How To Remove Grease Spots

Magnesia will effectually remove grease spots from silk on rubbing it in well; and after standing awhile, apply a piece of soft brown paper to the wrong side, on which press a warm iron gently; and what grease is not absorbed by the paper, can be removed by washing the spot carefully with warm water.

How To Clean Matting

Straw matting should be washed but seldom, as much dampness is injurious to it. When it is necessary to clean a floor mat, do it by washing with a large coarse cloth dipped in salt water; and, as you proceed, wiping it dry with another coarse cloth. The salt will prevent the matting from turning yellow. If, in putting down a floor mat, you have occasion to join it across, ravel about an inch at the end of each breadth, and tie or knot the lengthway threads two together. Then turning all these knotted threads underneath, lay one edge over the other of the pieces to be joined, and tack them down to the floor with a row of very small tacks; each tack having a little bit of buckskin on it, to prevent the head of the nail from injuring or wearing out the mat. This ravelling the ends of the breadths, and knotting and turning under their threads, obviates the inconvenience of a thick conspicuous ridge, if the edge of the matting is folded under in its full substance. Worsted binding is generally used for matting; but as this is sometimes destroyed by moths, it is safer to secure the edge of the mat with the sufficiently durable binding of colored linen or thick cotton tape.

How To Extract Grease From Papered Walls

Dip a piece of flannel in spirits of wine, rub the greasy spots gently once or twice, and the grease will disappear.

How To Clean Paper Hangings

All the dust must first be brushed from the walls. Then divide a loaf of stale white bread; take the crust into your hand, and beginning at the top of the paper, wipe it downwards in the lightest manner with the crumb. Do not cross or go upward. The dirt of the paper and the crumbs will fall together. Do not wipe above half a yard at a stroke, and after doing all the upper part, go round again, beginning a little above where you left off. If you do not do it extremely lightly, you will make the dirt adhere to the paper.

How To Clean Greasy Carpets

The carpets must be taken up, beaten and shaken; remove the grease spots, which must be effected by means of a paste made of boiling water poured on equal quantities of magnesia and fuller's earth; cover all the grease spots with this paste while it is hot, and let it remain till quite dry, then brush it off, and the grease will have disappeared. Carpets must be washed with boiling water in which common yellow soap and soda have been dissolved, in the proportion of an ounce of soap and a drachm of soda to each two gallons of water. The method of washing is to dip a clean flannel into the cleansing liquid and quickly wash over a certain portion of the carpet; then, before it can dry, dip another flannel into a pail of perfectly clean hot water, and wash the same part over again. Then proceed to wash another portion, first with the cleansing, and then with the pure water, and go on thus till the whole surface has been cleansed and rinsed in the clean water: not more than a yard square should be washed at once. When perfectly dry it should be again rubbed over with a clean flannel, dipped in a strong solution of ox-gall and water. This process, though tedious, entirely renovates faded and soiled and greasy carpets.