The American Frugal Housewife Part 2

If you have a large family, it is well to keep white rags separate from colored ones, and cotton separate from woollen; they bring a higher price. Paper brings a cent a pound, and if you have plenty of room, it is well to save it. 'A penny saved is a penny got.'

Always have plenty of dish-water, and have it hot. There is no need of asking the character of a domestic, if you have ever seen her wash dishes in a little greasy water. When mola.s.ses is used in cooking, it is a prodigious improvement to boil and skim it before you use it.

It takes out the unpleasant raw taste, and makes it almost as good as sugar. Where mola.s.ses is used much for cooking, it is well to prepare one or two gallons in this way at a time.

In winter, always set the handle of your pump as high as possible, before you go to bed. Except in very rigid weather, this keeps the handle from freezing. When there is reason to apprehend extreme cold, do not forget to throw a rug or horse-blanket over your pump; a frozen pump is a comfortless preparation for a winter's breakfast. Never allow ashes to be taken up in wood, or put into wood. Always have your tinder-box and lantern ready for use, in case of sudden alarm. Have important papers all together, where you can lay your hand on them at once, in case of fire.

Keep an old blanket and sheet on purpose for ironing, and on no account suffer any other to be used. Have plenty of holders always made, that your towels may not be burned out in such service.

Keep a coa.r.s.e broom for the cellar stairs, wood-shed, yard, &c. No good housekeeper allows her carpet broom to be used for such things.

There should always be a heavy stone on the top of your pork, to keep it down. This stone is an excellent place to keep a bit of fresh meat in the summer, when you are afraid of its spoiling.

Have all the good bits of vegetables and meat collected after dinner, and minced before they are set away; that they may be in readiness to make a little savoury mince meat for supper or breakfast. Take the skins off your potatoes before they grow cold.

Vials, which have been used for medicine, should be put into cold ashes and water, boiled, and suffered to cool before they are rinsed.

If you live in the city, where it is always easy to procure provisions, be careful and not buy too much for your daily wants, while the weather is warm.

Never leave out your clothes-line over night; and see that your clothes-pins are all gathered into a basket.

Have plenty of crash towels in the kitchen; never let your white napkins be used there.

Soap your dirtiest clothes, and soak them in soft water over night.

Use hard soap to wash your clothes, and soft to wash your floors. Soft soap is so slippery, that it wastes a good deal in washing clothes.

Instead of covering up your gla.s.ses and pictures with muslin, cover the frames only with cheap, yellow cambric, neatly put on, and as near the color of the gilt as you can procure it. This looks better; leaves the gla.s.ses open for use, and the pictures for ornament; and is an effectual barrier to dust as well as flies. It can easily be re-colored with saffron tea, when it is faded.

Have a bottle full of brandy, with as large a mouth as any bottle you have, into which cut your lemon and orange peel when they are fresh and sweet. This brandy gives a delicious flavor to all sorts of pies, puddings, and cakes. Lemon is the pleasantest spice of the two; therefore they should be kept in separate bottles. It is a good plan to preserve rose-leaves in brandy. The flavor is pleasanter than rose-water; and there are few people who have the utensils for distilling. Peach leaves steeped in brandy make excellent spice for custards and puddings.

It is easy to have a supply of horse-radish all winter. Have a quant.i.ty grated, while the root is in perfection, put it in bottles, fill it with strong vinegar, and keep it corked tight.

It is thought to be a preventive to the unhealthy influence of cuc.u.mbers to cut the slices very thin, and drop each one into cold water as you cut it. A few minutes in the water takes out a large portion of the slimy matter, so injurious to health. They should be eaten with high seasoning.

Where sweet oil is much used, it is more economical to buy it by the bottle than by the flask. A bottle holds more than twice as much as a flask, and it is never double the price.

If you wish to have free-stone hearths dark, wash them with soap, and wipe them with a wet cloth; some people rub in lamp-oil, once in a while, and wash the hearth faithfully afterwards. This does very well in a large, dirty family; for the hearth looks very clean, and is not liable to show grease spots. But if you wish to preserve the beauty of a freestone hearth, buy a quant.i.ty of free-stone powder of the stone-cutter, and rub on a portion of it wet, after you have washed your hearth in hot water. When it is dry, brush it off, and it will look like new stone. Bricks can be kept clean with redding stirred up in water, and put on with a brush. Pulverized clay mixed with redding, makes a pretty rose color. Some think it is less likely to come off, if mixed with skim milk instead of water. But black lead is far handsomer than anything else for this purpose. It looks very well mixed with water, like redding; but it gives it a glossy appearance to boil the lead in soft soap, with a little water to keep it from burning. It should be put on with a brush, in the same manner as redding; it looks nice for a long time, when done in this way.

Keep a bag for odd pieces of tape and strings; they will come in use.

Keep a bag or box for old b.u.t.tons, so that you may know where to go when you want one.

Run the heels of stockings faithfully; and mend thin places, as well as holes. 'A st.i.tch in time saves nine.'

Poke-root, boiled in water and mixed with a good quant.i.ty of mola.s.ses, set about the kitchen, the pantry, &c. in large deep plates, will kill c.o.c.kroaches in great numbers, and finally rid the house of them. The Indians say that poke-root boiled into a soft poultice is the cure for the bite of a snake. I have heard of a fine horse saved by it.

A little salt sprinkled in starch while it is boiling, tends to prevent it from sticking; it is likewise good to stir it with a clean spermaceti candle.

A few potatoes sliced, and boiling water poured over them, makes an excellent preparation for cleansing and stiffening old rusty black silk.

Green tea is excellent to restore rusty silk. It should be boiled in iron, nearly a cup full to three quarts. The silk should not be wrung, and should be ironed damp.

Lime pulverized, sifted through coa.r.s.e muslin, and stirred up tolerably thick in white of eggs, makes a strong cement for gla.s.s and china. Plaster of Paris is still better; particularly for mending broken images of the same material. It should be stirred up by the spoonful, as it is wanted.[2]

[Footnote 2: Some think it an improvement to make whey of vinegar and milk, and heat it well up with the eggs before the lime is put in. I have heard of iron mended with it.]

A bit of isingla.s.s dissolved in gin, or boiled in spirits of wine, is said to make strong cement for broken gla.s.s, china, and sea-sh.e.l.ls.

The lemon syrup, usually sold at fifty cents a bottle, may be made much cheaper. Those who use a great quant.i.ty of it will find it worth their while to make it. Take about a pound of Havana sugar; boil it in water down to a quart; drop in the white of an egg, to clarify it; strain it; add one quarter of an oz. of tartaric acid, or citric acid; if you do not find it sour enough, after it has stood two or three days and shaken freely, add more of the acid. A few drops of the oil of lemon improves it.

If you wish to clarify sugar and water, you are about to boil, it is well to stir in the white of one egg, while cold; if put in after it boils, the egg is apt to get hardened before it can do any good.

Those who are fond of soda powders will do well to inquire at the apothecaries for the suitable acid and alkali, and buy them by the ounce, or the pound, according to the size of their families.

Experience soon teaches the right proportions; and, sweetened with a little sugar or lemon syrup, it is quite as good as what one gives five times as much for, done up in papers. The case is the same with Roch.e.l.le powders.

When the stopper of a gla.s.s decanter becomes too tight, a cloth wet with hot water and applied to the neck, will cause the gla.s.s to expand, so that the stopper may be easily removed.

Gla.s.s vessels in a cylindrical form, may be cut in two, by tying around them a worsted thread, thoroughly wet with spirits of turpentine, and then setting fire to the thread. Court plaster is made of thin silk first dipped in dissolved isingla.s.s and dried, then dipped several times in the white of egg and dried.

When plain tortoise-sh.e.l.l combs are defaced, the polish may be renewed by rubbing them with pulverized rotten-stone and oil. The rotten-stone should be sifted through muslin. It looks better to be rubbed on by the hand. The jewellers afterwards polish them by rubbing them with dry _rouge powder_; but sifted magnesia does just as well--and if the ladies had rouge, perhaps they would, _by mistake_, put it upon their cheeks, instead of their combs; and thereby spoil their complexions.

The best way to cleanse gold is, to wash it in warm suds made of delicate soap, with ten or fifteen drops of _sal-volatile_ in it. This makes jewels very brilliant.

Straw carpets should be washed in salt and water, and wiped with a dry, coa.r.s.e towel. They have a strong tendency to turn yellow; and the salt prevents it. Moisture makes them decay soon; therefore they should be kept thoroughly dry.

Rye paste is more adhesive than any other paste; because that grain is very glutinous. It is much improved by adding a little pounded alum, while it is boiling. This makes it almost as strong as glue.

Red ants are among the worst plagues that can infest a house. A lady who had long been troubled with them, a.s.sured me she destroyed them in a few days, after the following manner. She placed a dish of cracked s.h.a.gbarks (of which they are more fond than of anything else) in the closet. They soon gathered upon it in troops. She then put some corrosive sublimate in a cup; ordered the dish to be carried carefully to the fire, and all its contents brushed in; while she swept the few that dropped upon the shelf into the cup, and, with a feather, wet all the cracks from whence they came, with corrosive sublimate. When this had been repeated four or five times, the house was effectually cleared. Too much care cannot be taken of corrosive sublimate, especially when children are about. Many dreadful accidents have happened in consequence of carelessness. Bottles which have contained it should be broken, and buried; and cups should be boiled out in ashes and water. If kept in the house, it should be hung up high, out of reach, with POISON written upon it in large letters.

The neatest way to separate wax from honey-comb is to tie the comb up in a linen or woollen bag; place it in a kettle of cold water, and hang it over the fire. As the water heats, the wax melts, and rises to the surface, while all the impurities remain in the bag. It is well to put a few pebbles in the bag, to keep it from floating. Honey may be separated from the comb, by placing it in the hot sun, or before the fire, with two or three colanders or sieves, each finer than the other, under it.

SOAP.

In the city, I believe, it is better to exchange ashes and grease for soap; but in the country, I am certain, it is good economy to make one's own soap. If you burn wood, you can make your own lye; but the ashes of coal is not worth much. Bore small holes in the bottom of a barrel, place four bricks around, and fill the barrel with ashes. Wet the ashes well, but not enough to drop; let it soak thus three or four days; then pour a gallon of water in every hour or two, for a day or more, and let it drop into a pail or tub beneath. Keep it dripping till the color of the lye shows the strength is exhausted. If your lye is not strong enough, you must fill your barrel with fresh ashes, and let the lye run through it. Some people take a barrel without any bottom, and lay sticks and straw across to prevent the ashes from falling through. To make a barrel of soap, it will require about five or six bushels of ashes, with at least four quarts of unslacked stone lime; if slacked, doable the quant.i.ty.

When you have drawn off a part of the lye, put the lime (whether slack or not) into two or three pails of boiling water, and add it to the ashes, and let it drain through.

It is the practice of some people, in making soap, to put the lime near the bottom of the ashes when they first set it tip; but the lime becomes like mortar, and the lye does not run through, so as to get the strength of it, which is very important in making soap, as it contracts the nitrous salts which collect in ashes, and prevents the soap from _coming_, (as the saying is.) Old ashes are very apt to be impregnated with it.

Three pounds of grease should be put into a pailful of lye. The great difficulty in making soap '_come_' originates in want of judgment about the strength of the lye. One rule may be safely trusted--If your lye will bear up an egg, or a potato, so that you can see a piece of the surface as big as ninepence, it is just strong enough. If it sink below the top of the lye, it is too weak, and will never make soap; if it is buoyed up half way, the lye is too strong; and that is just as bad. A bit of quick-lime, thrown in while the lye and grease are boiling together, is of service. When the soap becomes thick and ropy, carry it down cellar in pails and empty it into a barrel.

Cold soap is less trouble, because it does not need to boil; the sun does the work of fire. The lye must be prepared and tried in the usual way. The grease must be tried out, and strained from the sc.r.a.ps. Two pounds of grease (instead of three) must be used to a pailful; unless the weather is very sultry, the lye should be hot when put to the grease. It should stand in the sun, and be stirred every day. If it does not begin to look like soap in the course of five or six days, add a little hot lye to it; if this does not help it, try whether it be grease that it wants. Perhaps you will think cold soap wasteful, because the grease must be strained; but if the sc.r.a.ps are boiled thoroughly in strong lye, the grease will all float upon the surface, and nothing be lost.