CUPBOARD LORE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 599, 27 February 1929, Page 7

CUPBOARD LORE

STORING HOUSEHOLD LINEN SYSTEM NECESSARY Linen cupboard glories are not what they were! Restricted house-room no doubt accounts for the diminution of that old-time zeal. Or rather, not so much the zeal (which, I fancy, is still inherent in most of us) as the expenditure of money and time on a commodity we cannot spaciously store. That is no excuse for pride deserting us in the care of such possessions as are ours; but it would appear, nevertheless, that nothing like the old fervour prevails in the supervision of the linen chest. Not even where quality has taken the place of quantity. Yet orderliness is not only attractive; it is strictly utilitarian. You cannot tell what you are about unless your sheets, tablecloths, pillowslips, and so forth are arranged in neat and easily-get-at-able piles. Only so can you make reasonably sure that you obey the first law of linen preservation, which is to avoid keeping the same sheets and the same tablecloths in constant use. The former should be overhauled when returned from the wash and placed at the bottom of the pile, so that each pair is used in rotation and the strain on individual articles is minimised.

According to the size—as, for instance, sheets versus tray cloths—— linen should be sorted in pairs or dozens, then tied round with bands. These can be very conveniently made from rucked ribbon garter elastic, which enables the linen belonging to each bedroom to be fastened With the main colour of the room decoration, and so speed up identification, as it were. Infinite time is saved in the long run by this little preliminary expenditure of trouble. It is best to wrap up specially valuable linen—not much in use——in blue tissue paper, which helps materially to preserve its colour. Such linen should be unpacked and refolded at regular intervals to avoid wear at the creases. An essential is to line each shelf of the linen cupboard, The French housewife also pins up an inventory of the cupboard’s contents on the inside of the door.