(“Good Heavens! What a neatness of the utensils! how costly the beds and bedding, and how white the sheets, serviettes and tablecloths! What an ornamentation on the chairs, and, lastly, what cleanliness of the floors, walls and everything! The floors of the eating, sleeping and sitting rooms are strewn with a little sand, so that if anything should drop and one should accidentally step upon it, the floor would not be soiled, and before the matter could stick to it, the dirt might be removed with a broom.”)
Fifty years later, Guicciardini, after praising the general state of the civilization and courtesy of the people, and remarking on the beauty of the public and private buildings, says: “But after all this if one enters their homes and notices the abundance of all kinds of furniture, and the order and neatness of everything, it gives one great pleasure, and one looks upon it as a wonder. And indeed it is, for there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.”
The inventories of the day give evidence of a great variety and number of cleaning utensils. Brooms and brushes of all kinds, tubs, pails, buckets, scrubbers tied with red leather, dust brushes called hogs, floor brushes, hearth hair brushes with brass and wooden handles occur in every house. One inventory of 1685 shows how well supplied a rich home was with articles for cleaning and scrubbing. These are as follows: five whiting brushes, one brush to clean the floors, five rubbers, three small painting brushes, four dust brushes, two floor brushes, two hair brushes, two hearth brooms, one chamber broom, one rake brush, one brush, one hay broom without a stick, and two Bermudian brooms with sticks. Cooking and cleaning implements and utensils were kept in the kitchen and in the cellar underneath. Pictures by Dutch masters show that in clement weather a good deal of housework was done in the tiled court or yard adjoining the kitchen.
As an example of the ordinary burgher’s home, let us take the house on one of the corners of the Mat Wharf on the Voorstraat in Dordrecht, dating from the beginning of the seventeenth century, and dwelt in by Andreas Hulstman Janz, merchant in wood, his wife Elizabeth Balen Matthews, and his children Jan, Christine and Alette.