There are few of the minor crooks in the lot of the careful housewife
that cause her more anxiety and more discouragement than the attempt to
teach domestics how to wash up dishes.
“I’ve heard that Mrs. —— is very _exact_ about some things, such as
washing up dishes and the likes of that!” said a woman to me, with an
affected laugh, having called to apply for the then vacant position of
cook in my kitchen. She had high recommendations, a whine engrafted
upon her native brogue, and spoke of me in the third person—a trick of
cheap (and bogus) gentility that tries my nerves and temper to the very
marrow of my spine. “I was a-saying to myself, as I came along, that
Mrs. —— must have been _very_ onlucky in her girls if she had to tache
them how to wash up dishes. I always thought that was one of the things
that came _kinder nat’ral_ to every cook.”
“Mrs. ——’s” experience goes to prove that the wrong way of doing
this must “come natural” to the class mentioned, and that Nature is
mighty in woman. The fact that the right way is _not_ to pile unrinsed
dishes and plates in a big pan with a loose bit of soap on top, and
pour lukewarm water over all; then with a bit of rag to splash said
water over each separately, and make another pile of them upon the
kitchen-table, until the last is drawn, reeking with liquid grease,
sticky and streaming, from the now filthy puddle of diluted swill; then
to rub them lightly and leisurely with one towel—be they many or few—is
as difficult of comprehension to the scullionly mind as would be a
familiar lecture upon the _pons asinorum_.
Yet the right and only neat method is so simple and easy! Rinse the
greasy plates, and whatever is sticky with sugar or other sweet, in hot
water and transfer to a larger pan of _very_ hot. Wash glass first;
next silver; then china—one article at a time, although you may put
several in the pan. Have a mop with a handle; rub upon the soap (over
which the water should have been poured) until you have strong suds.
There is a little implement made by the “Dover Stamping Co.,” a cup
of tinned wire, called a “soap-shaker,” that greatly facilitates this
process of suds-making, without waste of soap. Wash both sides of plate
and saucer, and wipe _before putting it out of your hand_. Draining
leaves streaks which can be felt by sensitive finger-tips, if not seen.
If china is rough to the touch, it is dirty. Hot, clean suds, a dry,
clean towel, and quick wiping leave it bright and shining. Roll your
glasses around in the water, filling them as soon as they touch it, and
you need never crack one. A lady did once explain the dinginess of her
goblets to me by saying that she was “afraid to put them in hot water.
It _rots_ glass and makes it so tender! I prefer to have them a little
cloudy.” This is literally true—that she said it, I mean. Certainly not
that a year’s soak in hot water could make glass tender.