Cleanliness Comes from the Tools

The means of cleaning the house in the old way — sweeping, dusting, spreading out the carpets and beating them with a beater or a stick to drive the dust out of their pores, and likewise the cleaning of couches and sofas and everything of the kind — must be counted a method neither practical nor healthful; for the spreading of dust inside the house during this cleaning operation is among the causes of children's illnesses, because of the microbes this dust contains.

It is worth mentioning here that following those old methods is one of the factors that help to ruin the house's furnishings, effects, and contents in a short time. For example, carpets, curtains, and couches that are cleaned by beating wear out quickly under the effect of the blows upon them. It is plain and palpable that the mistress of every house in this age of ours cares greatly about the cleanliness of her house by the comfortable method, just as she cares at the same time about safeguarding her economies — I mean to say, about not ruining and wrecking the contents of the house in a short time.

Housewives, then, should turn their careful thought toward the means that will keep the house clean and healthful at one and the same time — namely, by using the most modern electrical appliances designed for the purpose, which do no harm to those furnishings and contents and preserve for them their luster and the cheerfulness of their look. Let her compare the cleaning of a piece of carpet by the old method — that is, by beating — with the cleaning of that same piece by means of the electrical equipment that sucks up the dust without letting it spread with its deadly microbes, as against the first method, which helps it to spread; this in addition to the toil that falls upon the housewife, driving her to seek help from others or to hire someone to do this work for her.

Now that the essential differences between the two methods have become clear to us — in cleanliness, in economy, and in the safeguarding of health — it behooves us to abandon the old means and follow the modern methods aforesaid, and to search and inquire after the newest of them in invention and the soundest in workmanship, such as the Hoover models, which were first of all in devising this true class of cleaning methods and appliances — and remain so.

"From The Clean House"