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Classic
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page 451
For cleaning hair-brushes it is excellent; put a tablespoonful into the water,
having it only tepid, and dip up and down until clean; then dry with the brushes
down, and they will be like new ones.
When employed in washing anything that is not especially soiled, use the waste
water afterward for the house plants that are taken down from their usual
position and immersed in the tub of water. Ammonia is a fertilizer, and helps to
keep healthy the plants it nourishes. In every way, in fact, ammonia is the
housekeeper's friend.
Ammonia is not only useful for cleaning, but as a household medicine. Half a
teaspoonful taken in half a tumbler of water is far better for faintness than
alcoholic stimulants. In the Temperance Hospital, in London, it is used with the
best results. It was used freely by Lieutenant Greely's Artic party for keeping
up circulation. It is a relief in nervousness, headache, and heart disturbances.
TO DESTROY INSECTS AND VERMIN.
Dissolve two pounds of alum in three or four quarts of water. Let it remain over
night, till all the alum is dissolved. Then, with a brush, apply, boiling hot,
to every joint or crevice in the closet or shelves where croton bugs, ants,
cockroaches, etc., intrude; also to the joints and crevices of bedsteads, as bed
bugs dislike it as much as croton bugs, roaches, or ants. Brush all the cracks
in the floor and mopboards. Keep it boiling hot while using.
To keep woolens and furs from moths, be sure that none are in the articles when
they are put away; then take a piece of strong brown paper, with not a hole
through which even a pin can enter. Put the article in it, with several lumps of
gum camphor between the folds. Place this in a close box or trunk. Cover every
joint with paper A piece of cotton cloth, if thick and firm, will answer.
Wherever a knitting-needle can pass, the parent moth can enter.
Place pieces of camphor, cedar-wood, Russia leather, tobacco-leaves, whole
cloves, or anything strongly aromatic, in the drawers or boxes where furs and
other things to be preserved from moths are kept, and they will never be harmed.
Mice never get into drawers or trunks where gum camphor is placed.
Another recipe:--Mix half a pint of alcohol, the same quantity of turpentine,
and two ounces of camphor. Keep in a stone bottle, and shake well before using.
The clothes or furs are to be wrapped in linen, and crumbled-up pieces of
blotting-paper dipped in the liquid to be placed in the box with them, so that
it smells strong. This requires renewing but once a year.
Another authority says that a positive, sure recipe is this: Mix equal
quantities
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