A few great Old-World cleaning secrets

March 21, 2004|By Cindy Hoedel, Knight Ridder/Tribune news.

I learned a lot about cleaning when I lived in Germany. My in-laws and former neighbors would dispute that, but it's true. Germans are just too advanced in the art and science of dirt eradication to appreciate my beginner's progress. It would be like asking Caravaggio to judge a coloring-book competition.

I'm sure I missed a lot of fine points. Still, my home here is cleaner, if not neater, for the decade in Deutschland.

One Teutonic technique guaranteed to get your neighbors talking is beating rugs in the snow. Germans are big on beating rugs year-round actually. But if they can lay the rug face down in clean snow, it's even better.

A simple meteorological fact helps explain why beating rugs in the snow is actually a very effective way of cleaning them. You know how the weather forecasters always say it takes 6 or 8 or 10 inches of snow (depending on which station you watch) to equal 1 inch of rain? That tells you snow isn't going to get your rug as wet as a cleaning solution would. When you take it back inside, any residual moisture is concentrated at the tips of the fibers and evaporates quickly.

Gravity aids effectiveness too. Because the rug is upside down, moisture isn't going to sit on the base soaking in. Instead the snow "grabs" the dirt and debris that falls down as you hit the back of the rug with a rattan rug beater or a straw broom.

In addition, snow doesn't contain any harsh chemicals that could cause colors to run.

Fresh air is another natural cleaning agent the Germans have learned to harness. On German streets, you often see featherbeds, comforters and down pillows spilling out of upper-floor windows to "air."

After they get aired, they get plumped. Here's how my mother-in-law plumps a down pillow:

Step 1: Grasp the pillow by one corner and shake it wildly back and forth, as if playing with a punching ball. Repeat with the other three corners.

Step 2: Grasp the pillow by one corner and fling it up toward the ceiling with a powerful back flip of the wrist, so the pillow spins like a pinwheel. Repeat two or three times.

Step 3: Put a case on the pillow and position it so the middle is resting on the mattress. If you did a good job, all four corners should be aloft.

By far the least glamorous trick I picked up is cleaning floors on your hands and knees. The very idea is enough to make liberated American women put their hands on their hips and yell nein!

All you do is get a little bucket of warm, sudsy water, a sponge and a stack of soft cotton drying cloths. Work from the furthest corner of the room backward to the doorway. Wash about a 1-square-yard area at a time, then dry it before you move on. It's the drying that gives superior, streak-free results.