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Old Fashioned Methods for Cleaning

To remove Printing Ink

Apply warm oil of turpentine, by rubbing the spot it will extract ink or paint. Warm the turpentine by putting the vial in warm water.

Stain of fruit or wine

Apply strong spirits of wine; if that does not succeed, apply oxy muriatic acid, and washing with soap alternately. Apply this, in a small tea or coffee cup, put three or four tea spoonfuls of common spirits of salt, to this add about half a spoonful of red lead, after having immersed the small cup in a larger one containing hot water; moisten the stain and stretch it over the vapor, till the stain be effaced--wash it well in water.

To remove grease spots

Apply white tobacco pipe clay, or French chalk (that is Steatite or soap stone) put blotting paper over it and apply a hot iron at a little distance. This will take out much of the grease by repetition. Good ether or hot oil of turpentine will efface the remainder. Where you can venture to wash the place, a good washing with hot soap and water, will answer every purpose. You may thus effaco grease spots from paper, should any slight stain remain at the edges, brush it with a camel's hair pencil, dipped in very strong spirits of wine or ether.

To clean silk stockings

Wash with soap and water; and simmer them in the same for ten minutes, rinsing in cold water. For a blue cast, put one drop of liquid blue, into a pan of cold spring water, run the stockings through this a minute or two, and dry them. For a pink cast, put one or two drops of saturated pink dye into cold water, and rinse them through this. For a flesh color, add a little rose pink in a thin soap liquor, rub them with clean flannel, and calender or mangle them.

To clean buff colored cloth

Take tobacco pipe clay, and mix it with water as thick as lime-water used for whitewashing rooms; spread this over the cloth, and when it is dry, rub it off with a brush, and the cloth will look extremely well.

To wash fine lace or linen

Take a gallon of furze blossoms and burn them to ashes, then boil them in six quarts of soft water; this, when fine, use in washing with the suds, as occasion requires, and the linen, &c. will not only be exceedingly white, but it is done with half the soap, and little trouble.

To clean while veils

Put the veil in a solution of white soap, and let it simmer a quarter of an hour. Squeeze it in some water and soap till quite clean. Rinse it from soap, and then in clean cold water, in which is a drop of liquid blue. Then pour boiling water upon a teaspoonful of starch, run the veil through this, and clear it well, by clapping it. Afterwards pin it out, keeping the edges straight and even.

To clean black silks

To bullock's gall and boiling water sufficient to make it warm, and with a clean sponge, rub the silk well on both sides, squeeze it well out, and proceed again in like manner. Rinse it in spring water, and change the water till perfectly clean dry it in the air, and pin it out on a table; but first dip the sponge in glue water, and rub it on the wrong side; then dry it before a fire.

To clean black veils

Pass them through a warm liquor of bullock's gall and water; rinse in cold water: then take a small piece of glue, pour boiling water on it, and pass the veil through it; clap it, and frame it to dry

To clean scarlet cloth

Dissolve the best white soap; and if black looking spots appear, rub dry soap on them; while the other soap is dissolving; with hot water, brush it off. If very dirty, immerse the article into the warm solution and rub the stained parts. Dispatch it quickly, and as soon as the colour begins to give wring it out, and immerse it in a pan or pail of warm water; wring it again, and immerse it in cold spring water, in which mix a table spoonfull of solution of tin. Stir it about, and in ten minutes hang it to dry in the shade, and cold press it.

To dip scarlet cloth

After it has been thoroughly cleaned with soap, and rinsed with warm water, put into boiling spring water, a quarter of a pound of young fustic, or zant, a drachm of pounded and sifted cochineal, and and equal quantity of cream of tartar and cochincal; boil five or six minutes, and cool by adding a pint or two of cold spring water, and a table spoonful of the solution of tin. Stir the mixture, put in the cloth, boil for ten minutes, and when dry cold press it.

Dip a brush in warm gall, and apply it to greasy places, rinse it off in cold water; dry by the fire, then lay the coat flat, strew damp sand over it, and with a brush beat the sand into the cloth; then brush it out with a hard brush, and the sand will bring away the dirt.--Rub a drop of oil of olives over a soft brush, to brighten the colours.

To take stains out of silver plate

Steep the plate in soap leys for the space of four hours, then cover it over with whiting wet with vinegar, so that it may stick thick upon it, and dry it by the fire; after which, rub off the whiting and pass it over with bran, and the spots will not only disappear, but the plate will look exceedingly bright.

To cleanse gloves without welling

Lay the gloves upon a clean board, make a mixture of dried fulling earth and powdered allum, and pass them over on each side with a common stiff brush; then sweep it off, and sprinkle them well with dry bran and whiting, and dust them well; this, if they be not exceedingly greasy, will render them quite clean; but if they are much soiled take out the grease with crumbs of toasted bread, and powder of burnt bone; then pass them over with a woollen cloth dipped in fulling earth or alum powder; and in this manner they can be cleaned without wetting, which frequently shrinks and spoils them.

To take out writing

When recently written, ink may be completely removed by the oxymuriatic acid, (concentrated and in solution.) The paper is to be washed over repeatedly with the acid; but it will be necessary afterward to wash it with lime water, for the purpose of neutralizing any acid that may be left on the paper, and which would considerably weaken it. If the ink has been long written, it will have undergone such a change as to prevent the preceding process acting. It ought therefore to be washed with liver of sulphur (sulphuret of ammonia) before the oxymuriatic acid is applied. It may be washed with a hair pencil.

To clean paper hangings

Cut into eight half quarters a stale quartern loaf; with one of these pieces, after having blown off all the dust from the paper to be cleaned by means of a good pair of bellows, begin at the top of the room, holding the crust in the hand, and wiping lightly downward with the crumb, about half a yard at each stroke, till the upper part of the hangings is completely cleaned all round; then go again round with the like sweeping stroke downward, always commencing each successive course a little higher than the upper stroke had extended till the bottom be finished. This operation, if carefully performed, will frequently make very old paper look almost equal to new. Great caution must be used not by any means to rub the paper hard, nor to attempt cleaning it the cross or horrizontal way. The dirty part of the bread too must be each time cut away, and the pieces renewed as soon as at all necessary.

To clean gold lace

Gold lace is easily cleaned and restored to its original brightness by rubbing it with a soft brush dipped in roch alum burnt, sifted to a very fine powder.

To take out spots of ink

As soon as the accident happens, wet the place with juice of sorrel or lemon, or with vinegar, and the best hard white soap.