Cleaning Tips from the Early 1800s.
As you go about your weekend chores, here are some helpful hints to get your work done! From blackening stone chimney-pieces to shoes, American domestic cookery, formed on principles of economy, for the use of private families covers it all!
To blacken the fronts of Stone Chimney-pieces.
To clean (Silver) Plate.
Note the reference to mercury as being injurious.
To clean Paper Hangings.
To take Ink out of Mahogany.
Find blacking for shoes
Convivial Supper 
Very interesting. Has anyone tried this method? Hartshorn- powder. IS that made from antlers of deer (hart)
Had to chuckle about mercury being injurious…. ya think?
Duck Duck Go: Hartshorn…. made from male red deer antlers. Know what it is???? drum roll, please…..
Ammonium carbonate, and early form of smelling salts.
Ohhff.. I bet THAT smelled bad!!! That makes sense in the Jane Eyre movies and Pride and Prejudice when those that smelled it made such a bad face!
Spirit of hartshorn was used as a aqueous solution of ammonia.
Wonder if some of this is better than the chemicals we use now.
Things that make you go hmmmm…..
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Ammonium carbonate – How the heck did they figure this stuff out? I suppose there was ample time on their hands without Netflix and the interwebs. You couldn’t argue that it’s not natural! But then again, mercury is arguably natural, too…
Here’s to weekend chores with spray-bottle bleach!
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Not that I have a clue about the rest of the cleaning suggestions, the shoe one of particularly strange to me. What is ivory black? Would it be charred ground Ivory? Why sugar? Sweet oil of the edible variety? And really, beer? Didn’t they have better things to do with beer?! I know “small beer” is a thing and different from regular old beer, but what IS the difference? I’m baffled.
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It’s like they’re using English – but not. I find I have the same experience when talking to The Daughter about internet memes. As it should be, but baffling none the less.
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