Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1879 — HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. [ARTICLE]

HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY.

Use kerosene to clean unvarnished furniture. Try benzine for removing paint spat ters on window glass. If cheese gets too dry to eat, grate it, pour on brandy, and pack into jars. Blankets, and, indeed, flannel of any kind, should not be washed with soap which has resin in it. Cements for joining metals or glass and wood are, made as follows: Melt resin, and stir in calcined plaster until reduced to a paste, to which add boiled oil a sufficient quantity to bring it to the consistency of honey; apply warm. Or, melt resin, 180 parts, and stir in burnt umber thirty parts, calcined plaster fifteen and boiled oil eight parts. Or, dissolve glue in boiling water to the consistence of cabinet-maker’s glue; then stir in sufficient wood ashes to produce a varnish-like mixture. While hot the surfaces to be united must be covered with this compound and pressed together. Breakfast Hash.—Chop into hash some cold meat (corned beef, beef, or mutton, or fowl); season with salt and a little pepper, also a little butter if liked; boil enough potatoes to make, when mashed, twice the quantity of the hash; mash the potatoes to a cream, adding before the mashing a table-spoonful of butter and a teaspoonful of salt; fill an earthen baking dish with the potatoes, rounding it; handsomely in the center of the potatoes make a deep hole large enough to contain the hash; round it all nicely and bake a light brown; garnish with celery tops. Pouch for Clothes Pins.—One of the latest conveniences which I have noticed for housekeepers is the apron for clothes pins. It is a trivial affair, but, nevertheless, quite useful. It takes nearly one yard of calico to make it, the apron or pouch being fifteen inches in length and nearly as wide. Round the corners at the bottom. At the top, on each side of the front, two inches from the middle, cut out a strip nine inches long and one and one-half inch wide for pockets. Bind them with lighter-

colored fabric than the apron, that they may be readily seen.• Gather into a band and button at the back, or, if preferred, put on strings and tie. Washing with «Hard Water.—To those who have to use hard water for washing this method may be recommended : Procure a large barrel, set it close to the well, and let some one who is able, if you are not, fill it with water; then put in two panfuls of wood ashes, skim off the coals, let it stand two days at least; wash your #hite clothes as for boiling, soap them and lay them in a clean tub; have sufficient broken water boiling hot to cover them, pour it on them, and cover immediately with one or two thick woolen blankets, and let them stand until the next morning; then wring them out, and you have a splendid suds with which to wash your colored clothes. Suds and rinse your clothes, also, with the broken water, and your clothes will look as nice and white as if you had used rain-water. This a good way for women who are not strong, as they are not so liable to overwork as if they did it all in one day. Doing Up Lace Curtains.—Put the curtains to soak in lukewarm water, turning over and clapping between your hands two or three times during the twenty-four hours that they remain in the water. Then if you have a wringer, fold smoothly and put through loosely; repeat for two or three days if very much soiled and smoked. The last time they are put to soak, add to every gallon of water two ounces of pulverized borax, after which put them on to boil in this water. When scalded a short time rinse thoroughly, and make a thin starch, with a trifle of blueing in. Now pin or sew to your carpets 'some sheeis, which done, wring out the curtains, and pin right side down upon the sheets, putting the pins in every two inches. Stretch' them evenly, but take care not to draw out of shape. Let them be until dry, when go over with a hot flat-iron, keeping a tbin-cioth or paper between the iron and curtain; then remove the pins, and your curtains ire ready to hang.