subject: Hints And Tips From Grans Book [print this page] We have a recipe book passed to us by my husband's Gran. As old-fashioned recipe books often used to, this one has a hints and tips section at the back plus a few others cut out from the newspaper by Gran herself that has some very handy odds and ends. Here's some of the gems about cleaning and keeping house (leaving out the real beauty: a recipe for tanning skins):
* The best way to clean a raincoat is to mix up quarter of a bucket of warm soapy water and add a couple of tablespoons of methylated spirits. Spread the coat out flat and scrub the outside. Turn it over and repeat on the inside. Rinse once with fresh warm water, then with cold water. Sponge with acetic acid (I guess vinegar will do) to set the colour, then dry the coat outside, turning the pockets inside-out.
* Wipe down wooden furniture with a mix of vinegar and water to remove finger marks before polishing.
* To remove ink from a fountain pen (i.e. ink that has leaked out from a fountain pen), cover the spots with wet mustard and leave overnight before washing in soapy water. (The mustard in this case can't have had much turmeric in it turmeric stains like anything and can even be used as a sort of dye. Best to stick to ink stain removal tip number two from the book: methylated spirits.)
* Clean the stained insides of teacups by rubbing a paste of salt and water around the insides.
* White chalk is good for removing grease stains from white wallpaper. Just rub the chalk onto the stain.
* If you need to clean the inside of a silver teapot (which is a bit hard to clean by the standard natural silver cleaning method involving baking soda and tin foil), mix up a paste of flour, soda (Gran's book doesn't specify whether this means baking soda or washing soda, but I presume that baking soda is meant) and vinegar. Brush this around the inside of the teapot and leave it overnight. Wash out with boiling water in the morning.
* Half a walnut rubbed over the spot helps to remove scratch marks from wooden furniture.
* If you need to banish the smell of stale smoke from a room (that's one thing that the end of tenancy cleaning won't get rid of if the former tenants were smokers), put some vinegar on a hot shovel and burn it. That's how Gran's book worded it in modern terms, boil vinegar on the stove until it evaporates. The place will smell of vinegar, but that's not as bad as stale smoke.
* To clean a coir mat (e.g. a door mat), tie it onto a clothesline outside. Hose it to wash the dirt out. This is much more effective than shaking.
* A pint of cold tea with a teaspoon of glycerine can be used for window cleaning.
* Remove heat marks from table tops by mixing equal amounts of methylated spirits and linseed oil. Use this to polish the marks, and keep going, adding more, until the marks go.
Oh all right the recipe for tanning skins for the curious. Mix up a paste of baking soda and kerosene, plus some wood ash. Spread this on the raw side of the skin and roll it up for a week. Then remove the paste, let the skin dry and soften the tanned bit by rubbing it with pumice stone. Just in case you ever wanted to know!
