The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1886-05-06
HOUSE-CLEANING.
Spring Days When the Housekeeper Goes
Mad on the Subject of Renovation.


Mad on the Subject of Renovation.
The early spring days are the high
carnival of the housekeeper, the domes-
tic Mardi Gras, when all the feminine
world seems to have gone mad on the
subject of cleanliness and renovation.
Then comes the first frantic out-burst of
work after the winter rest-the first at
tack of spring mania, the symptoms OF
which are restless activity, and de-
sire for change and growth. We turn
lightly to thoughts of house-cleaning,
flower gardens and spring clothes, and
we pore over seed catalogues, and visit
the paper-hangers and carpet stores.
We 90 about the house, measuring walls
and ceilings. and floors, computing the
amount of paper and carpet they will
require, and, perhaps, figuring to bring
the cost within the range of a somewhat
limited income. We are intensely tired
of CRATES, and stoves, and registers, and
long for a season when we can exist
without smoke, and SCOT, and ashes,
and dry hot furnace air. We plan how
we can change the aspect of our rooms
into something newer, if not better.
1t is this desire for change, rather
than the desire for cleanliness, that ur-
ges woman most emphatically upon her
house-cleaning career, and this love of
variety-this Inconsistency if you will
is one of the saving graces of the world;
it is the beginning of much of the
growth and reform that has brought the
human race to its present development
| If it wasn't for woman's ceaseless ener-
gy and resistless persuasion, the world
would have long since settled into
domestic and social rut. Woman's inn
pulses are quicker than mans. She is
| to him what the wind is to the sea; she
keeps him stirred up, and prevents stag
| nation. The endless changes she brings
| about, are as necessary to health and
welfare of the world as the breeze that
| fans the sea, and the waves that beat on
| the shore.
1t was this desire for something new
| that made Eva taste the apple in Para
| disc, and it is this that makes modern
| women desire most nightly to clean
| house as soon as the March sun begins
| to warm up their backs; it makes them
| long to re-paper walls, to turn old car
| pets and buy new ones, to change all
| the wintry arrangements to new or
| der of things, to get rid of accumula-
| tions of dust, mustiness and disease,
and to let the air into every crack and
crevice in the house. They make sly Wis
its to the garrets, and come down look
| ing blue and cold in spite of the shawls
| over their heads. There are traces of
| dust and cobwebs upon them that be-
tray them, and the foreboding world
knows that the women's crusade is
about to begin. The more ''forehand-
ed'' housewives begin to work slyly
along the edges of carpets with the tack
puller, and prospect for moths. ! once
heard an old gentleman say that in the
spring his wife spent most of her time
looking for something she didn't want
to find, and this has grown to be a sad
necessity in these days of moth-millers
and transient servant girls.
once knew a brisk woman who used
to loosen her carpets in the last of Feb
ruary, so that she might take advantage
of the first warm day, and whisk them
out before the gaze of an astonished
world. There was a tradition in her
family that all carpets should be up,
and stoves down, by the middle OF
March, and unless positively frozen up
and showed under, she fought it out on
that line. She and her family are long
since dead, as mi ght be expected, sacri.
feed not by cleanliness, but by a silly
| pride and an insane desire to be more
''forehanded" than her neighbors.
| have noticed that these women who are
SO forehanded with their house-cleanine
are apt to be forehanded in their deaths
They seem to fancy there is some merit
in thus forcing the season, and they
plunge into the good work with all the
| enthusiasm of the ancient MARTYRS
laying up coughs, and colds, and treas
ures in heaven. So many women clear
house according to tradition, instead O
common sense. They learned in theil
youth that spring begins in March, anc
in March they will clean house if the,
kill themselves and their families in tn,
| attempt. They remind me of that i'm
prudent young man who attempted to
scale the Alpine heights, refusing to lis
ten to sensible advice, and shouting
Excelsior to all inquiring friends.
These women, amid the snow and Bit
ing winds of lingering winter, will
expose life and limb, or at least fingers
and thumbs, and backs, to get ahead of
their neighbors and have their houses
cleaned first; they go pegging awsy up
the wintry Alps, in lame, rheumatic,
but determind procession, waving their
tack-hammers and scrubbing- brushes,
and shouting Excelsior" till they dis
appear in cloud of dust. They pay no
attention to good advice, nor do they
heed the roar of the awful avalanche OF
dust, and dirt, and carpet, and stoves,
and SCOT that they bring down on their
devoted heads; on they rush, and down
from the cold, damp shades of fireless,
sunless parlors, comes the last faint
echo of their cries.--ELizabeth Cole, in
| Good HOuSeEeeptno.