Great-Grandma's Household Hints-LONG

May 21, 2004

Got this from another list I'm on. I love reading or hearing about the way of life of past generations. Then I love asking grandma, how did your mom or grandma do this? Or asking my parents the same questions, though dad is kind of clueless about canning and stuff...hehe...guess maybe I should ask his sisters. My great-grandparents (or prior generations) were home-steaders, and to me it's part of my heritage. Anyway, thought you might enjoy this too.

Jessie

Honey in Great-Grandma's Household HintsFROM Cooking with Honey by Hazel Berto

Near the turn of the century housewives were warned not to try to simplify housework by purchasing patent washing and cleaning preparations, or to employ dressmakers and such people as laundresses. This would not only deprive their children of the educational value of learning this work, but it would also make housework dull and monotonous.

Great-grandma might have agreed with this point of view.

With so many chores confronting her day, and without patent washing and cleaning preparations, her daily life could not have been monotonous. But without planning and methods and schedules of the days and weeks, it might have been overwhelming. Yet with an eye on earnings and savings, she happily approached each day, wasting nothing, taking advantage of household hints handed down or newly discovered.

Wet tealeaves, saved daily, were used to sweep carpets. Dusters were made of old material including tops of stockings. Rags were beaten on lines with a carpet beater, or, if on the floor, were sprinkled with table salt, then swept hard. Oilcloth was cleaned with lukewarm water containing skim milk or buttermilk. For longer wear, whether on the table or the floor, beeswax and turpentine were rubbed on it.

Blankets or quilts were aired before storing for summer, then folded in paper, with hemlock or arborvitae sprigs, dry sweet flags, lavender or sachet powder scattered through out the folds to keep out moths and to give an agreeable odor.

To clean window corners, she might use wings from the Thanksgiving turkeys, geese, or chickens. They were also used to wash windows because they were free from dust or lint. To polish windows or lamp chimneys, pulverized pumice stone was put between folds of cloth and the cloth then stitched to hold the powder. Vinegar might also be used.

For deep scratches on furniture, beeswax prepared from honeycomb was melted and thinned with turpentine to the consistency of syrup. This was applied with a soft cloth and polished with flannel or velveteen.

Furniture and floor polish required 6-1/2 lbs of beeswax rubbed through a coarse grater, and 3 lbs of pearl ash, made from ashes from the fireplace, and a little water, boiled and stirred until it ceased to effervesce. 3 lbs of dry yellow ocher was stirred in, the whole then poured into a tin pail having a tight cover. It was used by thinning it with boiling water to the consistency of cream, applied with a soft cloth, then polished with a weighted brush, and finally wiped up with coarse flannel.

Another furniture polish contained alkanet root and melted beeswax. After straining, linseed oil and spirits of turpentine were added.

A paste for polishing light furniture was composed of beeswax and turpentine. Rosin was added for mahogany furniture. After this was melted, Venetian red was added for color.

Housecleaning for holidays and family gatherings meant furniture cleaning. One method was to dissolve beeswax and a bit of sugar in a quart of strong beer or vinegar. The furniture was first washed with water or tea, then the mixture was applied with a sponge or brush. After oiling, drying, and a final polishing, the furniture gleamed.

Varnishing was a tedious job for Great-grandma. She had many methods of "killing knots" in her woodwork before refinishing, one of which was to hold a hot iron against the know until the pitch stewed out, allowing her to scrape it off. Varnish was made by mixing resin, beeswax, and boiled hot oil until the mixture was stringy. When cool, turpentine was added. Applied in several coats, it was then rubbed down with very finely pulverized pumice stone and sweet oil before finally wiping and polishing with a chamois or flannel.

In cleaning feather beds, she passed the feathers into another fresh tick every two or three years, although people often slept on them for a whole generation without such renovation. The old ticking was washed, rubbed inside with a mixture of equal parts of beeswax and turpentine, and then gone over with a warm iron. This prevented the feathers from being soiled by perspiration or from working through the tick.

Waxing was also done with new ticks, including pillow ticks which were later filled with feathers, dried tea leaves, curled strips of newspaper, cured glass clippings, milkweed down with the seeds removed, baked cotton batting (baking finely picked over cotton batting kept it from matting), or fancier dried rose leaves.

Washdays were preceded by soap making. Great-grandma made soft and hard soaps. Rosin added increased weight and bulk. A favorite family recipe called for a gallon of soft water, a pound of ground stone lime, 3-1/4 lbs of sal soda, an oz of borax, 2-1/2 lbs of tallow or other animal fat (she often used fat from a butchered hog), 1-3/4 pulverized rosin, and an oz of beeswax. The lime and soda were gradually added to the boiling water and stirred vigorously before the borax was added. When all had dissolved, the melted fat was added in a thin stream and stirred vigorously. After the rosin and beeswax were added, the mixture was boiled and stirred until thick, then cooled in molds.

Ironing day meant hours of heating irons on a wood range or on a living room heater. It meant "doing up" yards of fine lace, ruffles, fancy work, petticoats, shirtwaists, long baby clothes, children's clothes, as well as sheets and pillowcases, linens and dishtowels.

To do fine ironing it was thought by some that several kinds of irons must be used, including a 6- to 7-lb polishing iron for shirt bosoms, collars, and cuffs; a puff iron for fine tucks, puffy sleeves, and other elaborated work; a fluting iron for ruffles, and perhaps a child's toy iron for tucks, fluting or other difficult parts of clothes. Starch was prevented from sticking to the iron by putting beeswax in a little bag of cloth or between two pieces of paper and running the iron over it.

To prevent rust on irons, a piece of beeswax was laid in a cloth, the hot iron run over it, then the iron was scoured with a cloth sprinkled with salt.

Silks and ribbons were cleaned with a mixture of gin, honey, and soft soap in a bit of water. Pieces were scrubbed, and then dipped in clean water, and ironed almost immediately. If the material was very soiled, it was also passed through a warm liquor of a bullock's gall and water, rinsed well, then passed through a bit of glue and boiling water before drying on a frame.

Another cleansing mixture for clothing consisted of gum camphor dissolved in alcohol, borax, saltpeter, honey, pipe clay and beef's gall, along with hard white soap, spirits of turpentine and sulfuric ether. It was stored in a black glass bottle and tightly corked. It was judged safe for woolens, silks, and all the ordinary fabrics that Great-grandma knew, and would clean practically every kind of spot or stain likely to be on her garments.

To prevent her silks or woolen goods from turning yellow when stored, pieces of white beeswax were broken up and put in loosely folded cheesecloth, and placed among the articles, after they were wrapped in old white linen or cotton cloth.

Great-grandpa, too, used beeswax. For polishing his steel tools, the wax was mixed with oil of turpentine and boiled linseed oil. His harnesses and leather goods remained soft and pliable after waxing them with his mixture.

Most types of leather goods needed waterproofing including new shoes for the family. For this mutton tallow and perhaps neat's-foot oil or castor oil might be added to beeswax, with coloring such as ivory black added.

For seams of leather goods a stronger solution was needed. This included India rubber, and was made with neat's-foot oil and as much Indian rubber from an old pair of rubber over-shoes or boots as the oil could hold, plus mutton tallow, beeswax, and coloring. Shoelaces were much easier for little fingers to thread if the shoestrings were first rubbed with beeswax and they came untied far less often.

When harnesses needed cleaning, which they often did, Great-grandpa used beeswax and neat's-foot oil, simmered until the beeswax dissolved, then added oil of tar. Other combinations for cleaning or waxing were black rosin and beeswax, ivory black and Prussian blue, mutton tallow and beeswax with brown sugar, castile soap jelly and indigo and turpentine. Black balls for leather dressing also had beeswax as an ingredient.

Cements were made for almost any mending chore, including knives come loose from their handles, broken china, and crockery. Grafting wax for orchards was needed. By combining and melting rosin, tallow, and beeswax, then cooling it in cold water and kneading it into a mass, enough wax was made to last for years.

Though Great-grandma's chores filled almost every waking hour, she found time to mix toilet waters, shampoos, hair curling solutions, dainty soaps, shaving creams for the men, and creams that helped them raise a luxuriant beard. Minutes were snatched from the mending, washing, ironing, canning, sewing, and housecleaning to produce these present-day items, the ingredients which might include oils of lavender, cloves, bergamot, sage, nutmeg, rose geranium, essence ambergris, musk, tincture of orris root, and honey. Other strange ingredients were tincture of cedar wood, myrrh, Krameria, oil of neroli, oil of balm, and essence of clove gilly-flower, and were often measured by drams, drops, and ounces. These mixtures when completed were usually left to stand for weeks to make a better product.

Egg yolk was an important ingredient in shampoos and was thought to help prevent gray hair. Another combination for gray hair consisted of a gallon of new milk into which was put two quarts of green tendrils of the grapevine, two pounds of honey, and a handful of rosemary. This was simmered until reduced by half. Strained through a linen cloth, it was applied frequently to the hair.

Preparations for curling the hair included some adhesive ingredient such as beeswax, which was then mixed with various oils and diluted with alcohol or water. One recipe called for apiece of white beeswax about the size of a hickory nut melted in an ounce of olive oil and perfumed with a few drops of oil of neroli.

Honey was added to both shaving creams and preparations to give luster to the hair and beard when the natural oils seemed lacking. One recipe combined honey with alcohol and glycerin as an inexpensive dressing.

Great-grandpa's razor strop was kept sleek and efficient with various dressings such as fine flour of emery and beeswax. Or the grit from a fine grindstone was collected as it gathered in the form of paste on the blade of a scythe or axe, and added to the beeswax.

Thus, Great-grandma filled her days, and avoided dullness and monotony.

Diana Gonzalez

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