The Simple Sanitary Wall 
Fortunately man’s ingenuity has ameliorated this 
condition of poverty in wood so that we have artistic 
and very attractive stains and finishes which bring 
out the grain of the cheap wood and give a color 
which is soft and pleasing. Chestnut, ash and pine 
can be finished so as to compare favorably with the 
more expensive hardwoods. It is simply a matter of 
treatment and good material. After the stain is 
applied and the wood finished with a dull or high 
gloss varnish, it is easily cleaned, sheds dust perfectly 
and is most decorative in its appearance. he stain 
selected for the woodwork should bear a very direct 
relation to the colorings of the floor covering and 
the color of the wall surface. 
There is also the question of the uses to which the 
room will be put which decides what the covering 
shall be, as well as the location. These are all 
important points and must be thoughtfully considered 
by each housekeeper. It is a mistake to use a 
dark, dull brown or dead blue in the north room, or 
a soft pink or deep orange in a south room, but by 
transposing these colors the effect is most delightful. 
In the orange room, if the woodwork be not alto¬ 
gether desirable it will be found effective to stain it a 
rich dark brown or dark green of the Mission finish. 
The appearance of the dark woodwork is attractive 
and will be found most practical. It will not show 
finger marks, nor stain, and it gives a characteristic 
decorative scheme to the room. In bedrooms 
white enamel finish for the woodwork is good, 
especially with blue tinted or buff' walls, giving an 
extremely sanitary and clean effect as well as a 
daintily pretty one. 
Fortunately the sanitary wall when properly con¬ 
structed is of added value through its light-saving 
power. 
The most skilled engineers on illumination say that 
50 percent of light is lost under even the most favor¬ 
able conditions, and when the wall conditions are not 
favorable then darkness is added to darkness. As an 
example, a glaring shining white wall reflects say 50 
per cent of the light thrown upon it, but is cold and 
barn-like in effect—add buff' to the white, making a 
cream wall, and you have added a great degree of 
hominess with no perceptible loss of light—light 
apple-green tint on the wall is also a light saver, so 
also is light blue, but as the tone darkens the light 
decreases until with dark green walls there is only 
15 per cent of light given back to the room, the rest 
being absorbed by the wall-coloring. 
A little attention to these conditions will enhance 
the illumination of your home with no added bur¬ 
den to your lighting expenditure. 
At the last Lake Placid Conference, one of the 
themes that was considered most seriously was pre¬ 
ventable disease, preventable death. Every good 
housekeeper is also interested in these problems. 
Time was when we considered disease, poverty, loss 
and death inscrutable wfisdom of a divine Providence. 
Now we have learned better. We have learned that 
much of the disease which we attribute to a divine 
Providence was preventable and the prevention of it 
lay in our own hands. We are surely aware of the 
fact that the province of the housekeeper includes 
not only the present health of the family but the 
continued health, that it is up to her to maintain the 
condition of health and so provide for the family that 
the least possible amount of disease shall come to it. 
This she can do by a careful scrutiny of her walls and 
woodwork, as well as of her food and clothing. It 
is absurd to suppose that one part of the house can 
be kept clean and the rest neglected. It is foolish 
to beat the carpets, leaving the walls covered with 
dirt and dust. Better to clean and recoat the walls 
and thoroughly sweep the carpets, but better yet, 
will be, to clean the walls every fall, as well as the 
rest of the house. 
There are many reasons for redecorating our 
rooms in the fall, and really there are none for dec¬ 
orating in the spring. The old custom was, of 
course, to get the winter’s soot and dirt off from the 
wall as soon as the weather was warm. But as soon 
as the weather was warm we betook ourselves to our 
verandas and ensconced ourselves in our hammocks; 
or hied us to the North Woods, or the alluring sea¬ 
shore. Nature beckoned and reached outstretched 
arms to welcome 11s, so we gladly forsook our shut-in 
rooms, our homes, and went out to live in the fresh 
air, sometimes under the blue sky, and even though 
our rooms were freshly decorated, we closed up our 
houses and left our walls to lose their freshness in 
solitude and dust. 
In the summer time, when the family is away, or 
can live on the veranda much of the time, when there 
is not such a demand for labor, then is the best time 
to clean the house vigorously. Then, too, when we 
come home from the summer’s outing, it is a relief 
and a joy to find the walls freshly decorated with 
harmonious colors and choice designs, and entirely 
free from the summer’s dust and that musty odor 
of closed rooms. 
Many of our housekeeping plans have become 
awry and the purpose of housekeeping to-day is to 
do things better, in a more timely way, and the results 
will be much more satisfactory. There are many 
labor-saving devices for the office and factory, there 
are many for the home, but better still there are 
also time-saving plans, and in no work in life is this 
statement more true than in good housekeeping, 
that “we may save our heels with our heads,” for “an 
ounce of forethought sometimes produces a greater 
value than pounds of afterthought.” 
Fortunately house cleaning need not be made a 
slavish work to-day as it was in the past, for we have 
specialized labor to serve us and specialized perfect 
material for securing the very best results. 
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