The close, sour smell that all housekeepers have noticed about dish-towels comes from want of boiling and drying in fresh air, and is unpardonable and unnecessary.
Keep hot water constantly in your kettles or water-pots, by always remembering to fill with cold when you take out hot.

Put away every article carefully in its place.
If tables are stained, and require any scrubbing, remember that to wash or scrub wood you must follow the grain, as rubbing across it rubs the dirt in instead of taking it off.
The same rule applies to floors.

A clean, coarse cloth, hot suds, and a good scrubbing-brush, will simplify the operation.

Wash off the table; then dip the brush in the suds, and scour with the grain of the wood.
Finally wash off all soapy water, and wipe dry.

To save strength, the table on which dishes are washed may be covered with kitchen oilcloth, which will merely require washing and wiping; with an occasional scrubbing for the table below.
The table must be cleaned as soon as the dishes are washed, because if dishes stand upon tables the fragments of food have time to harden, and the washing is made doubly hard.
Leaving the kitchen in order, the bedrooms will come next.