West Virginia freeman. (Parkersburg, W. Va.) 1881-1886, 1883-05-09
House Cleaning.

the accumulations of the cellar.
Throw away everything that is no
longer of use. Make your fat
which should have been fried out
and melted into cakes-into SOAP,
If your coal ashes have not been re-
moved weekly, have them carried
out. All empty boxes and barrels
and all boards that you donot wish
to save, have split into kindling
wood. Then sweep the ceilings
and walls thoroughly, and sprinkle
the floor if it is stone or cement,
before you sweep it. Examine the
walls, and if any rat holes are
found fill them with pounded glass
and cement them over. Cellars
should be whitewashed every
spring, If plenty of cooking salt
is put into the whitewash, it will
not rub off, and copperas added to
it will repel all vermin. Six or
eight pounds of copperas to half
bushol of quicklime will not be too
much. When the cellar is finished,
begin the attic or storeroom. Ev-
erything should be looked over and
cleaned out. Every drawer, trunk,
box, bag and bundle must come
forth from its hiding-place and
yield its contents to more vigilant
inspection than that of custom
house officer. All wooden articles
must be beaten and exposed to the
sun and air before being consigned
to summer quarters. A furniture
whip will be found useful, and can
be obtained at a house-furnishing
store for twenty cents They are
made OF two or three pieces of rat
tan braided or twisted, the ends
forming a handle. Wooden arti-
Giles that are out Of season should
be put in bags made of brown pa
per or newspapers; if made of the
latter, the paper should be double
for greater strength, and a soft pa
per should be chosen so it will not
tear. The edges can be pasted To-
gether, and when the goods are in,
the bags must be pasted up tight
ly. Unless moth-eggs were in the
garments, you need have no fears
for their safety if you put them
away in boxes or drawers and scat
ter little camphor or borax over
them. The floor of the storeroom
should be washed in hot alum wa
ter and all corners thoroughly
cleaned as protection against the
eggs of moths and other insects
The wire window screens should
be taken into the yard and the
dust brushed out, and if the wire
cloth looks rusty they should be re-
painted. This can easily be done
by any careful person. A box of
prepared green paint costs but
twenty-five cents. You will need
little brush for the corners. which
costs twelve cents, and a thin, fiat
brush, two or three inches wide,
such as are sometimes used for var
nish will answer, and a five-cent
bottle of turpentine. Care must
be taken to dip the brush only
lightly into the paint, which must
be thin. If too thick, thin with
turpentine. Both sides of the
wire must be painted, and it must
be done evenly in regular strokes.
You must see that the paint does
not fill up the meshes; if it does
you have put it on too thick. If
any paint has spattered on the
frames, clean it off with turpen-
tine; use it also to clean your
brushes. r
After the storeroom the spare
rooms must be put in order. If the
ceiling is to be kalsomined, all fur
niture must be removed or covered.
If there is smoke from kerosene
lamp, it must be washed in soda
water. If it has been smoked from
stove, the black patches can be
covered with gum shellac, SO they
will not strike through the kali
somining. Paper walls should be
carefully busted with a feather
buster or brushed over by fasten-
ing a piece of clean cloth over
broom and sweeping the walls in
regular strokes, SO it will have an
even appearance. Before the kali
somining is done, newspapers