crush. Choose it light rather than heavy. See that the handle is set at the angle to suit your height and that the bristles are of the very best quality.
Dust Cloths: Make of many sorts and sizes, from a foot square to half a yard. Cheesecloth, flannel, old silk, and crash—all answer well. Overcast edges loosely instead of hemming. Keep clean and dry in a box or drawer.
Dust Swabs: Tie a handful of cotton, excelsior, or even crumpled paper inside a soft cloth and about the end of a light rod. Use to dust walls, floors, and ceilings, changing the cloth as it gets dirty. Sprinkling the cloth with alcohol, turpentine, or gasolene makes it more effective where the dust is grimy.
A Silk Duster: Crumple soft old silk into a big floppy rosette and fasten to a rod. Use upon pictures and picture moldings, also on waxed floors newly polished.
Ironing-boards: Shape the blanket, sew up, and fit smoothly, letting the small end of the board project bare an inch or two. Draw taut over the wide end and sew with flax thread. Make shaped covers of unbleached cotton, open at the small end, rounded to fit the other and hemmed. Draw on a cover and pin tight at the broad end. Let the seams come along the edge of the board. Change covers after use. Have a smaller board, similarly covered, to use when sitting down—it is laid on the knees. Have also a covered bosom board if shirts are home-ironed, and a smooth straight board of handy size, covered with two thicknesses of flannel and one of clean cotton, for ironing embroidery or anything raised.
Sprinklers: Keep a tin sprinkler with a fine rose for dampening clean clothes or sprinkling floors or carpets. If ammonia or alcohol is put into the sprinkling-water, rinse the sprinkler well before putting it away.
A Tool Box: Fill cracks with putty to keep out dampness, hinge on a cover, and furnish with a padlock. Keep in it a sharp fine saw, a hatchet, tack hammer, brace and assorted bits, chisel, monkey wrench, screw-driver, and gimlets. Also assorted brads, tacks, wire nails, screw hooks, screw eyes, and picture wire. A putty knife is useful. A T-square and foot rule are indispensable. Keep the box stationary, and insist that whatever is taken from it shall be put back in good condition.
A Wax Board: Cover a small clean board with flannel, sewing it firmly, rub the flannel well over with softened—not melted—paraffine, and keep for smoothing irons.
A Laundry Cabinet: Have a laundry cabinet if it is no more than starch boxes set one on the other. Keep in it starch, soap, blueing, Javelle water for stains, soap powder, washing-soda, irons and holders, the wax board, and sandpaper, which is sovereign for roughened irons. Keep also a filled pin cushion and a bundle of clean rags. Close with a roller shade instead of door or curtain.
A Clothes Drainer: Tack coarse burlap over a big wooden hoop so loosely it sags smartly. Nail stout legs to the hoop, spreading them so a tub can be set underneath. Drop clothes sopping wet from the rinse into the hoop, and save time, strength, and wear.
A Lead Swab: For use on marble, brick, or stone—especially good for removing smoke and rust stains. Sew a pound of buckshot rather tightly inside stout canvas, tie the canvas in chamois skin, and change the leather as it grows soiled.
Sawdust: Get a peck of clean non-resinous sawdust, sift, and sun or oven-dry. Keep dry. Use on floors, also for drying and polishing intricate surfaces. Heat for use, but do not scorch.
Pine Needles: Clean pine needles, if available, should be kept for polishing floors, either hardwood or stained. Heat very slightly and strew them in front of the weighted brush or broom.
Brick Dust: Beat a soft brick to powder, sift it and keep dry. Use with a chamois dipped in oil, else upon the cut surface of a raw potato. Especially useful for spots on steel or for polishing pewter and copper.
A Wall Mop: Cut washed cheesecloth into even strips, tack as many as can be firmly fastened to the end of a light rod, and shake free of lint. Clean by dipping up and down in soapsuds or gasolene after use.
Care of Brushes: All manner of brushes, especially floor and vegetable ones, should be washed clean, scalded by dipping to the back, no deeper, in boiling water, then dried, brush down, in open air, and kept dry. Whisk brooms should hang the same as full-grown ones, likewise hearth brooms. Stand clothes and hair brushes bristles down—this so they may not collect dust. The safest wash for them is gasolene, letting it come only to the back, not over it. Hot borax soapsuds, likewise used, clean without loosening the bristles.
Renovators—Filler for New Wood: Sift twice together half a pint of powdered corn starch and as much whiting. Stir gradually into a half gallon of raw linseed oil mixed with the same quantity of turpentine. Take care there are no lumps and keep well stirred while putting on.
Oil Stains: Use the same mixture of oil and turpentine. For cherry put into the gallon an ounce of Indian red, stir well through, test, if too pale add more color. If too deep, add oil and turpentine. Work with the wood grain in putting on any sort of stain.
Mahogany Stain: Four parts Indian red, three parts burnt sienna. Mix dry and stir evenly through the oil and turpentine. Use half sienna for a dull tone. To make stains dry quickly add a pint more turpentine and half a pint less oil.
Walnut Stain: Use burnt umber, an ounce to the gallon. A little dry ocher mixed with the umber gives a livelier tone. Red or yellow, or both, can be put in, but must be very well mixed.
Oak Stain: Raw umber is the basis of oak stain; proportion and mix like the others. Antique oak requires burnt sienna mixed well with a very little lampblack, also to have two parts of turpentine to one of oil. Apply it with a sponge or swab of cotton waste and rub into the grain lines, leaving the spaces between bare.
Wax Finish for Stained or Hardwood: Melt over boiling water half a pound of yellow beeswax with half a pint of sweet oil. Beat hard a minute, take from fire, add half a cup of turpentine, and beat until nearly cold. Keep covered in glass or earthenware. Apply soft, but not liquid, with a clean flannel, and polish by rubbing until hot.
Dancing-wax: Used on Colonial ballrooms. Melt together over boiling water a pound of yellow beeswax and half a pint of filtered neat’s-foot oil. Add resin the size of a walnut melted in half a cup of new unsalted butter. Beat well, take from fire, stir in a cup of turpentine, and keep covered. Apply soft, and polish with hard rubbing.
Furniture Polish No. 1: Equal parts of sweet oil, choloroform, and alcohol shaken hard together, rubbed on quickly, then polished by rubbing until hot.
Piano Polish: Shake hard together equal parts of sweet oil, turpentine, and vinegar. Add a very little naphtha, apply with silk or flannel, and rub hard afterward.
French Polish: For dark wood, especially old mahogany. Melt together over hot water ten parts pale resin, ten parts palm oil. Mix, take from fire, add eighty parts benzine, one part essence peppermint, and half a part essence of verbena. Keep sealed in glass, away from heat. Use away from light or fire. Apply with soft old silk, and polish by rubbing with very soft silk or flannel.
The Glue Pot: Melt glue only as required. Cover dry glue with cold water after breaking up well, put salt water in the bath outside, bring to a boil, then simmer until the glue ropes a little. Thin with hot vinegar. To mend things white or light-colored, melt the clearest glue in a china cup inside a saucepan, and thin after melting with gin instead of vinegar.
To Make Glue Size: Melt a pound of glue, thin with a quart of hot vinegar, then stir well through two to five gallons hot water, according to the strength required.
Vegetable Size: Tie a gallon of wheat bran or cornmeal bran loosely in net or cheesecloth; boil for five hours in five gallons of water, filling up as it boils away. Add a lump of alum after the bran bag is removed. Apply hot to walls or wood.
Calcimine: Stir sifted whiting into strong glue size until it is thicker than cream. Clear with a little blueing. Thin at need with boiling water. Tint with earth colors in powder. Red and yellow ocher mixed give a pinkish-cream tint; yellow alone true cream. Indian red makes pink; by adding burnt sienna the color is pinkish fawn. Yellow ocher with burnt umber gives various shades of brown. Always mix colors rather pale at first, try out on a board, then add what is lacking.
Whitewashes: Either glue or vegetable size may be the foundation. Add a big lump of salt to five gallons of size, stir well, and pour boiling hot upon half a peck of unslaked lime. Clear with Prussian blue and apply very hot. For sanitary carbolic whitewash use vegetable size, dissolving in five gallons, boiling hot, two ounces of carbolic crystals. Then pour upon the lime and mix well. Two ounces of copperas—green vitriol—dissolved instead of the carbolic acid gives a faint-yellow tinge and is a good prophylactic. To kill vermin, as in poultry houses, nest boxes, and so on, mix through a pail of hot wash five grains of corrosive sublimate dissolved in a pint of water; put on as a first coat, and after a while give a second coat of plain whitewash.
Milk Whitewash: Stir into a gallon of sweet milk enough unslaked lime in fine powder to make it thicker than cream. Add a teacup of turpentine, stir well, and put on at once with a paint brush. This sticks to smooth wood nearly the same as paint, and can be colored with earth paints almost any shade.
Paste for Paper-hanging: Wet up smooth in cold water two tablespoonfuls of flour and stir it into a gallon of water on the bubbling boil. Stir hard to prevent lumps, add a small spoonful of tallow, cook for several minutes, then add an ounce of alum dissolved in half a pint of boiling water. Take from fire and add ten drops oil of cloves.
White Mucilage: For mending books and making scrap books. Cover clean gum tragacanth with cold water, let stand till dissolved, then add oil of cloves to keep from molding. Keep in a glass jar tightly closed. This leaves no mark.
Gum Arabic: For clear starching and shirt bosoms. Get four ounces of dry gum, pick over carefully, throwing out dark pieces and blowing away dust. Pour upon it a pint of boiling water, let stand till dissolved, filter, and bottle. A tablespoonful added to a quart of starch gives a high gloss. Two spoonfuls in a quart of tepid water will stiffen fine lawn or muslin sufficiently and restore the new look.
Paper Dough: Crumple newspaper very soft, tear to bits, dampen, pound, and knead well, then wet with strong glue size and knead to a dough. For wall breaks, rat holes, filling yawning cracks, or rounding corners, mix in plaster of Paris at the moment of application and pound in place before the plaster sets. Mix only what can be used at once.
White Cement: Mix sifted whiting to a soft dough with white of egg, for filling small holes in white walls or cracks in ceilings. Press in with a blunt knife and smooth the surface with the blade dipped in cold water.
Sand and Plaster: Sift together fine sand and plaster, wet with hot water, and use to fill bigger breaks in a wall. Wet only a little at a time and work quickly. Lay a board over the mortar as soon as in place, and beat with a hammer to smooth.
Putty: Sift two pounds of whiting into a bowl, make a hole in the middle, and wet with raw linseed oil, soft or stiff according to your requirements. Knead the same as dough. To keep, pack down in glass and pour a little oil over the top. Should be always on hand, as it is about the most useful of the renovators.
Cement for Glass: Cover isinglass with gin in a glass jar, set in sunshine until dissolved, then filter. It should be as clear as water. For mending colored glass rub down a trifle of oil color in a spoonful of the cement.
Sugar Cement: Cook to candy height the purest loaf sugar. Apply hot to heated edges.
Lime Water: Pour a gallon of boiling water upon a lump of quicklime the size of two fists. Stir hard, let settle, pour off the clear water, bottle, and keep corked tight.
Javelle Water: A bleach so effectual it must not touch colors. Dissolve half a pound of washing-soda in a pint of boiling water, and add it to a quart of boiling water in which a quarter pound of chloride of lime has been dissolved. Stir, let settle, pour off clear, bottle, cork, and keep dark.
Chloride-of-lime Water: Pour a gallon of boiling water upon a pound of dry chloride. Stir well, let settle, pour off clear, bottle, and keep well corked, dark, and cool. Dissolve in wood or earthenware—metal corrodes.
Oxalic Acid: Put four ounces of crystals with half a pint cold water into a quart bottle, shake hard and often till the crystals dissolve. This makes a saturated solution. If ragged crystals remain, add a gill more cold water. Keep plainly labeled “Poison.” Take care not to let it touch a scratch or fresh cut on the hands, also to keep it away from children.
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.