This section is from the book "Practical Housekeeping", by Estelle Woods Wilcox. Also available from Amazon: The New Practical Housekeeping.
Before putting away summer or winter clothes, mend, clean, brush, shake well, fold smoothly, sprinkle gum-camphor, on every fold, and on the bottom of trunks or closets (unless cedar chests are used). Fine dresses, cloaks, etc., should be wrapped in towels or sheets by themselves, and placed in the tray or a separate apartment of the trunk.
Mix two ounces of a thick solution of glue with one ounce of linseed-oil varnish, and half an ounce of pure spirits of turpentine; boil the whole together in a close vessel. After it has been applied to the glass and metal, clamp together for two or three days till dry.
- To clean and restore the elasticity of cane chair-bottoms, turn the chair bottom upward, and with hot water and a sponge wash the cane; work well, so that it is well soaked; should it be dirty use soap, let it dry well in the air, and it will be as tight and firm as new, provided none of the canes are broken.
Make a thin paste of gum-tragacanth and water, to which add a few drops of oil of vitriol. Mix a pound each of transparent glue and very strong vinegar, one quart alcohol, a small quantity of alum, and dissolve by means of a water-bath. This is useful for uniting horn, pearl, shell, and bone.
Take a pail of clean, soft, lukewarm water, a nice, soft piece of flannel, wash the oil-cloth and wipe very dry so that no drop of water is left to soak in and rot the fabric. After washing and drying, if a cloth is rung out of a dish of skim-milk and water, and the oil-cloth is rubbed over with this, and then again well dried, the freshness and luster of the cloth will well repay the extra labor.
Make a good, tepid suds with hard or soft soap, put in leather, rub it on the wash-board, put soap on skin and rub again on board, and wash in this way through one or two suds, or until perfectly clean; rinse in tepid water without bluing, squeeze dry (do not wring), hang in sun and keep snapping and pulling it till perfectly dry. The leather will be as soft as new if the snapping and pulling are done thoroughly.
The most impure water may be rendered pure by filtering through charcoal. Take a large flower-pot, put a piece of sponge or clean moss over the hole in the bottom, fill three-quarters full of equal parts clean sand and charcoal, the size of a pea; over this lav a linen or woolen cloth large enough to hang over the sides of the pot. Pour the water into the cloth, and it will come out pure.
Divide a newspaper in two, fold up one-half in a small square, wet in cold water. Rub the glass first with the wet half of the paper, and dry with the other. Fly-specks and all other marks will disappear as if by magic. This is only true of the best quality of rag paper, such as is used by the best weekly papers. Paper which has wood or straw in it leaves a linty deposit on the glass.
Save water in which potatoes have been boiled with a little salt, let it become sour, which it will do in a few days; heat and wash the articles with a woolen cloth, rinsing in pure water, dry and polish with chamois-leather. Never allow a particle of soap to touch silver or plated ware. For wiping silver, an old linen table-cloth cut up in pieces of convenient size, hemmed, and marked "silver," is very nice.
 
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