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House Cleaning: Carpets

To Sweep Carpets. - Before taking up the carpet it should be well swept.

The less dust it contains the quicker it can be beaten. Sprinkle with salt or corn meal, or with a mixture of salt and corn meal moistened with kerosene.

Or, if fresh clippings from a lawn mower can be had, sprinkle the carpet with them. Or, if the carpet is of a dark color, with wet tea leaves. Tea leaves may stain a light-colored carpet.

Or wring a newspaper out of cold water until it is damp, but not wet.

Tear in small pieces and sprinkle with them. Sweep thoroughly before taking up the tacks.

To Beat Carpets. - If you have a clean green lawn, draw the carpet "Use a Wire Beater." over the grass for some distance, turn, and draw back on the other side. Beat HOUSE CLEANING the carpet while lying on the grass.

Reverse the carpet so as to draw it over another spot, and beat on the other side. Then hang it over a line and beat until clean. Beat first thoroughly on the wrong side and afterwards more gently on the right. To beat carpets, use preferably a wire beater made by bending a heavy piece of wire 8 or 10 feet long and inch or more in thickness. Of this form a loop, and attach the ends to a convenient handle, as a broomstick.

Or use flexible hickory switches rather than heavy sticks, which may injure the warp of the carpet.

To Clean Carpets. - If a carpet is much soiled it may require washing or scouring after having been beaten.

This may be done after the carpet has been laid on the floor. First remove stains and grease spots. Next wash, then, with a stiff bristle brush the size of a nailbrush, apply suds made with warm water and one of the following cleansing mixtures:

Have at hand a pail containing suds, another containing clear hot rinsing water, a stiff bristle brush, a large sponge, and a number of coarse porous cloths. Use as little water as possible. Take one breadth at a time and scrub what can be reached without moving. Rinse this section immediately with a sponge wrung out of clear water and dry with a coarse cloth before proceeding to the next.

Soap soiled spots with any good hard white soap dipped in water. Take about 1 yards at a time and work quickly, so that the water will not soak into the carpet.

Or pure soapsuds made by dissolving 1 bar of castile of other hard white soap in 2 gallons of water.

Or one bar of hard white soap, 1 tablespoonful each of borax, washing soda, fuller's earth, and salts of tartar. Cut the soap fine, mix the ingredients in a kettle, add 1 gallon of boiling water, and stir until all are dissolved.

Or 1 pint of ox gall dissolved in 1 quart of cold water. Apply with a scrubbing brush until a lather is formed. Rub pure ox gall on soiled places, rinse, and dry as above.

Or dissolve 1 bar of hard white soap in 1 gallon of water. Dissolve 4 ounces of borax and 4 ounces of sal soda in 4 gallons of water; mix, remove from the fire, and add pint of alcohol, stirring well. Apply when cold.

Finally, open the windows and allow the carpet to thoroughly dry before the room is used. Kindling a fire, if convenient, will assist in drying.

Or ingrain carpets may be ripped into breadths and washed in the tub like other woolen goods with soap and water, or hung out on the line during a warm summer rain.