The Arizona sentinel., 1890-01-18
BOARDING OLD THINGS.
The Poetry and Prose of Garret, Sowing
Room and Closet.

The Poetry and Prose of Garret, Sowing
Room and Closet.
Women, in the main, are not natural
spendthriftS, and economy is a COM
mendable thing, but there is a point at
which it, like forbearance, ceases to be
virtue. / allude now to the practice
of letting odds and ends accumulate, Of
boarding nondescript articles of no pres
ent value, with the notion that they
will somo time he Of nse. Such articles
become veritable skeletons in the closets
of many home. Bouucts. of fashion
of wears agone have mustv smell; the
piles Of newspapers are sticky with age;
hoop-skirts Of times past grin sardon-
ically, and shoes are green with the
mold that is the cOncomitant of leather
long unused.
The rule, keep thing seven years,
and if no use be yet found for it keep it
seven more, is ono that is more hon
ored IN the breach than in the observ-
ance." From it has come the thriftless
sight of q collection of dust-harboring,
so disease-engendering rubbish Of
no seeming earthly use, that
makes one of properly consti-
tuted tendencies instinctively long
for either bonfire or a spade.
What, 1 should like to know, is the wis
dom in keeping the broken parasol or
umbrella longer if not fixed within
year. Yet the dilapidated lot is often
increased. Why not, at once, sell the
old iron to the iron-monger, and break
up the cracked pitcher and noseless tea
pot into eagerly-appropriated bits (of
graveD for the chickens? Bury out of
sight the old tin cans for which there is
no apparent need, knowing their cheap
ness if any should be wanted in the I'M
certain future for fower-pot or for foot
stool, and burn in the friendly depths of
the kitchen fire the rimless hat, the
wornout shoe, and the rag-bag that was
filed last year but for which the rag
man never came.
Fire is in more than one way the
housekeeper's blessing. Besides its use
fulness for cooking and heating pur-
poses it may hide forever the object
that is an eye-sore, or which would
become such by long keeping, giving us
in its place a handful of ashes with
which to enrich our flower border or
fertilize our orchard plat. The scrap Of
cloth and bits of paper and string that
litter the floor and swept out disfgure
she dOor-yard, may help, to better adj
vantage. in l1indLng the next fire; and
mal-y an unsigbtly thing about the
premises can be picked UP from time to
time, and it's burning serve q double
purpose. namely: the provision OF more
fuel, and tidily-kept surroundings.
Cloths of every description are so USE
full to the housekeeper that every part
of almost any garment can be speedily
utilized, and the long saving of laid-aside
clothing becomes a folly. While the
thousand and one uses for waSte-paper
that housewives know precludes any
necessity of stacks of stale newspapers.
Bureau-drawers and pattern recep-
tacles ought to be ''riddled out' occa-
sionally, and, by the same token, ones
letters and papers and pigeon-holes.
And however niggardly one may once
have been it can come to be, by the
higher order of worth and neatness, a
peculiar satisfaction to put every bulk
and particle, no longer valuable, quite
out of the way.
The young housel1eeper should be
prudent and not wasteful, but there is
occasion to guard against the opinion
too often considered a virtue - that
every thing is ''too good to throw away"
Even an inanimate articles day of use
fitness may be ended, when its keeping
becomes burden. 1 have often thought
that the poetry of the garret exists only
in the poets imagination, fer in reality,
in the room cleaned on an average but
once year, the spiders webs are too
numerous, the spinning-wheel too dusty
and the hair-covered trunk too apt to
contain mouse's nest to make it place
of delight or the contents of healthy
inspiration. {, Yolsptine. ip
Coed Housekeeping