Chapter 15. ATTICS AND BASEMENTS

A THOROUGH TREATMENT once or twice a year is needed for attics and basements to be put in order, swept, and dusted. This is the time to discard the accumulation of worthless stuff that tends to move toward the opposite poles of the house.

There is a certain glamour to attics, especially old cluttered ones, with their lure of hidden treasure, rare stamps, papers, or antiques. Let's ascend-up steps or ladder-taking the vacuum cleaner along.

THE ATTIC. This is like a moon station, remote and weird; it suffers great extremes of climate, frigid cold in the winter and stifling heat during the summer months. Dust filters down from it as from a distant star to dim the floors and furniture below. Strange objects infest it. Though seldom visited, it seems to have a life of its own because the things you remember distinctly storing in one place will frequently be found in another, or strewn all over the floor. This would be the work of the young, who infiltrate a house everywhere.

THE MAJOR PROBLEM is to rout the dust and achieve order. Here is where you really need your vacuum cleaner, but is there a floor outlet up there? If not, you can use an extension. In this case an ordinary one will do. Or you can have your vacuum cleaner man make one for you to match the cord you have. (If you do not have a vacuum cleaner, brushes and brooms will do.)

CLEANING THE WINDOWS FIRST is a good idea because you will then have more light for sorting and stacking, while using your vacuum brushes to devour the dust.

JUNK IS A FIRE HAZARD. If you have cartons handy, sort it out with the next church rummage sale in mind and get rid of all the worthless stuff you will never get around to using. Be utterly ruthless in this, otherwise things will keep moving down from the attic to litter the rest of the house. Store what you want to keep, carefully, in cardboard boxes and, if you have woolens stored in chest or trunk, examine them for moth damage and make sure that they are well protected with mothballs or para crystals. Directions will be on the box or tin of the insect assassinator you select.

CLUTTER ON THE STAIRS. When you finish, descend carefully, making sure that there is nothing left on the stairway to constitute a safety hazard. If yours was a winter ascent, you may be wondering about providing insulation up there. If summer, you could be thinking of the advantages of an attic ventilating fan. But probably you visited the upper reaches of your house in the spring or fall. In the Pluto-ish region under the house, temperatures are more equable than in the attic. If summer has begun it is really nice and cool.

THE PROBLEM IN THE BASEMENT, unless it is a de luxe edition, is dust, grit, cobwebs, and clutter, the job-to sweep, arrange, and firmly discard. Here we are likely to encounter a type of junk altogether different from that found in the upper reaches, especially if the family includes boys. There will be garden tools in various conditions, old brushes and brooms, disembowled and dissected mechanical gear which has yielded desired parts, or is allegedly being persuaded to "work"; and cans of paint in different stages of decomposition.

Since the value of many of the mysterious and assorted items found in a basement is difficult for a mere woman to assess, you are in a real jam down here. No boy ever wants to part with hardware, whatever its condition. If you consult about it you will be lost. And, if you do not consult and blithely toss out the stuff you will be riveted with an icy glare and informed that the rusting, ancient pump, the beat-up dictaphone, or wheezy radio was either on the verge of yielding important parts or its troubles approximately diagnosed. Again, if you attempt to store the stuff in boxes, you will find that you have solved the problem only temporarily. In less than a week somebody looking for something will have it out and scattered all over the place again. So this is a problem you will have to solve yourself.

GOOD ORGANIZATION is perhaps the foundation for keeping the basement under control. In other words, work centers must be established-places for garden equipment, paints, woodworking tools and so forth.

WHEN YOU CLEAN YOUR BASEMENT, tie a cloth around your head to protect it from dust, wear work gloves, and descend toting your next-to-best broom or floor brush.

BEGIN WITH STAIRWAY, cleaning it as you go. Basement stairs, often poorly lighted, should always be kept in good repair and clear of objects that might trip someone in a hurry and send him headlong in a nasty fall. Before you start straightening the place, why not unscrew any penny-pinching electric bulbs you may have been using and replace them with 100-watt numbers that will provide really good light.

IF YOU GO IN FOR HOME CANNING, you might start with the shelves used to store jelly glasses and fruit jars. Thoroughly dust and clean the shelves and arrange the empty jars and glasses neatly according to their size. Sort over jars of home-canned foods and remove any that may have spoiled. This is one organization, or work, center.

PAINTS AND PAINTING EQUIPMENT may comprise another. If you have a small cabinet that can be used for paint storage that will be fine. Place all paints that you have on hand on the shelves and provide for the brushes on the inner side of the doors. Steel wool, sandpapers, emery cloth, thinners, scrapers, rollers, and all other equipment that may have to do with painting, can be kept together here so that it will never be necessary to waste time hunting them. This cabinet, or shelf if you do not have a cabinet, should be located away from any source of heat as a precaution against fire. Oily or paint-stained rags used in a painting job should be discarded after use, never saved to be used again.

GOOD PAINT BRUSHES (and a poor one can really botch a job) are expensive and deserve proper care. Put them away clean. The time to clean them is right after you finish using them. If the paint hardens even a little, the cleaning job will be more difficult and, if the brush is left to another day, you may never be able to reclaim it.

SOME TIPS ON CLEANING PAINT BRUSHES: first, there are many kinds of paintbrush cleaners on the market, and also equipment intended to keep brushes soft and conditioned for a job that is to be resumed the next day. Some of these cleaners are designed for neglected, paint-hardened brushes that might be worth saving, and you may want to investigate them. Otherwise you will consider the thinner used in the paint or varnish that you are using with a particular brush, because that is the agent that will clean the brush best when the painting job is done. For brushes used with rubberized and synthetic resin paints, which are thinned with water, you would use warm water with a good detergent. Work out as much of the paint as you can on a clean newspaper before you clean the brush. If washed immediately these brushes are easily cleaned. When the brush is thoroughly clean and you have shaken out as much of the water as possible, wrap a clean piece of paper around the bristles, leaving just the tip of the brush exposed, snap a rubber band around it, and hang the brush up to dry-bristles down. When you want to use the brush again the bristles will be straight and even, without those troublesome side whiskers that stick out and daub bits of paint in the wrong places. If you can't hang the brush up (and why can't you?) at least lay it flat; never stand it on its bristles. And never leave a brush you propose to clean soaking in water. Such a course may loosen the bristles.

BRUSHES USED WITH OIL PAINTS, varnishes, and enamels mixed with turpentine should be cleaned with turpentine; those for paints and varnishes thinned with denatured alcohol are cleaned with denatured alcohol; lacquer brushes with "lacquer thinner," or acetone. And so on. The can of paint will have printed instructions that will tell you what solvent has been used so you can scarcely go wrong if you read the directions. After cleaning your brush in the proper solvent, wash it thoroughly with a detergent and water, rinse, wrap, and hang it up, as described. The solvent used for cleaning can be saved and used again for this purpose, or as a thinner for future paint jobs. Stopper it tightly. Most of the paint dissolved in the solvent will settle in time to the bottom, leaving the fluid clear.

NYLON PAINT BRUSHES are sensitive to alcohol and should never be used for applying shellac or cleaned with denatured alcohol.

GARDENING EQUIPMENT can be localized in a corner of the basement, perhaps near the outside door for convenience. A row of clip-type holders, of the sort sometimes used for brooms or mops, can be fastened to a convenient wall to hold rakes, hoes, sickles, sharpeners, and other garden tools so that you can find them easily when they are needed. The clips will secure them in an upright position, off the floor, so they won't all slide down when you are attempting to extract what you need from a jumble of tools. And you will be able to sweep the floor without having to move them.

GARDEN TOOLS, especially at summer's end, should be stored clean and dry. Mud left on spades, hoes, rakes, etc., encourages rust to develop, and insecticides left over the winter in a garden sprayer can corrode the metal parts to such an extent that it will not be usable in the spring. Remove the mud from all garden tools in the autumn, if you take pride in good equipment; rub off any rusted spots with steel wool, and wipe the metal with a good lubricating oil, or vaseline. Wash out sprayers and insect dusters and store them thoroughly dry.

POWER MOWERS AND SMALL TRACTORS, stored in the basement, are not a woman's job, but probably the woman will be the one to nudge the greens keeper of the family into putting them up properly in the autumn. The Department of Agriculture says this is how to do it: drain all left over fuel oil from the gas tank and carburetor to avoid gum deposits. While the engine is warm, drain out the old oil and then refill the crankcase with fresh oil of the weight you will use in the spring. Take out the sparkplug and squirt a tea-spoonful of oil into the firing chamber, roll the fly wheel a few turns to distribute the oil* and then replace the sparkplug. Last of all, cover the exhaust pipe to protect it from moisture. As for the lawn mower, obviously, the one that is sharpened and put in tiptop condition before the grass begins to sprout has the edge on the one that is left to be sharpened during the early spring rush.

CARPENTRY TOOLS. In a household of putterers no items of equipment are more elusive than carpentry tools. Screwdrivers, small hammers, and such items apparently have a life of their own, migrating according to the dictates of fancy to locations ranging from the attic to the basement This is why so many women have learned to use hairpins, knives, and kitchen scissors for an amazingly wide variety of minor repair jobs. However, if you can achieve it, there is nothing like a well organized carpentry bench in the basement-with jars for nails, tacks, and screws of various sizes, and racks for tools, neatly arranged. Tools can be kept from rusting by rubbing off spots of corrosion with emery cloth, and wiping the metal parts with olive oil or vaseline. Store sharp tools safely in racks or on their sides to protect the cutting edges.

Firewood / Basements

There are wall racks with adjustable pegs that encourage the neat disposal of small tools and you might want to try one of those. The problem, though, is to get members of the family to put the tools back into place after using them.

FIREWOOD stacked in the basement should be arranged, if possible, in a place that has a cement rather than a dirt floor. This is because the wood may possibly contain termites, which need a contact with the moisture contained in earth to survive. Other insects likely to be hibernating in firewood may emerge in the warmth of the house but are not likely to cause damage or to survive very long. If you are squeamish about them, spray the walls and floor of the wood storage area and the inside of your woodbox with 5 per cent DDT. Spraying the wood itself is not desirable.

THE PRESENCE OF TERMITES is sometimes indicated by mysterious little piles of wood dust on window sills, accumulations of insects' wings, or strange little earthen tubes extending from soil to wood. If you notice these, call for help from an exterminator.

DISPOSE OF ALL TRASH. And now, in words anyhow, the work centers of the basement have been straightened up. Put all the trash you have collected into suitable containers, to be taken away by the collector next time he comes. When you get rid of all the old papers and rags, wood shavings, and litter that accummulate in the neatest of basements you are safeguarding your home against fire.

DUST DOWN THE WALLS and ceiling now, with brush or broom, also any water and heating pipes that may be exposed. Sweep the floor clean and let's call it a day.

IN SWEEPING THE FLOOR you may want to use a sweeping compound to keep the dust down, or to dampen your broom with water. Should you have a floor drain, make sure it is free of litter and in good working order. If the basement floor is cemented and you want to wash it, follow the directions that have already been given for the best and easiest way to do it.

IS IT TOO DARK IN YOUR BASEMENT, even with the 100-watt electric bulbs? Even after wiping the windows dust-free with a dry cloth or washing them? Have you ever thought that whitewashing the walls might make it much lighter? Whitewash is better than oil paint for a basement inclined to be damp.

And, now let's get out of here-clean up, and have dinner in some nice restaurant.