Stock-Taking Time

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 735, 7 August 1929, Page 14

Stock-Taking Time

SPRING-CLEANING SOON

Housewife’s Busy Time SPRING-CLEANING will shortly be upon us. It is the time when the housewife puts her house in order, casting out labour-makers and installing labour-savers. Cavil and grumble at housework as they may, matrons must admit that it is becoming easier every day.

After the yearly stock-taking consider your wants in relation to your resources and spend your money well. It is a curious fact which many house furnishers have at times commented on that whereas a woman will pay, more or less cheerfully, £lO, £2O, £3O, or £4O for a gown, she will ponder over spending as many shillings over labour-saving devices for the home. Yet probably the same woman will* wail over the high cost of domestic help and wail when she has the work to do herself. On the other hand there are self-sacrificing mothers who stint themselves of household appliances to send a son to college, a daughter to a finishing school, or make financial matters easier for the hubby. This economy may be praiseworthy, or it may be merely misplaced. Money spent on labour-saving household apparatus can usually in a short time more than clear itself by saving charwomen’s or maid’s wages, or the housewife’s own vitality. It is at this time of the year when the housewife should be a little ruthless in her survey of the house. The workmakers iu the way of extra fireirons, unnecessary furniture, ornaments, curtains, and the like should be got rid of at sales or stored in the attic out of work’s way. New purchases should be reviewed with a stern eye on their work-making or worksaving. If there are to be new window curtains, then why have them reaching to the floor collecting dust — and costing more when they are washed or cleaned? Why not casement curtains? In the hanging of those curtains why not have the simplest and easiest variety of fitments? There is really no excuse to be offered for the person who maks of housework or spring cleaning a drudgery today, for firms all over the country are vying with each other in producing aids for the housewife. For aluminium and other metalware there are preparations that clean without scratching, for floors there are polishes and long-handled mops that end “getting down on the hands and knees,” with its back-breaking accompaniment. Science Aids Science, too, is helping with the weight problem of domestic work, and here aluminium is a great ally for the pots and pans which are so frequently needed in the home. Papier mache is another great help, being utilised for household utensils and basins. The

moving of furniture about a room need not be the bugbear it too frequently is since it can invariably be mounted on smooth-running castors. It is at spring-cleaning time that the housewife should review these domestic matters, and if they are not already facts, make them so. According to modern thought, it is terrible that sunshine was ever considered a housewife’s enemy and that the liouse-proud woman of the past ever walked round a house persistently drawing blinds —some used to be slatted wood Venetian blinds —to keep it out. Of course, one can understand their point of view. The sun faded such housewifery belongings as carpets, curtains, upholstery and covers. Now we can take to heart the medical counsels which bid us admit all the sunshine we cau, for fadeless curtains, upholstery and carpets are now the order of the day.

The following mixture is recommended by a writer in the “English and Amateur Mechanic” as a homemade paint and varnish remover:—A very strong solution of soda and boiling water, to which should be added a quantity of soft soap made into a paste with fresh slaked lime. This should be applied to the paint or varnish and kept damp for a short time, and then scraped off. The work, of course, should be washed very thoroughly, and not painted until perfectly drj r . Preferably in all cases where the soda and lime method is used, after the surface has been thoroughly washed with water and dried, it should be washed with a mixture of one-third vinegar, onethird raw linseed oil, and one-third turpentine, and then wiped off with a dry rag, which does not give off fluff.