The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking eBook

Helen Stuart Campbell
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 284 pages of information about The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking.

The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking eBook

Helen Stuart Campbell
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 284 pages of information about The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking.

One large pitcher, also three-pint and quart sizes;

Yeast-jar, or, what is better, two or three Mason’s glass cans, kept for yeast.

This list does not include any crockery for setting a servant’s table; that being governed by the number kept, and other considerations.  Such dishes should be of heavier ware than your own, as they are likely to receive rougher handling; but there should be a full supply as one means of teaching neatness.

Wooden-ware is essential in the shape of a nest of boxes for rice, tapioca, &c.; and wooden pails for sugar, Graham-flour, &c.; while you will gradually accumulate many conveniences in the way of jars, stone pots for pickling, demijohns, &c., which give the store-room, at last, the expression dear to all thrifty housekeepers.

Scrubbing and water pails, scrubbing and blacking brushes, soap-dishes, sand-box, knife-board, and necessities in cleaning, must all find place, and, having found it, keep it to the end; absolute order and system being the first condition of comfortable housekeeping.

CHAPTER VI.

WASHING-DAY, AND CLEANING IN GENERAL.

Why Monday should be fixed upon as washing-day, is often questioned; but, like many other apparently arbitrary arrangements, its foundation is in common-sense.  Tuesday has its advantages also, soon to be mentioned; but to any later period than Tuesday there are serious objections.  All clothing is naturally changed on Sunday; and, if washed before dirt has had time to harden in the fiber of the cloth, the operation is much easier.  The German custom, happily passing away, of washing only annually or semi-annually, is both disgusting, and destructive to health and clothes; the air of whatever room such accumulations are stored in being poisoned, while the clothes themselves are rubbed to pieces in the endeavor to get out the long-seated dirt.

A weekly wash being the necessity if perfect cleanliness exists, the simplest and best method of thoroughly accomplishing it comes up for question.  While few women are obliged to use their own hands in such directions, plenty of needy and unskilled workwomen who can earn a living in no other way being ready to relieve us, it is yet quite as necessary to know every detail, in order that the best work may be required, and that where there is ignorance of methods in such work they may be taught.

The advantages of washing on Tuesday are, that it allows Monday for setting in order after the necessary rest of Sunday, gives opportunity to collect and put in soak all the soiled clothing, and so does away with the objection felt by many good people to performing this operation Sunday night.

To avoid such sin, bed-clothing is often changed on Saturday; but it seems only part of the freshness and sweetness which ought always to make Sunday the white-day of the week, that such change should be made on that morning, while the few minutes required for sorting the clothes, and putting them in water, are quite as legitimate as any needed operation.

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The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.