Two more nights have passed—No, I will not detail them. What is friendship but a name?
This little book is intended to convey instruction with regard to a housemaid’s duties to the most ignorant in the simplest possible language. Many will throw it aside in indignation, and exclaim, “Does it require a book to be written to tell us that the drawing-room grate should be the first thing cleaned and polished, and not left till a room is swept and dusted, or that if the apartment has not been used for some time, and the carpet carefully covered up, it is better to leave it covered till the walls have been swept down, and the window-curtains brushed?” Strange as it may appear, such advice we have more than once found necessary; we therefore address ourselves to those who for want of regular training, and from not bringing common sense into practice, have fallen into similar errors to those here alluded to, and to a still more numerous race, who are every day leaving their father’s cottage with the desire to obtain a housemaid’s place, and would therefore willingly learn something of a housemaid’s duties.
A housemaid’s duties are various, and by no means easy of attainment; for she has to contend against a host of enemies—dust, soot, smoke, rust, insects of various kinds, and bad smells innumerable; let her, however, not be discouraged; all difficulties will give way before early rising, habits of activity, an acute nose, frequent open windows, and a teachable spirit; let us therefore proceed without further preface to give our best advice as to cleaning a house thoroughly after the six winter months of smoke and dust.
Let all the dusters and brushes which will be required, be carefully washed the day before you begin the work of cleaning. To sweep with a dirty brush will do more harm to a carpet than to leave it unswept; and a chair-cover, rubbed with a soiled duster, is injured in a way which no after-dusting can remove.
Let the stair-carpet be first taken up and folded to be beaten with the other carpets. If the family are absent, it is better that all the carpets which require to be beaten should be taken up at the same time and sent away, and all the chimneys swept before the cleaning begins. But if the family are at home, this should not be done, as the cleaning should then only begin in one room at a time, so as to occasion as little discomfort and inconvenience as possible.