Keep the Dish-Cloth Clean

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 3, 1907

Keep the Dish-Cloth Clean

BE particular with your dish-cloth. Do not hang it in a damp warm place in the sink cupboard, there to breed disease germs. Wash it in soap and clean hot water each time after using, and then hang where it will dry in the sun and fresh air.

Clean dish-cloths and towels are as necessary for health as is clean, inviting tableware. Even though rinsed and carefully dried each day, they should be placed in the wash each week, and put through the same process to which other soiled articles are subjected.

Too many housewives neglect to oversee this highly important part of the household machinery. Ignorant domestics frequently use one dish-cloth until it has become so greasy, stained, and ragged that it is hardly fit to touch, to say nothing of being fit to wash the family plates and cups.

Soft pieces of the checked linen crash, hemmed (in order that the raveled ends may not make work for the plumber), make the most satisfactory cloths for the silver and china; while coarser pieces of crash, unbleached, may be used for enameled ware and tinware and the iron cooking utensils. The cloth should be soft and pliable and easily absorbent. Good results can not be obtained from a harsh, starchy cloth. Do not use old pieces of muslin, lest the lint and ravelings work havoc in the drain pipes.

It is a very simple matter to keep clean cloths in use, and any woman with a well-developed sense of nicety will make this a part of her household discipline.—Selected.