Grease on Verandah

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 35, 23 February 1940, Page 45

Grease on Verandah

Dear Aunt Daisy, I heard you mention this morning a lady who had spilt hot fat on her verandah. I once worked with .a Danish lady, whose floors were all just the plain boards; she would not have any. mats or anything on the floor on account of the children. These floors were kept white with plenty of scrubbing, but the kitchen floor, of course, got many times spotted and marked with grease and butter spots. This is how she always removed them, before she commenced the scrubbing, and I think the same thing would do the job for that lady who wrote to you. She may, of course, have to repeat the process several times, as the grease that has soaked into the wood comes to the surface, which it is sure to do. My Danish lady used to take a tin of ordinary lumpy washing soda in one hand, and ‘a large kettle of boiling water in the other, Then she would put a few little lumps of the soda upon the greasy spot, and then slowly pour a little boiling water over the soda and grease spot. If it was a very bad spot, she would repeat the process, and then go on to the next spot, and so_ on, until all had been treated. The kitchen floor would be a mass of wet blotches! Then she would take her bucket of water and her scrubbing brush and scrub out the kitchen in the usual way. I should think that if the lady put a scattering of washing soda over her greasy patch, and then poured the boiling water over, afterwards scrubbing it with clean water, and repeating it in a few days when the patch began to appear again, that she would in time get

it right out.-

S. G.

O.

(Takanini):

Yes, I think so too, and many thanks for an interesting letter. Nowadays we can get household cleansers which make it easier to remove grease, but I think the Danish lady’s method was cheap and simple, and certainly perfectly successful. Here’is another letter about keéping floors clean: