WASHING AND WASHING IliACHINES. Although domestic washing is a simple enough process, yet it may be useful to give a brief description of the most efficient way of conducting it, in so far as experience and correct principles can guide such an opera tion. The first essential is suitable water, in other words, soft water. See WATEn surelar. Yellow soap (q.v.) being the kind chiefly used in washing linen, it is well to bear in mind that it is not desirable to purchase it very pale in color, or very low in price. - In order to gratify the desire for a light color soap-makers are obliged to reduce the strength of good dark soaps with adulterants; and it will give some idea of how easily the demand for cheapness may be met to state that hard soap which should not contain so much as 25 per cent of water, can be made with as much as 75 per cent. Soap, as is well known, improves by keeping. Soft or potash soap is sometimes used to wash coarse things, on account of its being stronger than hard soap, but its smell is objectionable. Soda is easily procured good; and withrespect to washing-powders, as their merit depends on the amount of alkali which they contain, suffice it to say that to buy them is only a dear way of buying soda.
In arranging clothes for washing, it is desirable to sort them into kinds most suitable for washing together; such as lace, nets, and fine muslin into one heap; white body, linen into another; colored things of the nature of prints and ginghams into another; and so on. It is also desirable to wash clothes as soon as possible after they are soiled. Previous to washing, all white articles should be soaked for a night in cold water, in which a little soda has been dissolved, as the steeping in alkaline water greatly aids in removing all dirt of a greasy nature. The clothes should then be washed twice in clean tepid water with a sufficient supply of soap. If the water is quite cold, the dirt is taken off with difficulty; and if too hot, it is apt to fix it into the fiber of the cloth. The clothes should next be examined for spots or stains, so as to remove them, if by an additional rubbing; after which they are boiled for at least 15 minutes in soap and water. Ink-stains or iron-molds require to be taken out with oxalic acid, or the essential salts of lemon (oxalate of potash); and fruit-stains by boiling the stained part with pearl-ash. After being boiled, the clothes are rinsed twice in cold water; and in the
second rinsing, a little stone blue is added, to neutralize any yellowness occasioned by the washing. When this is done, they are wrung, and hung out to dry.
For the washing of flannels, it is even more desirable that the water should be softer than for linen or cotton; and it should contain no soda or potash in any form, as although a little alkali would more effectually remove dirt, yet it always turns woolens yellow, and at the same time thickens them. It is well to remem ber also that all rubbing, wringing, or squeezing tends to make woolen a-oods shrink, by facilitating their tendency to felt or mat into a thicker fabric. With respect to ladies' colored dresses made of tine wool, such as merino, it is considered best to wash them in warm soft water with ox-gall, say a pint in a tubful of water. Ox-gall is a soap in its chemical nature, and it clears and brightens the colors.
The washing of printed cotton fabrics, especially muslins, has of late years become a difficult operation, on account of the fugitive nature of some of the dye-stuffs employed, The beautiful hues produced by the aniline or coal-tar colors, and by the archil lakes in imitation of them, have led to their being extensively used 'in calico-printing, as well as in the dyeing of silk and wool. These dyes can scarcely be said to be permanent on any fabric; but on cotton they require to be fixed by mordants, such as albumen (white of egg), which will scarcely stand washing at all, and to which hot water is utter destruction. The same thing is true of some other dyes, such as the light blue produced by artificial ultramarine. If economy is to be studied, it is far better to have printed dresses done in fast colors—the reds and purples, from madder, for example—as they, although less attractive at first, can be washed without injuring their appearance. All such articles should be washed in soft warm water; that which has been used for flannels, if not too dirty, will do. When thoroughly cleaned, rinse them well in clean cold water, and do not allow them to remain long In contact before they are hung up to dry.