How To Test The Purity Of The Atmosphere

Fill a glass tumbler with lime water, and place it in any convenient position. The rapidity with which a pellicle forms on its surface corresponds to the amount of carbonic acid, or foul air, present in the atmosphere that surrounds it.

How To Clean Wall Papers

Let the servant or man employed get on high steps, and first brush the wall all over with a perfectly clean brush. Then divide a stale loaf in large pieces, and rub the paper downwards with it in firm clear strokes; he must not go back over it with the same piece of bread, nor rub it up and down, only downwards. The bread will remove all the dirt and leave the paper like new; but it must not be used dirty, a fresh piece must be taken when the last used is soiled, otherwise dust will be carried from one breadth of the paper to the next.

How To Remove Grease Spots

If there are any grease spots on the paper, cover them with a little moist fuller's earth, and when it is dry brush it off. Repeat the application if required.

Board Cleaning

Boards should never be rubbed across, but up and down the boards. After being well scrubbed with soap, hot water, and a brush, they should be washed over again with clean water and soft cloth, and then well dried by hard rubbing. To extract oil from boards (it is frequently upset on them by careless painters), make a lye of pearl-ashes and rain-water; add to it unslacked lime as much as the water will absorb; stir well together; let it settle, and bottle it for use. Dilute it with rain-water when required, and wash the greasy spots quickly with it. Do not let it remain wet, for fear of discolouring the boards. Boards may be whitened by scrubbing them with soft water, sand, and slacked lime. This will also destroy insects.

For Removing Grease From Carpets

Half a wineglassful of Fuller's earth, half a wineglassful of magnesia. Mix the above in a basin with boiling water; put it hot on the grease-spot or spots, and leave it on till it is dry, then brush it off, and you will find the spots are gone. Or if the grease is recent, lay a sheet of blotting-paper over it and iron over the spot with a hot flat iron; it will come out into the blotting-paper, but you must keep moving the paper and applying fresh parts of it till the heat has absorbed the whole of the grease.

How To Remove Ink From Carpets

If the ink is just spilled, take up as much as you can with a spoon and with blotting-paper. When you have taken off all that is possible, wash well with skim milk (London milk does as it is), then wash again with hot water. As soon as the accident happens, wet the place with juice of sorrel, or lemon, or vinegar, and the best hard white soap. Old ink-stains are hard to get out; but they can be removed by first wetting the spot, and then applying salts of sorrel. Wash off immediately, however.

Fuller's earth mixed with lemon-juice will also take other stains out of carpets.

Carpets should not be swept with the whisk-brush above once a week. It wears them out if it is used ofcener.