Vigo County Historical Society
Historical Treasure Article
Historic Treasure of the Week -
March 3, 2002
By Betty Stroup Wright
Vigo County Historical Society
Housecleaning no small project back in the old days
The Vigo County Historical Museum began its housecleaning early in January.
As a child we chose the months of April and May and I loved being involved.
First, the big cast iron stove was moved out of the front room into the store room and I was allowed to use blacking on the stove to prevent rust during the summer months. I Loved looking through the isin-glass or mica windows of the stove and see the flames during the winter months.
Four of us would moved all the upstairs bedroom furniture to the outside to be in the fresh air all day and this started about 7 a.m. The metal springs of the beds were hosed down as the mattresses were placed on kitchen chairs for airing.
I helped carry out clothes, still on their hangers to be hung from clothes lines.
Little throw rugs I would shake, then run the non electric Bissel sweeper over them.
Back upstairs I placed a clean cloth over the broom straws and started dusting corners of the ceiling for any cobwebs.
The baseboards were then washed and dried.
The sheer curtains were washed and painstakingly pinned onto the curtain stretchers with all those sharp little needle points. I usually stuck my fingers several times.
Using Bon Ami and a little water to make a solution to clean window panes, I found that as the substance dried, I could draw pictures and play tic-tac-toe with myself.
On the second day the real work began as the front room furniture was carried outside to air.
The lumpy feather tick mattress (my grandparents’) was then draped over the clothesline.
Mother hired two women to help clean the dining room walls and ceiling with a product known as EZ Wallpaper Cleaner.
One brand, named Dauntless, was made by Hulman Co. and had two main colors, pink and green. After placing their ladders against the wall, the women would take out some pink cleaner, warm it in their hands, then apply it to the ceiling, giving a long sweeping motion, removing as much sut or soot as possible at a time.
The cleaner became gray, then black, so another can would be opened to continue cleaning the walls.
Every dish in the house would eventually be washed that day and was usually my job, but as I liked antique dishes, I was very careful, such as putting a towel in the bottom of the sink to prevent any chips.
Next I put a pink solution on all the silverware and when dried, rubbed all the dried pink off. This was not my favorite job.
A solution of linseed oil and ammonia helped clean grime off wooden furniture. Once it was clean it was rewaxed.
In the front room, the upright piano, by an inside wall was never moved. As the saying went, if moved by an outside wall the moisture would affect the strings or wires of the piano.
Next, in the front room closet, was the big twist of tobacco, hanging from a nail. This tobacco (my grandfather’s) was supposed to ward off moths in the woolen clothes. We then carried out the heavy winter coats to air in the sunshine. These coats would be packed in a large upstairs trunk by Decoration Day (now renamed Memorial Day) and stayed there until Labor Day.
The front room curtains would then be hung up, with a silver case knife inserted crossways in the middle of the bottom of the hems of the curtains. Sometimes they were left for two to three days to make certain they hung evenly.
This way of life mostly came to an end during World War II, but you can still see artifacts from that time in the Vigo County Historical Museum.
The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Its Web site is http://web.indstate.edu/community/vchs.