Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1893 — The Weekly Cleaning. [ARTICLE]

The Weekly Cleaning.

Why a house should require such frequent going over, so much .and so regular administration upon in the way of sweeping and dusting, furbishing and polishing, is a neverending puzzle to the masculine mind. To a man’s eye the house is always clean unless it is aggressively dirty. Dust thick enough to form a coating on which one can write bis name, muddy footprints on the piazza or the hall carpet, disorderly and dingy apartments evidently in need of the broom, offend his taste if he be in the least fastidious, and he comprehends that soap and water have their uses in emergencies. But the periodical, systematic and radical cleansing on which good housekeepers insist every Friday or Saturday appears to the ordinary husband a work of supererogation. He passes it over as one of his wife’s amiable and womanly weaknesses, pitying her that she wastes her time and strength, as it looks to him, in so unnecessary an effort. The fact is, however, that if you would have a house clean and sweet and shining, and inviting to eye and smell and touch, you must go over it often from attic to cellar. How great the labor of rendering it clean, and keeping it so, depends very largely on the locality of your home. If your residence be on a public street in a thronged town, you will have to wage a never-ceasing fight against dust; against disease germs borne on the wings of air-laden dust: against the grime and soot which permeate everything, rob furniture and hanging of their freshness, and detract from the impression of beauty you would fain have your house make ou your family and friends. Dust sifts through crannies, drives through windows and doors, lodges in papa’s coat and Johnnie’s ulster. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and of cleanliness. Only by careful daily dusting and by weekly thorougness can you rout the foe. In the country life is, in this regard, easier; but the temptation here, in houses not warmed throughout, is to shut up a large part and pay attention only to living rooms. Who does not know the vault-like mustiness, the damp, as of the. grave, in the closed and darkened refrigerator known as the parlor in many a country house. A habit of going over the whole house weekly would do away with the danger which comes of breathing stagnant air. No; we cannot help wbat our good man friend may think. The women must clean bouse every week, and spring and fall, too!—Harper’s Bazar.