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Ironing Day: Irons

To Prevent Rust on Irons. - If irons are exposed to moisture or stored away for a time, brush or rub them when warm with a mixture of vaseline and sweet oil. Lard or vaseline alone may be used for this purpose. These substances may be removed by washing the iron in good soapsuds when ready for use.

To Keep Flatirons Clean. In small apartments it is often convenient to store the flatirons on the back of the range. To keep them free from grease and dirt take a common pasteboard shoe box or other box of convenient shape and size, and cover with sheet asbestos glued on. Keep the irons in this, and they will be clean, dry, and always handy.

Care of Irons. - Care must be taken to prevent the roughening of irons from starch or other sticky substance adhering to them and burning on.

This is especially likely to happen if raw or partly cooked starch is used.

To prevent this, tack a piece of very fine sandpaper on the ironing board and rub the iron on it each time before returning to the fire. Or use bath brick, dry salt, or powdered pumice stone spread on a smooth surface, with or without sandpaper.

Or fill a cheese-cloth bag with powdered pumice stone and rub the iron on this.

Starch may be prevented from sticking to the iron by the use of beeswax, paraffin, wax paper, or kerosene. To use beeswax, put it in a little bag of cloth or between two pieces of paper, and attach to the ironing board. Rub the iron over this. Save the paraffin on the tops of jars of jelly, melt up, and pour into a mold to cool. Put this in a cloth bag and use the same as beeswax.

Or save the wax papers that come in cracker boxes or the inside linings of laundry soap, and rub the irons on these.

Or have at hand a cloth saturated with kerosene, and rub the iron over this. These methods all tend to make the ironing easier by lessening the friction and also keep the iron clean and give polish to the fabrics.