Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 126, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1915 — Daily Cleaning is Simplified [ARTICLE]

Daily Cleaning is Simplified

The installation of hardwood floors and small movable rugs in our homes has totally changed and simplified much of the daily cleaning, writes Christine Frederick in the New York Press. The long handled, so-called “yacht” or oil mop has come to stay, and we have it in every form. Where formerly a woman prostrated herself to wipe up the hardwood floor with a rag, she now fastens her rag on a handle or uses one of the specially prepared long-handled mops. The best of these are made of black fiber fitted into a soft head, which will not mar the furniture. Perhaps the very best is a triangular-shaped mop with soft padded edges, so that nothing will be scratched. t

The scrubbing brush fastened into a long handle is even more effective than the scrubbing brush as formerly used, because pressure from the arm at this height is more powerful than when exerted from the wrist. Then there are various improved mops and cleaners for all surfaces like tile, hardwood, linoleum, etc. A good one of these has an extremely long wooden handle, to which are fastened a number of rubber teeth. A specially prepared 20inch cloth is used with this handle, and the rubber teeth serve to hold the cloth tight as it is moved across either the wet or dry floor. In the array of small brushes, too, we have the grater choice, and such helps as radiator brushes, pointed button brushes knd the many improved wall mops and cleaners. The best of these come of the same fiber material as the oil mops, but are angle-shaped, so as to fit exactly the wall surface. Others are of soft felt and various absorbing materials, and all of them far preferable to the old way of cleaning a wall by rubbing It over with bags of corn meal.

Some housekeepers still do not care to use the long-handled oil mop, or do not need it, and for these there is a better way to wipe dust from the hardwood floor than the old method of tying a rag over the broom. This not only bent the broom out of shape, but the cover slipped off and never did successful work. Such a housekeeper may now have a carefully shaped bag of unbleached muslin, with a lower section made of cotton plush, the whole bag fitted with tapes so that the cover stays in place and enables the housewife easily to get up the dust The same dust-scattering method of olden days prevailed formerly in that always unpleasant task of cleaning silver and other metals. It was almost a half-day job to clean the weekly silver with the old-fashioned powder, brush and various “rags.” But this, too, has changed, and now we have been using for some time the so-called silver clean pan, and various specially prepared cloths for cleaning metals. One bright woman discovered by accident that the placing of silver in any aluminum utensil, adding to it hot water and a teaspoonful of salt and baking soda, would clean her silverware almost instantly. There is also a modification of the silver clean pan on the market in the form of a simple piece of zinc, which can be placed in any pan and used similarly. Many of the specially prepared cloths for cleaning metal are most excellent and far surpass the old, mussy, dust-flying method. The new order of cleaning means, then, absorbing dust rather than scattering it, and in every branch of cleansing, whether it be carpets, furniture, walls, metals or ornaments, there is a new method and a new tool lying at the door of the housewife, which will make cleaning an easy task.