DOING THE WASHING

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 450, 4 September 1928, Page 5

DOING THE WASHING

THE MODERN METHOD Every woman cannot afford a washing machine, but there are many short-cut but efficient methods nowadays of doing the laundry work. The gas copper, almost universal in every city home, is scarcely enough appreciated. Let the older housewife just turn her thoughts hack to the days when she had a copper, probably built with a bad draught, which had to be supplied with coal and wood for several hours. To-day she applies a match to the gas beneath the copper, in which the clothes have been placed. The modern housewife does not wash her clothes first. She puts them with finely shredded soap and a little borax into a copper of cold water. Sometimes she adopts one of the many soap substitutes which are so excellent and save so much labour. It is advisable to use at first very little gas, and to let the clothes come to the boil slowly. After threequarters of an hour the gas should be turned off and the clothes allowed to remain ill the boiling water for another quarter of an hour. This steams them thoroughly clean.

When Really Soiled Clothes may be immersed in the copper with the soap and borax the day before if they are really soiled. The old method of rubbing white clothes before they are boiled has been completely abandoned. If they are dirty a thorough soaking and a thorough boiling and rinsing are sufficient. * It is useless to boil * clothes for hours in a very little water, with the copper packed, and almost no soap. They will invariably come out a bad colour. The quick, clean method, with plenty of soap and ample water, is always the best. The hand wringer is to-day almost unseen. Thousands of homes have no wringers. To ensure really white clothes, three waters should be used for the rinsing. Then the clothes may be dropped into a basket, almost unwrung, and allowed to drip on the line. The average laundress, who is employed by the day, does not wear out the muscles of her hands by wringing the clothes. She knows that on ordinary days the sun will do this arduous labour for her. An old-fashioned book advises householders that “the linen should be well washed in two waters and the water should be hot and plentiful. Then it should be boiled in the copper for about an hour and a-half. Then rinsed in hot water and then in cold water. Then wrung thoroughly and hung out early in the sunshine.” As a matter of fact, table linen should be put into the copper when the water is boiling. This method will remove all tea stains. It does not affect the life of the linen either, for the writer has tablecloths treated in this manner which have been in constant use for 14 years. So faithful are they, in fact, that the household feels unable to adopt the modern usage of table mats. SONNET OF COMRADESHIP For ever dwells beyond the bounds of speech, the love that friendship links, come woe come weal. It is the realms beyond the groping reach of reasoned definition, that reveal hushed havens where two wandering entities clasp hands in silence, while their eyes proclaim: This is the bourne of friendship’s secret bliss; sweet mystery that language cannot name. ... O rapturous sense of refuge from unrest of hearts’ home-coming, eased of stressful words; of new life-con-sciousness, so subtly blest that thought itself is stilled, like tired birds. . . . O timeless music of the muted string, when comrades meet, who hear the silence sing! H.S.