The Library of Work and Play: Housekeeping
by Elizabeth Hale Gilman · English · Gutenberg #44732 · 488,856 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Library of Work and Play: Housekeeping
Author: Elizabeth Hale Gilman
Release date: January 23, 2014 [eBook #44732]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIBRARY OF WORK AND PLAY: HOUSEKEEPING ***
THE CHILDREN'S LIBRARY OF WORK AND PLAY
CARPENTRY AND WOODWORK
By Edwin W. Foster.
ELECTRICITY AND ITS EVERYDAY USES
By John F. Woodhull, Ph.D.
GARDENING AND FARMING
By Ellen Eddy Shaw.
HOME DECORATION
By Charles Franklin Warner, Sc.D.
HOUSEKEEPING
By Elizabeth Hale Gilman.
MECHANICS, INDOORS AND OUT
By Fred T. Hodgson.
NEEDLECRAFT
By Effie Archer Archer.
OUTDOOR SPORTS, AND GAMES
By Claude H. Miller, Ph.B.
OUTDOOR WORK
By Mary Rogers Miller.
WORKING IN METALS
By Charles Conrad Sleffel.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
Have You a Play-House?]
_The Library of Work and Play_
HOUSEKEEPING
BY ELIZABETH HALE GILMAN
[Illustration]
LEER·V·SOLON.
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1911
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
"_Look not thou down, but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The Master's lips a-glow!
Thou, Heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?_"
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I. THE PLAY HOUSE 1
PART II. LEARNING AND HELPING 41
PART III. MY HERITAGE 61
CHAPTER
I. My Heritage 63
II. The Plan 69
III. The Accounts 87
IV. The Schedule 101
V. Possessions 115
VI. Care of Fittings and Furniture 121
VII. Upstairs Work 146
VIII. Dining-room and Pantry Work 160
IX. The Kitchen 188
X. The Cellar, Fires, Plumbing, etc. 208
XI. Menus and Marketing 244
XII. Cooking 274
XIII. Washing and Ironing 312
XIV. House Cleaning 337
XV. Emergencies 353
XVI. Servants 370
XVII. Martha 382
XVIII. The Inspiration 388
ILLUSTRATIONS
Have You a Playhouse? _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
A Playhouse Somebody Else Has Made 14
Tidying 52
The Account Book 90
The Broom Closet 140
Straight and Smooth 150
Air, Sun, and Water 156
Order and Daintiness 164
Cooking 274
PART I
THE PLAY-HOUSE
THE PLAY-HOUSE
_Monday, I wash my dollies' clothes,
And Tuesday, smoothly press them.
Wednesday, I mend their little hose,
And Thursday, neatly dress them.
Friday, I play they're very ill,
Saturday, something or other.
Sunday, I say, "Lie still,
I'm going to church with mother."_
WHEN I was walking in a garden the other day, I saw a play-house. And
what do you suppose it was? A big tree with humpy roots which stuck out
of the ground, and low branches which nearly touched the grass at the
ends. You could not stand up straight in the house if you were more
than three feet tall, but as the people who lived in the house were
only about two feet eleven inches, they did not mind that.
You should have seen the china-closet. It was under a bent root, and
all the dishes were white with violet markings. One might have thought
they were big and little and middling-sized clam-shells, if one had not
seen them in a china-closet.
There was a bedroom between two big roots. A doll was taking a nap
there, not on a pine-pillow, but on a whole bed of pleasant-smelling
pine needles which had dropped off a tree in the neighbourhood. The
mistress of the house was in the kitchen cooking, and the kitchen, of
course, was where the sun came through a break in the branches. One
must have a patch of sun in a kitchen, for how can you bake without
it? When I went into this kitchen, there was a cake baking, with an
ornament on the top that looked quite like an acorn.
I was invited to stay for lunch, and I will tell you what we had:
First, there were brown-bread cutlets, and smooth white stone potatoes,
and a wonderful salad made of maple leaves and pepper-grass. Then for
dessert we had the cake I had seen baking, and milk. The cake had a
brown layer made from the garden beds and a yellow layer made from
the path, and was iced with white sand. You will guess that the brown
bread cutlets and the milk were what people getting up plays call
"practicable," which is just a grown-up word for "really and truly."
A tree is one of the nicest play-houses a person can have. But suppose
it is a rainy day! We will play it _is_ a rainy day, and we will go and
go until we get to a house with a steep roof. And we will go in, and
go upstairs, and then upstairs again until we get to a garret, where we
can see the rafters sloping to the ridge over our heads, and the inside
of the shingles. On the floor are trunks and boxes and barrels, and all
sorts of things are hanging from the rafters. Sometimes we hear the
pigeons running on the outsides of the shingles and cooing under the
eaves. It is a lonely sound. It is rather dark, too, but we are brave,
and we get past two saddles, and a row of white petticoats, and a dim
place where there are a lot of old books with strange dark pictures
in them, which one likes to be sure are shut in tight. At last we get
round a corner and find a gable with a pointed window, and there is a
play-house where a little girl and eight dolls live. There are four
rooms in the play-house, though if you are not thinking, you may very
likely walk right through the walls and not know it. On one side of the
window is a bedroom, and on the other side is the kitchen. The dining
room and the living room are in the corners nearest the rest of the
garret.
The little girl's big sister put up some pictures on the sloping wooden
walls to suit each room. One of them is very useful when the little
girl is deciding what to play. It is seven little pictures on a card
with verses to explain them. You can read the verses at the beginning
of this chapter; I am sorry the pictures are not there, too.
This little girl likes especially to play "Monday, I wash my dollies'
clothes"--because she has a tub and a washboard, and a wringer that
will really let buttons through, and clothespins and a clothes-horse,
and all the garret to put up lines in. Housework, you know, is so much
more fun if you have the right things to do it with.
"Tuesday, I neatly press them," is a good day, too, but "Wednesday, I
mend their little hose," is not. One cannot sit still and make believe
sew, for many minutes. When mother was told about this trouble, she
looked at the pictures and said, "Why, there's no sweeping day! As soon
as the stockings are mended on Wednesday, you had better sweep, and
tidy things up a little." Mother often wants things "tidied up" when it
isn't in the game. She says, she does not keep her little girl's hat
on the dining table, nor leave her bed unmade, and she cannot have the
dolls brought up that way either.
The Friday game is one of the best. The two dolls that have night
dresses are most often sick. Of course, it is a great care to have a
doll sick, but it does make a great many interesting things to do. She
may need cold-water cloths, or a hot-water bottle, or a poultice, and
there is always medicine to give and meals to serve on a tray. Then
the bed should be made over often. The little girl who lives in this
play-house likes to have her dolls ill when she has company, because
then there is some one to be the doctor.
"Saturday something or other," usually means cooking, and that, too, is
a favourite game for company. Sometimes the little girl goes down into
the "really and truly" kitchen to market, or sometimes mother sends up
a little cake baked in a doll's pan. That makes a very grand occasion.
The table must be laid with all the dishes, and napkins if possible,
when there is a cake from the big kitchen.
A great many things can happen in a garret play-house, besides
housekeeping. Sometimes it is so still up there, that one knows one
must be in a deep forest, or out on the plains; and, of course, in that
case, the cooking or nursing may be interrupted by a band of robbers,
or an attack from Indians, or one may have a visit from an escaping
prisoner, and besides, there are always long, dangerous journeys to
take through the garret. In fact, every time one hears a new story,
something unusual is likely to happen in the play-house.
Have you a play-house? I hope you have. Nowadays, when rents are so
high, and when many people live in flats and apartments, it is often
hard to get a play-house, but it can usually be managed in some way. If
we have a nursery or a play-room all our own, then it is easy to have
a play-house. We only have to get mother, or nurse to give us a corner
to fix as we like, and to advise us about sorting things. Perhaps they
will let us make the whole room into a play-house, but we really can
keep house nicely in a much smaller space than that. The great point
is to get the things together which belong together. If the bedroom
things stand together, that is all we need to have a bedroom, and if
the kitchen things are together, there is the kitchen. If we have a
dining table, why, there is the dining room, and our living room can be
anywhere where mother likes us to have most of the chairs.
But even if we have not a play-room we can still have a house. I know
some clever dolls and their mother who keep house in the cupboard part
of an old-fashioned washstand. The way they manage is to make the
cupboard any room they wish to use. Monday morning it is a laundry, and
every night it is a bedroom, and if they give a luncheon it is a dining
room, and Saturday it is a kitchen. They keep the furniture which does
not suit the room they are using in the drawer of the washstand which
is over their heads.
I know another family who live under a dressing table. The legs of the
table show where the corners of their house are, and they change the
room into anything they need it for, as the other people do.
One little girl I know, whose name is Esther, lives in a flat and has
only a bureau drawer for her housekeeping things. This is quite hard,
for it means so much packing and unpacking, and parting with things she
would like to keep when the drawer gets too full. She has to take her
two dolls and a few things she thinks they will need into the parlour
or the bedroom and play house there. In the bedroom, she plays it is
night, because it is always nearly dark in there. Her mother lets her
play with her big grown-up beds and chairs and stoves and irons. If she
did not, Esther would have a hard time keeping house for her dolls.
But it is not always the people who live in flats who have not room for
their things, is it? Sometimes after Christmas, or a birthday, one just
feels as if one were trying to keep house in a toy shop. The best cure
for this trouble is to give things away. Because--it is dreadful to
think about--there are people who have no dolls: and there are people
who have not so much as a tin cup to begin housekeeping with; and there
are little girls who have real babies to look after, and real meals to
cook who would just dearly love to have the games and toys that have to
be packed away in closets and drawers because their owners have so many
other things.
It is easy to _say_, give things away, but, my stars! how hard it is
to decide which to give. One just can't give away the new things, and
one feels so fond of the old ones, when one gets them out and looks
at them. The only way to part with them is to think of Saint Martin
cutting his cloak in two for the beggar, or something inspiring like
that. Even then one feels a little dreary.
Once there was a little girl whose family moved into a smaller house.
There was not room in her new play-house for the many things she had
in her old one. Some of them had to be given away. One decision was
so hard to make that she remembered about it after she was a grown-up
woman. There was a little green wagon with yellow wheels, which she
had always had, and which her older sisters had played with before
she was born, and there was a little orange-coloured cart with four
red wheels, which her father had brought out from town, a week or two
before, filled with soap.
Two wagons were too many for the new play-house, and mother said keep
the green one, because the other was only an "advertisement"; and the
older sisters said keep the green one, because it was better and they
had played with it; and father just smiled and said, "You must decide."
When no one was looking, the little girl took the little
orange-coloured wagon with four red wheels, and the big letters round
the outside, which made it an "advertisement," and put it in the box
mother was packing for some other children, and it hurt so to do it
that she could not quite help crying.
Some of us are troubled more with having too few things than too many,
are we not? We can make a game of getting out of this trouble. We must
all be discoverers and inventors, and if there is something needed in
the play-house, we must keep our eyes wide open to see what else will
do or what we can find to make into the thing we want. It spoils the
hunt, and the surprise, if some one else tells you what to do, but one
or two little things will show what the game is like. For instance, if
it is a bed you need, try a strong pasteboard box, not very deep. If
you mind its having no legs, then you must go on a journey and have it
a berth on a car or a ship.
A cigar-box makes a good trunk for a small doll, especially the boxes
which have trays in them. A doll with a cigar-box trunk will never have
moths in her clothes.
Paper napkins are useful for dolls' tablecloths, and for napkins when
they are cut into small squares. They will even do for sheets, if
mother cannot spare us white "pieces" that are big enough. A bandanna
handkerchief, or a scrap of bright calico, makes a good bedquilt.
Shells we have brought home from a day at the beach are convenient for
dishes. Radiators are splendid stoves. And did you ever find out how
much closet room there is under a bed? With the help of a few pins, one
can hang all the dolls' clothes from the springs, and shut them in with
the counterpane, if it happens to be a long one. But if mother does not
want you to do this, you mustn't.
You will be able to make a great many discoveries and inventions,
if you think what you want, and then think what to make it out of.
But the best and most wonderful thing about a play-house is, that if
we have to, we can make one anywhere, or out of anything. Once, two
little girls wrote home about a visit they had paid, "We had two rag
dolls and we played house." Even one little girl, without so much as a
rag doll, can have a play-house. She has only to _imagine_, that is,
pretend, and there it is--with rooms, and staircases, and people, and
everything needful. It can be big or little; and in the country or in
the city. She can do the washing, or give a dinner party; take care of
a sick doll, or work in the garden, just as she pleases. It is easier
and happier to play with the pleasant things people give us, and to be
able to see and touch most of the things in our play-houses, but we
always want some imagined things, too. And if it should happen that
we are in a place where we "have nothing to play with," then we can
imagine and pretend, and go and play in the play-house we always have
with us. In a second, we can build it into a wigwam, or a palace, or a
cave, or a great castle, or it can be just the house we live in when we
are at home.
* * * * *
Sometimes, when we have played a good while in the play-house, we feel
tired, and if it isn't a nap we want, perhaps it is that we would like
to go and play in a play-house somebody else has made. We need not take
a journey to do this, we only need some one to tell us a story, or a
story-book to read to ourselves. We might choose to read "Cinderella,"
for that is the princess of housekeeping stories, or it may be that we
will find one we like, if we go on reading this book.
IRISH STEW
Do you ever have Irish Stew for luncheon? Most Irish Stews are a good
deal alike, but this is the story of one that was different.
Once upon a time there was an Irishman who lived in a little two-roomed
hut on the edge of a bog. All day, he cut peats in the bog, for that
is the way he made his living. It was not a very good living; in fact,
he was very poor indeed. At night, when he came back to the hut, there
were often only a few potatoes for supper, which he boiled in a pot
over the fire. His old father had died a few years before, and that was
the reason he lived alone.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
A Play-house Somebody Else Has Made]
One chilly, foggy night, the Irishman had come home late through the
wet and the dark, and lighted his fire. There was very little for
supper, and he had not had a chance to cook that, when Thump! Thump!
came a knock on the door. He was ever so frightened, but he thought it
would be better to open the door than have it thumped in. When he
did open it--Preserve us! there were five big robbers with knives, and
pistols, and high boots and fierce, bright eyes. They all crowded into
the little hut, and threw more peat on the fire and demanded supper.
The Irishman apologized, and said he had only potatoes. The robbers
said they had to have something better than that, and all five of
them laid their five big knives on the table with a look which meant,
"Supper or your life!"
The Irishman went into the other little room and sat down on a chest
to think. There was nothing in the room but the chest, and nothing in
the chest but a few old clothes, and the more he tried to think, the
less he was able to do it. At last, for no reason at all, he opened the
chest. In it lay an old cloak, which his father had worn forty years
and more.
No sooner had he seen it, than he went back to the room where the
robbers were, and they saw him take the pot into the little room, and
very soon come back and put all the potatoes into it and some water,
and hang it over the fire, which was now so hot and bright that the pot
soon began to boil. It simmered, and bubbled and steamed and soon the
robbers began to sniff their supper. It did not smell like anything
they had ever had before, but was not bad for a cold, foggy night.
Pretty soon the Irishman set the pot on the table, and the robbers ate
heartily. The Irishman was busy arranging something near the door. All
of a sudden, one robber choked. He choked, and choked, and two others
beat him on the back. He coughed and coughed, and then, something flew
out of his mouth. It was a button.
The Irishman turned up his eyes to the roof and said, "Ah me, that is
the last of a good old cloak." Before the robbers could move, he had
opened the door and disappeared into the fog.
KING ALFRED AND THE CAKES
A good while ago there was a king of England named Alfred. He was a
great and good king, but in spite of this, he had many enemies, who
tried to take his kingdom away from him. Once, after a battle, the
country was so overrun with his enemies, that he had to separate from
his followers and go away in disguise. You would never have guessed he
was a king when he started, and when, after he had wandered a few days
in the forest, he came to a cowherd's hut, he looked like a hungry,
ragged beggar. The cowherd and his wife gave him supper, and let
him stay all night, and gave him some breakfast next morning. After
breakfast, he sat for a long time looking into the fire, thinking
of his kingdom, and of the dangers and sorrows of his people. The
cowherd's wife was a hard-working woman, and it provoked her to see
a great big man dreaming over the fire all the morning. She said to
herself, "If he has no work of his own to attend to, he shall just help
with mine." She put some meal cakes on a board to bake before the fire,
and told the King to watch them carefully while she went out to feed
the pig.
The King said he would watch them, but he kept on thinking about his
army, and the heavy taxes, and by and by the woman came back.
There was smoke in the room, but she could see that the stranger was
still sitting beside the fire, and that her cakes were burned to
cinders. My, my, but she was angry. She boxed her guest's ears soundly,
little dreaming that she was laying hands on the Sacred Person of the
King, and might be hanged for it. The King, however, took her blows and
her scolding, for he was very sorry he had let the cakes burn.
Afterward, when he had driven out his enemies and was at home again in
his own castle he told what a scolding he had got for thinking about
his troubles when he should have been baking the cakes.
ROAST PIG
Long ago, longer than you can even imagine, nobody in the world knew
how to cook. People were not as dreadfully hungry on that account as
you might think, because, you see, they ate their food uncooked. No one
had ever cooked, and no one had ever thought of it; no one had ever
eaten cooked food, and no one knew how pleasant it tasted.
This is the story of the way a little Chinese boy found out how to
roast pig.
His name was Bo-bo and he had been left at home by his father, Ho-ti,
to look after their hut, and their one big pig, and their nine little
pigs. Bo-bo, was fond of playing with fire, and what did he do but set
fire to some straw, and that set fire to the hut, and burned it down. A
much more serious matter was that the one big pig and the nine little
pigs were burned along with the hut.
Bo-bo was dreadfully frightened when he saw what he had done. He knew
his father would beat him, and he began to cry. He also poked round
among the ruins of the hut, though he did not hope to find anything.
As he was turning over the embers, he found one of the little burnt
pigs, and tried to pull it out. It was very hot, and burnt his hands,
and he did just what you or I would have done--put his burnt fingers in
his mouth.
The instant his hands reached his mouth, Bo-bo forgot all about being
burned. He licked his fingers, but not because they hurt him. He did
not know why he did lick them, but he kept on. Neither he nor any one
else in the world had ever tasted such a wonderful taste.
Pretty soon, it came to him that it was the pig which tasted so
delicious, and no sooner had he thought this, than he sat down in the
ruins of the hut and began to eat great pieces of the little burnt pig.
While he was making the best meal he had ever had in his life, his
father came home, and when he saw that the hut was burnt down and that
his son was eating some horrible food that no one else had ever eaten
before, he began to beat Bo-bo with the stick he had in his hand. But
Bo-bo did not seem to feel it. He hunted in the ashes for another pig
and thrust it into his father's hands. Then the same thing happened
which had happened to him. The pig burned Ho-ti's fingers and he put
them in his mouth, and after that he had no time to think of beating
any one, but sat down with his son in the ashes and made a good dinner.
From that time on, whenever they had little pigs, they burned down
their hut to roast them. When the neighbours found it out, they thought
it very wicked of Ho-ti and Bo-bo to eat burnt pig, but as soon as
they were persuaded to taste it, they changed their minds, and then
everybody was burning down his house in order to roast his pigs. After
a long while, some one found out that one could cook without burning
one's house down, which I am sure you will agree was a great discovery.
--Some day, when you go to school, you will have this story given to
you to read--for a lesson!
THE KING'S KITCHEN
When King Arthur was King of England, a boy named Gareth, was growing
up in a castle far away from Camelot, the King's city. But he had two
brothers who were at Court, and who were Knights of the Order of the
Round Table, and when they came home, now and then, Gareth asked them
more questions than you could count about the King and his knights,
and the Court, and tournaments, and battles. Every day, he rode and
practised with lance and sword, and exercised in all ways that would
make him strong and skilful with arms. And always he tried to be brave
and to be gentle toward weak things and to tell the truth. And the
reason for all this was that, more than anything else in the world,
he longed to be in the service of the King, and to be a Knight of the
Round Table.
As Gareth grew older, and more and more worthy to be made a knight,
his mother, Bellicent, sorrowed and grieved. Her husband was very,
very old, and her two elder sons had gone away to the Court, and she
could not bear to have Gareth leave her, for he was the youngest and
last. Though she saw that his heart's desire was to be with the King,
yet she felt as if her heart would break if he went. She tried to make
him especially happy at home; she tried to persuade him that he was
not skilful or brave enough to be a knight; she told him of dangers
and wounds, and besought him not to go. Again and again he asked her
permission to go away and earn his knighthood; again and again she
refused.
One day when he had spoken so bravely and truly that she knew not how
to resist him longer, the thought came to her to test his great desire
to be with the King, and she said to him: "If you desire so greatly to
serve the King, give the proof of it which I shall ask of you. Go to
the King and ask him to let you serve him in his kitchen for a year and
a day, and tell no one your name and rank until the time is over."
She thought he would refuse to do it, but he kissed and thanked her,
and quickly made ready to go to Camelot. For he wanted to serve the
King, and this was a way of doing it, though not the one he had hoped
for.
He journeyed a day and a night, and came to Camelot, the wonderful big
city which he had never seen before. In the morning, the King sat in
the Great Hall of his palace to hear the requests and troubles of his
people. There Gareth came, and stood before him. And when he raised
his eyes to the King's quiet face, and met his eyes, he loved him and
longed more than ever to serve him. It was a little hard, when he was
longing to be made a knight, and to be sent on an adventure, just
to ask to be a kitchen-boy; but he did it, and the King granted his
request.
So joyous and strong was he when he went out from the presence of the
King, that he felt nothing would ever be hard to do again. But there
were things which were hard. The kitchen was a great stone room with an
earth floor, and a fireplace at either end as big as a little room.
When the great fires were lit it was mightily hot between, and there
was smoke and hurry, and jostling of servants, and there were some
bad-tempered people and a great deal of hard work. There were trenchers
and platters to be scoured, and big iron pots to be lifted about and
washed, and roasting meats to be watched and turned before the fires.
The cooking tanned Gareth's face and hands as riding in the hot sun
had never done. When he could, he would run out into the courtyard,
and play games with the other kitchen-boys, and when they were tired,
they would sit against the wall and he would tell long tales he had
read, and some that he made up, about knights and dragons and enchanted
forests and robbers. The stories he loved best to tell, though, were
stories of the King.
Often these play-times were broken in upon by the Master of the
Kitchens, who called them back to their tasks with no great gentleness.
Especially was he a hard master to Gareth; and, strangely enough, this
was because Gareth was willing and cheerful, for there are people
with such crooked places in their minds that they cannot see a person
working gladly at a hard task but they want nothing so much as to see
if they cannot break their cheerfulness. And that was the sort of
master Gareth found in the King's Kitchen. He missed his rides over the
downs in the clear air, and the right to go and come as he pleased. But
when things seemed hard he cast off the thought and laughed to himself,
saying, "It is for the King." In a little while, too, he learned to
take fault-finding, and, now and again, a blow, in quietness. And this,
too, was for the King.
As the days came and went, Bellicent, alone now with her old husband,
thought of her son day and night; and the tasks that he must do and the
discomforts he must suffer seemed to her a thousand times worse than he
ever thought them. At last, when hardly a month of his trial had yet
gone by, she could bear it no longer, but sent a messenger to the King
to tell him the story, and to take to Gareth a horse and armour and all
things that he would need when it should please the King to make him a
knight.
After the King had seen the messenger he sent for Gareth, and Gareth
left his scouring and went gaily and eagerly to him. He was glad in
his love for the King, and I think he may have felt that he had borne
rather unusual things for his sake. As he came near, the King loved him
for his youth and gaiety and faithfulness. But Gareth, looking up into
the quiet, loving eyes that were fixed on him, knelt down at the King's
feet and bowed his head, and knew that nothing he could do for the King
would ever be too much.
The King ended Gareth's kitchen service and made him a knight, and some
day you will read other stories about him, for he fought many battles
and loved a beautiful lady.
And it seems likely that the King loved him all the more because he
could cook and scour for his sake.
BROTHER JUNIPER'S COOKING
Have you heard stories about Saint Francis of Assisi? There are a great
many, and people like to hear them over and over again. For, though
Saint Francis lived most of his life in a little, faraway, country town
in Italy, called Assisi, and though he died hundreds of years ago, yet
every year many people go to see the place where he lived, and the
church where he is buried, and many people in countries far away from
Italy love him as well as they do their friends whom they can see and
talk to.
One of the stories about St. Francis tells of a flock of birds that
came to listen to a sermon he preached to them, and another is about a
wolf whom he persuaded not to hurt people any more. The reason he could
do these things, and the reason people who have never seen him love him
very dearly is because he loved everything and everybody in the world,
and God and our Lord Jesus more than all.
No one was so dirty, or so sick, that he did not want to take care of
him; no one was so cross, or so cruel, that he did not want to be kind
to him.
Every day he went about helping poor people, and sick people, and
troubled people; and he taught them all to be sorry for the wrong
things they had done, and to sing songs of joy because God loved them.
After a little, a good many men began to help him do this. They gave
everything they had to the poor, and never after that kept any money.
They worked every day to get a little food, and the rest of the time
they spent in helping and teaching people. St. Francis called them his
"Little Brothers," not because they were small or young, but because
he taught them to think themselves of no importance, and to think, if
anybody scolded them or hurt them, that they deserved it and more too.
One of these Little Brothers was named Brother Juniper. He was always
thinking of ways to help people. One day, all the Brothers went out
to work, and left Brother Juniper to take care of the little hut where
they lived, and to get some food for them. When he set about this he
began to think of the Brothers who usually did the cooking, and how
much time they had to spend every day getting food ready for the others
to eat. To be sure, they had but one good meal a day, yet even so the
cooking of it took time the Brothers might otherwise have used for
prayer, or tending the sick, or some other good work.
As Brother Juniper was thinking of this, a plan popped into his head
which made him very glad. He took two big baskets, and went off happily
to several farmhouses in the neighbourhood, where the people were fond
of the Little Brothers and liked to give them anything they needed.
That day they gave Brother Juniper chickens and eggs and meat and salad
and all sorts of vegetables, and they lent him some big iron pots. He
took the baskets home heavy with food, and he came back and took the
pots home. Then he made a big fire, and all the time he was happy and
sang to himself, because he thought, "I will work hard to-day, and cook
all this food, and then the Brothers won't have to think about cooking
for a week or more." He hung the pots over the fire, and put into them
all the food he had gathered without so much as taking the feathers
off the chickens or the shells off the eggs, or stopping to see whether
the vegetables were all just fit to eat or not. Then he filled the pots
with water, and before long they began to boil. The fire was furiously
hot. Brother Juniper could not get near enough to it to stir the pots.
When he found this out, he took a board and tied it fast to himself,
and, with that for a shield, he leaped to a pot and stirred it, and
then leaped away again to cool himself; then he dashed at another and
stirred that, and so on.
By and by, the Brothers came back, and the Brother Guardian with them,
and they all sat down to dinner. Brother Juniper poured out some of
the stew from his pots and brought it to the table. He was hot and
tired, but delighted, and he told the others what he had done, and that
they need not do any more cooking for a long time. The Brothers looked
at him, and looked at the stew, and looked at each other, but not a
mouthful could they eat. Brother Juniper urged them to begin, and when
they did not, wondered what could be the matter. He was not left long
in doubt, for the Brother Guardian told him that the dinner was not fit
for a pig to eat, and scolded him well for wasting so much good food.
Brother Juniper listened and the gladness died out of him. He went
and knelt at the Brother Guardian's feet and confessed his fault, and
begged to be forgiven for wasting the Brothers' food, and for getting
them a dinner they could not eat. Then he went away by himself, and
the rest of that day and all the next, he neither ate nor spoke, nor
ventured to come near any of the Brothers, because he was so sorry for
his wastefulness and stupidity.
But the Brothers and the Brother Guardian thought they would be willing
to know as little about cooking as Brother Juniper if they could be
like him in some other ways.
THE WIDOW'S CRUSE
Long, long ago, there was a famine in a little town called Sarepta. For
months and months there had been no rain, and nothing could grow in the
fields, and the streams dried up and the sheep died and many people
died, too, because they had no food.
A widow lived in Sarepta, who had one boy, and she was poor. When the
famine began she had just one barrel of meal and one cruse of oil, and
because she knew she could get no more, she and her son ate as little
as they could, but even so, in a few months the meal was far down in
the bottom of the barrel, and the cruse of oil felt very light.
At last one morning, when the woman got up, she found there was only
enough meal and oil to make one little cake. She looked at it a long
time, thinking they must certainly starve to death when that was gone;
then she went out to get some wood for the fire, for she said to
herself, "I will bake this one cake and we will eat it, but after that
we will have to die." I expect she looked white and sad as she went,
for it hurts very much to be so hungry that you die of it.
She found a few sticks, and was picking them up, when a tall old man
stopped beside her and leaned on his staff. His clothes were made of
hairy skins, and he had a long gray beard, and his face and arms and
legs were brown and rough as if he had lived out in the sun and the
frost. He seemed to have been making a journey, and he asked for a
drink of water. The widow was glad it was only water that he wanted,
and was hurrying off to get it, when the old man called after her, and
asked her to bring him a piece of bread.
She thought of the little bit of meal and oil, and of her hungry boy,
and of how hungry she was herself--and now, here was this tired old
man asking for food! It was really more than she could bear. She came
back toward him and said, "As the Lord liveth, I have not a cake, but
only a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and
behold I am gathering two sticks that I may go and dress it for me and
my son, that we may eat it and die!"
The old man saw how hungry and desperate she looked; it may be that
he knew beforehand that she was; nevertheless, he said: "Fear not;
but go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake
first, and bring it unto me, and after that make for thee and thy son.
For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not
waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord
sendeth rain upon the earth."
The widow did not altogether understand what he said, but somehow
she felt stronger and more brave. She went home quickly and baked a
little meal cake, and brought it to the old man, and asked him to come
to her house and rest. He went back with her, and then she set about
baking the rest of the meal and oil. She thought it would only make a
very little cake, but the more meal she took out of the barrel, the
more there was in it; and the more oil she poured from the cruse, the
heavier it was to lift. She could hardly believe it, and yet she saw
it was surely so. Then she went, crying with gladness and relief, and
knelt beside the old man and thanked him, and begged him to stay with
them as long as he could. And he did stay, a good many months, and all
the time of the famine there was meal in the barrel and oil in the
cruse.
By and by, the widow and her son learned that the old man's name was
Elijah, and that he was a Prophet of the Lord God of Israel.
THE LUNCHEON
If we sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, and then sailed as far east on
the Mediterranean Sea as we could, we should come to Asia. Then if we
travelled into Asia for a little distance, we should come to a small
lake. Long ago, this lake was called the Sea of Galilee, and one of the
little towns on the shore was named Bethsaida. In this town, almost one
thousand, nine hundred years ago, a boy lived and played and went to
school. His uncles had boats on the lake, for they were fishermen, and
the boy played in the boats, and sometimes his Uncle Andrew let him go
out with him to the fishing.
Bethsaida was a busy, little town. There was always something to do.
The lake and the boats and the fishermen and the nets were always
there; then sometimes Roman soldiers marched into the town, and
merchants from far-off countries came to trade in the market-place. Now
and again men came who gathered crowds round them, and talked loud and
shook their clenched fists and tore their long robes and kept the town
restless for days together.
The boy liked to go with his uncles to listen to these men. He could
not understand what they were talking about, but the crowd buzzed and
jostled, and sometimes groaned and yelled. It was very exciting. Uncle
Peter was often angry about what he heard these men say, but Uncle
Andrew just stroked his beard and went back to the boats.
The people called a man who spoke to them in this way a "Rabbi." This
meant in their language, a master--a man who knew a great deal about
something.
One day, a Rabbi came to Bethsaida, who acted differently from the
others. He did not make speeches in the market-place, and often when
people were crowding to hear him, he went away on the lake or into the
hills. If they followed him, he would sometimes stand in a boat by the
shore, or on a hillside, and talk to them; and he could make sick
people well. He liked children; and the boy had seen him once stop in
the road and talk to a woman. That was a very queer thing for a great
Rabbi to do.
The boy saw very little of his uncles after this new Rabbi came,
for they followed him everywhere he went and seemed to be his close
friends. When they did come home they spoke of him as if they did not
know just what to say, yet always it seemed as if they could have said
more if they had thought it well.
One day, the Rabbi and his friends had gone up into the hills, and
people from the towns on the lake, and from the country round it, had
gone out to find him; for those who had seen him wanted nothing so much
as to see him again, and those who had not seen him could not rest
until they had found out what the others went to see. The boy had been
playing in the boats that morning, which nowadays were most of the time
pulled up on the shore, and when he saw some of the neighbours setting
off for the hills, he made up his mind to go too. First, though, he
thought, "Uncle Andrew will be hungry, and so shall I," and he went
home and got some food to take with him.
The way up through the hills was long and steep. The boy and his
neighbours were tired enough before they came in sight of a great
crowd of people in a green hollow of the hills. It was strange but,
though there were thousands of people all standing together, they did
not make a sound. As the boy came a little nearer, he heard the Rabbi's
voice in the stillness. He wondered why the people kept so quiet. He
did not realize that he was keeping very quiet himself.
After a while he no longer heard the Rabbi's voice, and the people
began to move and make a little murmur of talking. He crept through the
crowd toward the group round the Rabbi where his Uncle Andrew would
be. When he got there he found they were trying to think of a way to
feed all these hundreds of people who were tired and hungry, and miles
away from any place where they could get food. That reminded him of the
luncheon he had brought, and he pushed the basket into Uncle Andrew's
hand.
Uncle Andrew looked into the basket and smiled when he saw what it had
in it. Then he said to the Rabbi, "There is a lad here, which hath five
barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?"
All the same, though, he held out the basket to the Rabbi, as if he
really thought it would be of some use to him.
The boy looked to see if the great Rabbi would be angry with Uncle
Andrew for saying such a useless thing, when all the others were trying
hard to think what could be done. But no; instead of that, he looked as
if something had made him delightfully happy, and he said, "Make the
men sit down." And they did. Then the Rabbi blessed the five little
loaves and the two little fishes which he had taken out of the basket,
and began to break them up and give them to those especial friends
of his who were always with him. And they carried them to the people
sitting on the grass, and came back for more again and again.
And there always was more.
The boy went with Uncle Andrew, back and forth, again and again. He
wanted, more than anything, to help in some little way, if it were
only to hold back his uncle's robe as he bent toward the people on the
ground.
When they would walk back for more food, he scarcely dared go so near
to the wonderful Rabbi. And yet--his heart was in his throat with the
joy and wonder of it--was it not his own barley bread and fish that the
Rabbi had been so glad to have, and with which he was feeding all these
thousands of hungry people?
Last of all, after every one was fed, the boy sat down close to his
uncle and they had some luncheon, too; but he could not take his eyes
from the Rabbi's face. He looked and looked until he could not see it
any more, for he had gone to sleep in the warm grass.
When he waked the crowd was moving away, and his uncle was helping
gather up the food which was left. The Rabbi had gone away alone into
the hills.
THE FIRE OF COALS
It was spring-time, and eventide, in the thirty-third year of that
amazing time when God walked on the earth, not only everywhere, and in
every man as He does now, but Himself in the form of one Man.
Five of those men who loved Him best, and had been with Him most often,
stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in the quick-coming darkness.
Only a week or two before, they had seen their dear Lord nailed on
a cross and left to die. And He had died. And when that happened,
they felt they could not bear to live any longer. But--what do you
think?--first one, and then another, had seen Him alive again, had
talked with Him, touched Him, and been taught by Him as they used to
be. When He was with them, they wished for nothing else; and when He
was away they watched and longed for His return.
It had now been several days since He had been with them, and meanwhile
they had been going about among people who thought of them as men who
had wasted three years wandering round after another man, who was
always about to do something but never did, and who, at last, had been
put to death by the government. I expect it made these men feel lonely
then, just as it makes us feel lonely now, to have to be with people
who think that Our Lord is not alive.
They did not know what to do with themselves as they stood on the shore
that evening. So, when one said, "I go a-fishing," all the rest said
they would go, too. They were glad to be at work again, at something
they had done all their lives.
They started out on the dark water under the stars, and cast their
nets, but when they drew them in, they had caught nothing. They cast
them again, and rowed here and there, and worked as hard as they could,
but they got no fish for their pains, and the night was passing. One
cannot tell whether or not they thought it strange, that men who had
made sick people well, and cast out devils, could not now catch a few
fish. Whatever they thought, they were wet and tired, and hungry, and
the cold, gray early morning had come.
When it began to dawn, they rowed toward the shore. As they drew near,
they saw some one standing on the beach who called to them and asked if
they had any fish. They had to say no. Then the Stranger said "Cast the
net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find." They had cast
it, perhaps, in that very place during the night, but they did not say
so; they just cast the net. When they began to draw it, it was heavy
with fish.
This was a strange thing. One of the men said very low, "It is the
Lord." Then the one who had suggested that they go fishing, threw
himself into the water and swam to the shore; he just could not wait.
The others came in the boat, dragging the net full of fishes.
As all through the night everything had seemed to go wrong, so now,
everything was all right. On the shore was just the thing that tired,
hungry, cold people want--a fire, burned down to glowing coals, with
fish and bread baking on it.
But that was not the best thing they found on the shore.
The Stranger told them to draw up the net, and they did, and counted
the fish, one hundred and fifty-three. Then He told them to come and
eat, and He said grace for them and waited on them, and they knew every
word and every gesture, but they could not speak. They just ate and
rested and looked at Him. It made them so glad, and yet it almost made
them afraid, too, that He should care about their hard work, and come
and cook for them and wait on them Himself.
Perhaps it often happened in the years which followed, that when a
friend, or a woman, or a slave came to these men, bringing food and
comfort for their weariness, that with them came also the memory of
the dawn on the beach, and the fire of coals, and the blessing of a
Presence more than theirs.
PART II
LEARNING AND HELPING
LEARNING AND HELPING
"She was one of those persons who possess, as their
exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement.
It is a kind of natural magic that enables these
favoured ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of
things around them; and particularly to give a look
of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for
however brief a period, may happen to be their home."
--_Hawthorne_
ONE would like to take the person Hawthorne is describing on a camping
party or a picnic. She would be equally agreeable to stay at home with,
or to find at home when one came in. It is a sign that there is such a
person in a house when the whole family have to know where "Mother" is,
as soon as they get inside the front door. Sometimes it is a sister or
an aunt, sometimes a father, who has to be found before one can settle
down, but whatever the relationship, it is the person who makes us feel
at home.
It is odd, is it not, the way we are always saying that we "feel
at home," or "not at home," or "homesick," or that something is
"homelike"? What do we mean by it, anyway? When people try to tell
what home is, they usually make poor work of it. It is not in the
least necessary to tell what it is; a home is a thing to have, not to
talk about. All I want to say here is that homes are not houses and
furniture, but people. There is an Indian proverb which says, "The
hearth is not a stone but a woman." Fathers and brothers have their own
share in making their homes, but mothers and daughters are more apt to
take care of their homes and stay in them. So it has come to be that
making homes is a special and particular work of women.
Whatever work a girl may hope to do in the future, she will live
somewhere, and whatever that somewhere is like, it should be as
homelike as she can make it. This is partly on account of a good many
people she will find who need a little pleasantness and comfort given
to them, and partly because she will not be comfortable and happy
herself unless she has something homelike about her. This is why it is
a great advantage to be a woman; what power we have to make homes, we
carry with us. Hawthorne says that a woman, who is especially gifted in
this way, can make a home of any place, even though she is there but a
few hours--a hotel bedroom, for instance. The Indian proverb, however,
goes even further. It says, not that a woman can make a home, but that
she _is_ a home. That is, we should have the power to make people feel
at home wherever _we_ are.
Most women, though, have something more to make a home out of than
themselves. They have little houses or big houses to keep. When they
begin to do this they find themselves very glad of all the cleverness,
and learning and experience which they can gather. It is much easier to
do some of this gathering before one has a house of one's own, and ways
of doing it lie all round us, often unrealized and unused.
Through most of our teens, school is the principal thing. Whether we
are interested in it or not, it is then our recognized occupation.
Nowadays, there are opportunities in many schools to learn things
helpful in housekeeping. They are not only to be found in cooking
and sewing classes. Chemistry and physics, which may one or other of
them be required of you for college entrance examinations, are also
of excellent service in housekeeping. Some of you will be in schools
where you can choose to some extent what courses you take. In that
case, do not say chemistry is "messy," and physics is "too hard," but
just tussle with them for the sake of your home-making, as a boy would
who knew he was to be a physician or an engineer. I hardly dare to
mention it, but detested arithmetic, learned in school, often afterward
saves the peace of a household and the happiness of the housekeeper.
Personally, I have found what geometry I know useful on many unexpected
occasions. But to turn to a more agreeable subject, I can recommend any
course in light carpentry, for you will almost surely like it if you
try it, and no one thing is more useful in a house--except perhaps,
arithmetic.
If, on the contrary, you are in a school where there are no choices,
or if you are obliged to narrow down to the requirements of a college
entrance examination, the only thing to do is to keep in mind the
things which will be especially useful to you--physical sciences,
mathematics, manual training, domestic science; study some of them if
you can, and, besides that, see what you can learn at home. I do not
mean that the other things which you study at school are not useful in
home-making; they are. It is just that certain things are part of the
special training for this work, and those named above are the ones more
usually taught in schools.
We turn now to the preparation which can be given to us, and which
we give ourselves, at home. Ideally, this is the place to learn
home-making.
If we have a home, whether it is a palace or a room in a tenement, some
one in it "keeps house." If that person is one's mother, then is one
the normal and fortunate person who learns in the normal and fortunate
way, from being with her. If she does some of the work of the house
herself, and we help her, we learn far more than we realize until some
moment of emergency comes and we find that our eyes, and hands, and
noses, and muscles are trained for service.
If your mother merely directs the affairs of her house and the details
are carried out by others, watch how she does it, for this may be the
way in which you will keep house; and persuade her to let you try it,
sometime when she is to be absent. In this case there will be some one
else in the house from whom you will need to take a few lessons. It
will perhaps be a housekeeper, or a very trusted maid. Make friends
with her and ask her questions. If she sees you want to learn and not
to criticize she will become the most delighted, flattering teacher you
ever dreamed of.
If your mother does part or all of the housework it will probably be
one of your appointed duties to assist her. If it should happen, as
is sometimes the case, that you are not required to help with the
housework, then be a woman, and not a lap dog, and ask to help. In the
proper story-book, a mother's response to such a request would be an
affectionate answer and much patient teaching, and I think, in many,
many cases, that is the reply a daughter does receive. But just suppose
that you are one of the other cases. I can imagine a variety of answers
you might get to "May I help?" One of them might be, "Go out of the
kitchen, you'll spoil your clothes"; and others might be, "Don't bother
me, I'm busy," or "Don't interrupt," or, "I'd rather do it myself than
put up with your clumsiness."
The first thing to do when one gets an answer like this is to go
away. The second is according to temperament; if you feel hurt and
discouraged, then, try not to, or if you feel that your responsibility
is ended by the refusal of your offer, then don't think that; it
isn't true. Think rather, that you may have offered just at the wrong
moment--you will find when you begin to keep house yourself that there
are a good many wrong moments--or that there may have been some simpler
thing you could have done which would have been a greater help. We
might also consider the possibility that our way of helping has not
been quite agreeable on some former occasion. Perhaps, alas, we may be
clumsy, or we may be slow, or we may be more nuisance than help just
at first. After we have gone away and thought ourselves quiet, then we
must do that most difficult and heroic of things--try again to help the
person by whom we have been rebuffed.
You see I speak entirely of your side in this matter. That is because
neither you nor I may be permitted to pass judgment on your mother.
She is like some one about whom we have read a short story, we only
know one little period of her life and only a few of her thoughts and
feelings even then. She must always remain a bit of a mystery to us,
because we can never know very much about what happened before we were
born.
There is a thing which makes helping mothers difficult, that one must
guard oneself against, especially because it is so natural and so
insidious. It is especially a snare when we learn about housekeeping
outside of our homes, though it very frequently lies in wait for us
anyway. It is the desire to reform our homes and our mothers, and
that instantly. I venture to say that the trouble with this lies in
the _instantly_. The ways you are taught at school may be better than
mother's ways; but, on the contrary, mother's ways may be the result of
practical experience, and they may be an adaptation to the practical
needs and tastes of her family. It may be that the things you learn are
better adapted to your own generation and your own future housekeeping
than they are to your parents' tastes and needs. You are the future,
but remember that your parents are the past, without which you would
never have been. There is this also to consider, that as we grow older,
we grow toward orthodoxy. We place our faith in the "new thing" of the
hour, and in a little while, find that it was proved impracticable ten
centuries ago. While we are deciding that the old people we know are
narrow-minded old fogies, behold, some girl or boy tells us that the
reason we do not believe in their theory of the universe is because we
are "old-fashioned." To you, young, thoughtful, and alive, belongs the
belief that you are born to make the world better; and this is true.
Not, however, by tearing down is this accomplished, but by building
up. And the building is done by laying in a lifetime one small stone
in the structure, ages old, which has its foundations in the deeps of
the universe, and upon whose finished spires shall shine the glory of
Heaven.
But there--it is of some practical ways of helping mother, and thereby
learning housekeeping, that I wish to speak just now. They belong to
the class of things called little services, but I can assure you, they
are great, in tact, and helpfulness and love. They are homely; but they
are just the sort of things angels would like to do. Dusting is one
of them, the little everyday dusting which makes such a difference in
the tidiness of the house, and perhaps takes five minutes, or less,
to a room. With this goes taking up crumbs in the dining room, with
a sweeper or dustpan and brush, and arranging flowers and watering
plants. Tidying means removing dirt and litter, and putting each
thing in the place where it belongs. Tidiness is not a housekeeper's
superstition; it is a mechanical device for invoking the spirit of
restfulness.
Another homely thing always needing to be done is mending. It is, by
nature, incidental work, and therefore it is especially grateful to
the housekeeper to have it done by an incidental helper. I do not mean
merely darning stockings and sewing on buttons though that is the
larger part of it, but also, mending which is done with hammer and
tacks, or glue, or perhaps a varnish brush. I mean all those odd jobs
which pursue the busy housewife in the hours when she ought to rest.
Get your mother to write a list of these odd jobs on her memorandum
pad, as she sees or thinks of them during the day, then see how many
of them you can find a way to do.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
Tidying]
If your household does not include a waitress, there is a class of
small services which need to be done before each meal. One is not quite
so sure to be at home at meal times, as if one were a boy, but one can
arrange to be. Certain things are needed on the table which come from
the refrigerator or the cellar, cool things which should be put on at
the last moment. The cook has already fifty things to do at the last
moment, and few things relieve her more than to know that she need not
think of the table until she puts the meal upon it. I saw a girl, once,
looking at the dining-room table, and tapping out some sort of rhythm
with four finger-tips against her cheek. She owned up that she was
saying to herself, "Bread, butter, milk and water"--four things which
she had made it her business to see on the table before each meal.
Sometimes there were jelly and pickles and other relishes to put on,
but these four, which she counted off on her fingers and her cheek,
were the essentials.
Wiping and putting away the dishes is a small service which one can do
often and acceptably. It is elsewhere described, but is also mentioned
here because it belongs to this list of opportunities.
If your mother, or whoever does the cooking in your house, likes to be
helped with it, there will be many little things which you can do, like
beating eggs for instance, or shelling peas. No one can tell you what
they are, though, except the person who is cooking.
How many, and which of these small services you are able to do, depend
on how long your school hours are, and on what sort of health you have,
and on how much of the housework is done by the family. It is not fatal
if you do not do any of them, provided your reason is not laziness or
selfishness.
There is another group of small things, helpful, but more personal
to yourself, which you are less likely to be prevented from doing.
You probably have a room, or half a one, and a closet, and bureau
drawers, and certainly clothes, which are your own. Possession means
responsibility. If we find this sharp-cornered foundation-stone of
truth in the depths of our own bureau drawers, it is less likely to
fall heavily on us later on. Our own things and the places in which
they are kept should be our own care, and not another's.
It may not be your business to do the periodical sweeping in your room,
but the daily dusting and tidying the household authorities will be
glad to have you do.
You cannot find a better way to learn to make beds than to make your
own, for in that case you get the benefit of the insufficient airing or
the crease, or the crumb, which you have let go. If, for some reason,
you cannot make your bed every day, try to do it on Sunday. It is a
custom of gentleness from one woman to another.
Keeping a room in order is accomplished by the same means that any
tidiness is brought about, that is, by having a place for things and
seeing that they are there. The things that most girls want in their
rooms are apt to be hard to keep in order. They are things which our
heartless elders call "trash." I would not undertake to say what a
girl's room should or should not contain, but I would ask her not
to have so many things that they are either never neat or else a
tormenting care; not to hang things on her walls which are vulgar or
silly; and not to leave her clothes and little adornments for other
people to put away. Keeping one's own possessions in order is a
reasonable service to others, and one of the natural, gradual ways of
learning home-making.
Will you turn over a few pages and read the suggestions about the
fittings and care of closets you will find in the chapter on upstairs
work? Bureau drawers, however, are not mentioned elsewhere than here,
for I consider them the private property of individuals, to be cared
for by their owners and not to be intruded upon by others except in
emergency. Articles put in drawers should be classified as far as
possible, and things used least often should be put in drawers least
easy to get at. Suppose, for instance, a bureau has four drawers, the
lowest is probably deepest and requires stooping to open it. In it can
go best waists, and sashes, and girdles, and scarfs, and fluffy objects
which should lie loosely. In the third drawer underclothes might be
put; to be folded and packed close does not hurt them. As they are
things which go into the wash, they should be worn in rotation, and
this is accomplished without thought or trouble if we pile all the
garments of the same kind together and always put the newly washed
ones on the top or the bottom of the pile, and take the ones we are to
wear from the opposite place. It takes a great many troublesome words
to describe this action, which is very simple, and almost immediately
becomes mechanical. In the second drawer of this possible bureau might
go collars, and handkerchiefs, and gloves, and ties, and things which
must be kept uncrumpled. If one has ample room, pretty boxes are good
to keep these things in, and they make for neatness. If one must
economize space, it is better to have some squares of silk, or pretty
coloured linen or silkoline in which one's possessions can be laid
flat, and then the four corners of the wrapper folded over upon them.
I have found these more convenient to get into and more easily washed
than regular veil and necktie and glove cases.
The top drawer is the one which locks most securely, because it is
under the top of the bureau, instead of under another drawer which
might be removed. It is therefore the one in which people usually
keep the things which they especially value, and their pocketbooks or
handbags. If a part of the top drawer is set apart for the collars,
ties, handkerchiefs, hair ribbons and belts which are in immediate use,
it will assist immensely to keep a room and bureau top neat. One does
not wish to put things, which have been worn, away with things which
are perfectly fresh, and one wants the belt and ribbons which one wears
for two or three days in succession close at hand. If they are folded
or rolled up to keep them shapely, and put in a space in the top drawer
which has been chosen for the purpose, time and tidying will be saved.
The space will need emptying out frequently, but that can be done on
those Saturdays when one is seized with a sudden clearing-up fit.
Care of our clothes is not directly related to housekeeping--it is
only a collateral relation. A neat house, however, is marred if the
housekeeper herself is untidy. For our immediate purpose, though, the
point is, that the habit of caring for our clothes, and the deftness
and inventiveness which such care requires, are qualities constantly
useful in housekeeping. I met a woman once, who boasted that she did
not know how to hold a needle, but give her a hammer and nails and she
could do anything. I happened to see her later with a hammer and nails,
and she was clutching the hammer close to the head, and pounding in
nails with more disregard for the help of leverage, than if she had
been a cave-woman pounding a stake with a stone. Some people can hammer
who cannot sew; and some people can sew who cannot hammer; some people
can do neither, and some people can do both. But the fact remains that
if we can use our hands and heads cleverly for one thing, we have a
better chance of using them cleverly for another; and blacking shoes,
and binding skirts, and mending stockings, and putting in ruchings,
are steps in an apprenticeship to more interesting and clever work.
Incidentally, too, we are giving ourselves that exquisite daintiness
which is one of a girl's charms.
At least one means of learning something of housekeeping lies open
to every creature. That means is an observing interest. We never
remain entirely ignorant of the things in which we are interested. We
gather ideas about them everywhere, and in the most unexpected and
unintentional places. If we sit at tables where the meals are carefully
served and well cooked, that privilege teaches many things about
serving and cooking. There is as much to learn in a cheap restaurant,
if we watch how things are done, and think out the reason for the
methods. If we watch a servant or a housewife doing work well, we need
never again be entirely ignorant of how to do that work. If we read a
book or hear a lecture, or overhear a scrap of talk in a street car
which contains a thought to help us or an unusual method to be tried,
it ought to stick to our memories as if magnetized. Think in the
morning that you want to know something about the cats in Thibet, and
almost surely before night, you will have heard or read something about
them. We know how often this is true of remote and unusual affairs; it
is infinitely more true of intimate daily ones. It is a great blessing;
a means of getting knowledge without other struggle than remembering
what we want to know. If it is not a royal road, it is at least a royal
by-path, to learning.
Some day, you will discover that you are "grown up," and if you have
learned what you could and helped when you could, you will discover,
too, that you have the gift and power to make a home--that you are a
woman, who is not a stone but a hearth.
PART III
MY HERITAGE
I
MY HERITAGE
"The lot has fallen unto me in a fair ground, yea, I
have a goodly heritage."
THERE is a deep surprise and joy in these words, which grows to
exultation. They might have been spoken by one who had climbed a height
to look for the first time on the place where henceforth his life and
work were to be, and saw in the curve of many-folded, blue hills,
white roads with crops warming in the fields on either hand, woods and
streams, laden orchards, and vines in garlands.
"It is a fair ground." Then--"yea, I have a goodly heritage." There
is joy in beauty, and in possession--and more than that. There is
exultation in the vision of seed-time and harvest, of growing beauty
and usefulness, of life renewed; and in the strength and power to work
for all this and to achieve it.
It is not fanciful to say that a woman may regard her heritage in some
such way as this. The childhood, and the homes of the world are hers,
and her work is the making of men and women. If she chooses to say that
God has exalted His handmaiden, who is able to deny it?
The particular work of women is not just like any other work; indolence
and failure in doing it, however, have been too often excused on
account of this fact. Their work is yearly becoming more and more
allied with other commercial, intellectual and moral activities.
Even their housekeeping is no longer a disagreeable thing kept out
of sight as much as possible, as the plumbing used to be. Its varied
problems are being recognized and studied. Nobody denies that they
are difficult, but it is not reasonable to suppose that they are the
most difficult in the world, nor that they are unsolvable. One reason
why they are difficult is that they are an attempt to establish order
and law, without destroying individuality and freedom; and another
reason is that the housewife exercises her profession chiefly for the
benefit of her own family. If the physician had to doctor himself, the
preacher preach to his wife, and the teacher teach his own children,
their professions might be in as much confusion as the housekeeping
profession is. The efforts to do away with these difficulties by
having families live together, eat together, or do anything else in a
wholesale way, have not succeeded and have led in a wrong direction.
What is wanted is a way to preserve the separate family and the
separate family home, not a way to make them into something else.
Difficulty is a characteristic of their work which should appeal to
women. They are seeking to do difficult things. They are seeking to
prove that there is no profession, nor labour, nor art in which they
cannot succeed. In many cases they have succeeded admirably; it has
not proved the point they set out to prove however, but another. What
they have proved by their activities is that they are amply able to
solve the problems and accomplish the organization of the work which is
especially their own. They cannot get it believed that they are equal
to anything while their own work lies undone--while they wilfully leave
the home or helplessly stay in it.
Things which we are proud to do in other fields, we neither see nor do
in our own. For the sake of a college degree, or a paper to be read
before a club, we delve in difficult books; yet we do not study, nor
even read about our own work. We would be proud to invent a flying
machine, or a mud-digger, yet most of the inventions to aid housework
are made by men. We aspire to be stockbrokers, merchants, accountants,
bankers--while housekeeping finance has become a stock joke. We are
eager to study social problems and take up settlement work, but we do
not think it worth while to study our own cooks. We feel in ourselves
a power to organize and betake us to the club, and leave the cook and
the nursemaid to organize our homes and our children's lives. We have
raised the woman's work of teaching and of nursing into excellent
professions, and yet we are ready to sit down and cry before the
difficulties of housekeeping.
Unpleasant and monotonous things, which we claim make our own work
unbearable, we ignore in occupations which we covet or admire. Under
Mr. Kipling's influence we cultivate an enthusiasm for machinery and
engineering, but we neglect his constantly emphasized lesson that the
digging of a canal or the building of a bridge involves humble toil and
unsightly details far beyond any we may encounter in peeling potatoes
or washing dishes. We look at the wide, slow waters which have been let
into the land and they silence us; we follow with our eyes the great
span of the bridge and hold our breath as if it were music. It is right
that we wonder and admire. They are great things. But see that woman
beside you who is looking at the bridge with such especial interest. Is
the bridge any more wonderful than her son, who built it? He is what
she has built. It seems to me, one might peel several tons of potatoes
as a thank-offering for a son.
But I will not take such high ground as to suppose that we might be
willing to do some hard and disagreeable things just because we feel
very earnestly the privilege and glory of being women. Much more
ordinary considerations urge us to get about our work. If the engineer
son of whom we were speaking said, "Estimates make me nervous," or, "I
hate dealing with dirty, foreign labourers," or, "You can't expect me
to concern myself with the nasty river-bottom when I have the arch of a
bridge in my mind," or, "This work is so monotonous, I certainly have
a right to one day a week when I can go to town and shop"--if he said
these things, we should say he was--effeminate.
Effeminate!
Our times are so quick that, if we went earnestly to work, the next
generation would see nothing in the remarks quoted above, to suggest a
_woman_.
And do you know that this work of ours is a profession in which we
can be as clever, and independent, and advanced, and emancipated as we
please, and no man will like us the less for it. They like us to be
inconsistent and unexpected, and they do not like us to know more than
they do. But if we can keep house thriftily and comfortably and not
bother them with it, they like that. In this we are not their rivals.
They like our charming unexpectedness better elsewhere than in the
butcher's bills; and they love the inconsistency of the woman who, in
the home which her cleverness and toil have made peaceful and adequate,
is yet full of pleasure and wonder at the things her husband or her son
has accomplished.
This is my thought of our fair heritage of clever, helpful and devoted
work, with its goodly promise of a harvest of people whom we have
helped to be happier and better. Such is the country of my Vision.
II
THE PLAN
IF WE want something, we plan to get it. We say, "I will do this, not
that; I will use my time, as I have little strength; I will give my
strength, as I have little money; or, I will give my money as I have
little time to give." A plan is merely a series of choices, a record of
things taken and things left for the sake of obtaining some end or of
following some ideal.
If we wish the people for whom we keep house to be well and happy, and
good, we shall plan to make them so, as earnestly and definitely as if
we were making a train schedule, or drawing the plans of a house, or
writing the outline of a book.
The object of a housekeeping plan may be an ideal, but the plan is
based on a definite, practical fact--the amount of income. The plan
itself is the record of the choices made in the outlay of that amount
of income.
The first thing for a family to do when they wish to make a plan, is
to impress on their minds, not what they think they will have or what
they think they ought to have, but the definite amount of money which
they have. Some people gamble who do not go to races or play cards.
They bet on futurity by spending something they expect to make, or risk
a purchase on the security of Aunt Maria's usual Christmas present.
The indications of this sort of gambling are the casual remarks one
hears too often; "I just had to have it," or "We could not keep up
our position without it," or, "I can't have my children dressed like
beggars," or "It was awfully expensive, but I will save on something
else." They are silly words and not honest. Silly, because they mean
that some momentary self-indulgence has been thought worth the price
of long unrest and anxiety; not honest, because if people have what
they cannot pay for, they have what some one else has paid for as truly
as if they had carried off a parcel belonging to the person standing
beside them at a counter. In that matter of Aunt Maria, there is an
extra offense. A gift should bring some special pleasure, or meet some
special emergency. Counted on, or spent beforehand, it gives no happy
surprise, no unexpected pleasure or relief; and what is worse, Aunt
Maria gets no more happiness from making the gift than she would from
paying the interest on a mortgage. Counting on gifts is a mean trick.
If a child's parents do this, they cannot reasonably blame him for
calculating the inheritance he will acquire at their death.
The income from some kinds of work is of necessity uncertain. This
makes the housekeeping plan especially difficult. Probably the wisest
way to meet this is to pretend that one's income is an amount somewhat
under one's brightest hopes, and to live on that amount. In case of a
disappointment, there is not then so large a deficit to struggle with;
or, if the hopes come true, the surplus can very easily be put into
a needed garment or a needed pleasure, or perhaps into the savings
bank. Some people manage uncertain incomes by the month instead of the
year. The trouble with this is that there is likely to be "always a
feast or a famine," and that is demoralizing. As far as possible, a
family should have an established style of living, to be changed only
gradually, as an assured income increases.
This thing called the style of living is the insidious, untiring rival
of that hard, cold fact, the amount of income. The two are forever
quarrelling. Logically, the amount of income should settle the style of
living, but often people spend weary lives trying to stretch the hard
fact to fit its ever-increasing rival. This conflict is the source of
most household troubles, and quarrels, and sorrows. What is the matter?
Why is one less ashamed to wear one's heart on one's sleeve than a
patch? Why would you rather owe the grocer, than say to your friend, "I
can't afford it?" Why, when I say I am not ashamed to be poor, does the
blood rise in my cheeks to belie my words? Poverty is not a badge of
failure and laziness. It is often a decoration for high principle, or
for noble self-sacrifice,--it is the lady-love of saints.
Very soon and very often in housekeeping, whatever may be the income,
the conflict will arise between needs and wants and the financial
ability to supply them. For this struggle we must gather our common
sense and courage. They will help us to choose the things which really
matter, and to laugh at ourselves for pretending to have what we have
not.
* * * * *
Some husbands and wives make the financial plans of the family
together. In other cases, the husband decides what amount of the income
should be spent on the table, and the wife plans only the expenditure
of that. The households in which the wife buys and the husband pays
without consultation or agreement, exist, but let us hope they are
few. Then, there is the household in which the woman is financier,
and the man lives on an allowance. And, of course, there are a great
number of households which are not complete families, but are groups
of people, related or unrelated, who make their homes together, and in
which the division of income is made by one person, or by the group, as
they wish or are compelled by circumstances.
Plans for a whole income are considered here because they include the
problems and details of less elaborate plans.
As has been said, the first thing for a family to do is to find out
their definite income, irrespective of Aunt Maria. Incomes of all sizes
are lived on in some way. The way which their income will cover, is the
style of living suitable for a family. If the family income pinches,
however, and there is some way of increasing it which does not destroy
the home life, nor work some member of the family to death, then it
is well to take that way. But only in cases verging on starvation,
should an increase in income be made by the homemaker leaving her
housekeeping, or the breadwinner working eighteen hours a day.
When the amount of the income is found out, the next thing is to
divide it among the family needs in a reasonable proportion. This
proportion is decided in the first place according to necessity, and in
the second, according to taste.
Let us take for illustration a family with an income of $2,000 a year.
And then let us take, from Mrs. Ellen H. Richards's book called "The
Cost of Living," the following proportions for an income of that amount.
1/4 for food.
1/6 " rent.
3/20 " running expenses.
3/20 " clothes.
1/4 " miscellaneous expenses.
Translated into dollars this is:
$500 for food.
400 " rent.
300 " running expenses.
300 " clothes.
500 " miscellaneous expenses.
The next thing is to find out whether this is a possible proportion for
us, if this income is our own.
Food, $500 a year, $9.61 a week, $1.37 a day--we shall probably think
this a possible allowance.
Rent $400 a year, $33 a month--here there may be a difficulty.
If we own a house in a country town or a suburb, we can probably pay
the taxes and make repairs, and have something left from $400. If
we rent a house in a country town or in a not too popular suburb we
can perhaps get it for less than $400, but in the latter case, the
remainder may need to be used in carfares if some member of the family
has to go to the city every day. If we live in a flat in a large city,
it is an uninviting one that can be had for $33 a month, and even so,
nothing is left for carfares. Regular carfares are usually reckoned in
the department with the rent, because the place where one's home is
situated determines their amount.
Here are two cases, then, in which the proportion for rent does not
work. The first, in which there is more money than is necessary to
provide a dwelling, is easily arranged. The surplus can be used for
more clothes, or more "help," or to satisfy more of the unfailing
supply of miscellaneous needs, or it can be put by for future needs.
The second case, in which we feel we must have a $40 flat and have
only $33 with which to pay for it, is not as hopeless as it looks. For
the next thing in the table of proportions is $300 a year for running
expenses, that is, wages, fuel, light, water, etc. Here is at once a
partial solution of the rent difficulty. In that forty-dollar flat,
heat and water are supplied. If we use gas for cooking, $7 a month
will be an average gas bill for a careful family, that is $84 a year.
This amount will likewise cover the expense if we use gas for light
and coal for the range. Then if we pay three dollars a week to an
inexperienced girl, or $1.50 a day for two days a week to a combination
washerwoman and scrubwoman, that will be $156 a year. Our running
expenses will then be $240 a year. The $60 saved will pay $5 a month
on the rent, and we shall then need only $2 a month more to secure the
forty-dollar flat.
Next, $300 for clothes. In a year when things have lasted over, we may
be able to get the $2 a month for the rent from this department. If, on
the contrary, there is a new overcoat, or a new street dress to buy, or
a new member of the family to clothe, then it cannot be spared.
The next division is $500 for holidays, recreations, books, charity,
savings, doctors' bills and all unclassified expenses. This is the
division which is most difficult to manage. If we think we cannot spare
that $24 from the clothes department, we shall need to consider very
carefully whether we take it from this, or from the food department.
We shall have to consider the price of food in the neighbourhood; the
health of the family; how much they need a holiday; whether there
is any special purpose for which we must save; whether there is some
piece of furniture much needed; whether there is a present which we
greatly desire to give. And these are only samples of the things which
will need to be considered. A choice must be made, though, however
difficult, for when one item of expenditure in the family life is
exceptionally large, there is but one thing to do, that is, to decide,
reasonably and carefully, in what other department of living the
expenditure can be lessened.
In this case of a high rent which has just been described, see in the
table below what has happened.
+-----------------+------+------+----------+---------+---------------+
| |_Food_|_Rent_|_Running |_Clothes_|_Miscellaneous |
| | | | Expenses_| | Expenses_ |
|-----------------+------+------+----------+---------+---------------+
| Mrs. Richards's | 500 | 400 | 300 | 300 | 500 |
| Division | | | | | |
+-----------------+------+------+----------+---------+---------------+
| Division | 500 | 480 | 240 | 300 | 480 |
| for high rent | | | | | |
+-----------------+------+------+----------+---------+---------------+
80 60 20
The high rent is balanced by a saving in running expenses and in some
item of miscellaneous expense.
This is merely a suggestion of the way in which a housekeeping plan
is worked out. Every family has its own needs and wants, and its
income must be proportioned to suit them as far as possible. If your
income is larger than the one used as an example, you will find that
the department of miscellaneous expenses will grow and need to be
subdivided many times--you will have more concerts than cabbages--if,
on the contrary, your income is less than the example, you will find
that the food and rent departments will begin to swallow up the other
departments.
An example of the extreme of this is exhibited by a budget of
housekeeping expenses given by Mr. Arthur Morrison in the _Fortnightly
Review_ a few years ago, for a family with an income of £1 10s. a
week--about $7.50 a week and $390 a year.
s. d.
Rent 7 0
Meat and fish 5 5
Bread and flour 2 1½
Groceries 1 8
Cheese, butter, eggs, bacon 1 11
Green groceries 1 3
Fuel 2 0
Oil, etc 1 7½
Clothes 2 0
Club and insurance 1 0
Beer and tobacco 2 9
Balance 1 3
--------
£1 10s.
This table, roughly calculated, gives the following proportions:
A little more than 2/5 for food.
A little more than 1/5 for rent.
A little more than 2/25 for running expenses.
A little more than 1/15 for clothes.
A little more than 2/15 for other expenses.
Nearly half the income was used for food; the same proportion for rent
as it is reckoned should be paid by a family with an income of $2,000;
and about a third ($2.50 in our money) was left for fuel, clothes, and
every other need or want. Yet Mr. Morrison says that if the wife is
not lazy and the husband does not drink, a family can live in London
on this income and manage to be well and decent. "Pretty hard!"--yes.
"Pretty sordid!"--no. Courage and perseverance and self-denial made
that budget, such as most of us save up for heroic occasions, and would
not think of expending upon marketing and meal getting.
One cannot be as definite about housekeeping plans as one would like to
be in dealing with such a definite and practical subject. In the nature
of things, each family must decide on the purposes for which its income
is used, and on the amount to be devoted to each. I cannot, however,
emphasize too strongly the necessity of definiteness on the part of
those dealing with their own actual incomes. A carefully thought out
plan of expenditure, written down and earnestly adhered to, is a family
backbone. A first plan has to be made somewhat in the dark, but every
year brings enlightenment and confidence. Though the purposes for which
their income is used are for each family to decide upon, yet I venture
to lay stress upon three purposes which are often subdivisions of that
general and entirely voluntary department of miscellaneous expenses.
For convenience, I shall call them, "Allowances," "The Tenth," and
"Savings."
There is an odd sort of innate privacy about money matters. Children
are taught that it is ill-bred to open other peoples' pocketbooks or
checkbooks, or to ask them what their possessions cost. As they grow
up they find that business affairs are considered confidential, and
that no honourable person investigates another's money affairs without
some authority. It is desirable that these rules of honour should be
preserved, and one simple way to help in this is to arrange that each
member of the family has an allowance, if it is only five cents a
week--an allowance for which he is responsible to himself alone. These
allowances should go down in the family accounts as "Allowances," the
details belong to the individual. The members of families in which this
arrangement is made should conscientiously keep their private expenses
within the amount agreed upon, for allowances not only teach the
right of individual privacy, they teach that old and difficult lesson
that "you can't eat your cake and have it too";--that one can't have
marbles and candy the same week. An allowance also supplies each person
with something to give away, which is really his to give. He may not
have earned it by work, but he has earned it by going without something
he would have liked to spend it for. There is yet another purpose
which allowances serve. They help to prevent the failure of a plan of
expenditure. For they keep a strict and careful plan from becoming a
galling chain. They prevent the absorption of personal privacy and
freedom by the regulations of the family as a group against which the
individual, sooner or later, invariably rebels.
"The Tenth" is that part of the family income, more or less than an
actual tenth, which is given away. It is not mine to offer advice as
to the size or use of this division. I merely emphasize its necessity.
It is the small thing, which keeps meanness and bitterness out of the
management of scanty means, and selfishness and brutality out of the
management of ample means. Establish a give-away division in your plan,
for the sake of your own disposition, if you are not urged to it by any
other consideration.
Next to this division, which is considered the generous
division, comes one which has a less agreeable reputation, but
undeservedly--"Savings." Many people who will say giving is a good
thing, will deny that saving is. And is it? Why? What is it for? It is
to provide those who suffer adversity, or who live to old age, against
becoming a "public charge"; or against dependence upon relatives and
friends. There is a fine honour in not taking the risk of these things.
One ought to be willing to struggle hard and self-denyingly to save
oneself and one's family from becoming burdens to other people.
Perhaps you say, "But why pinch and save for something which may never
happen?" If you speak as one solitary individual, it is true, you may
die before old age; it is the rare family, however, in which some
member does not need a provision for a last period of helplessness.
Then, there are those things called adversities, and those things
called opportunities, which turn to adversities if they cannot be used.
Do you know many people, who have not at some time been in a difficulty
where they needed money, or who have not had a chance that depended on
an outfit or a pledge? Is it reasonable to expect to run to some one
else for help at such times?
And, by the way, to whom would you run? To the friend who is the
open-handed, good companion, or to the careful, farseeing friend?
Of the two, which is the more to be depended upon, the more finely
honourable, the more worthy to be imitated?
There are two very usual ways of keeping savings. Life insurance is
one of them. It is more than a way of keeping savings, for in most
cases, the amount finally received is more than the amount paid in.
It has this advantage, and also the advantage that the savings thus
laid by are only available at a time of great need--sickness, accident
or death--or sometimes, after a long period of years. It has the
corresponding disadvantages that these savings are not available for
small needs, and also that they may be lost, if for any reason the
subsequent premiums cannot be paid.
A savings-bank account is another way of keeping savings. Savings
banks will take money in very small sums and will pay a reasonable
interest on it. This method of keeping savings has the advantage
that the money can be drawn whenever it is needed, but the resulting
disadvantage that the account may be small at the moment of sudden
need. If it is possible, as it often is, to have both a life insurance
and a savings-bank account, a household may feel well protected against
calamity, and well provided against sudden wants.
If some member of a family has a life insurance, a definite premium
will have to be paid at definite times. A savings-bank account is not
so insistent. But to succeed in saving and to do it with as little
discomfort as possible, it is better to put ten dollars or ten cents
into an account on the first day of the month, and forget about it,
than to save five cents in carfare on Monday, one cent on a newspaper
on Tuesday, ten cents on lunch on Wednesday, and so on.
You will say that it amounts to the same thing. That if that money
is put into the bank, all these little pinching economies will have
to be borne as a consequence. That is logical, but only to a certain
extent true in practice. In one case, that of the definite amount put
away monthly, the money is saved because it is not there to spend; in
the other case, it is there, but is saved with the thought of saving.
The latter method means going without everything that possibly can be
gone without. It is the method by which one fills a Lenten mitebox--it
is disciplinary, that is, it is meant to hurt a little, and it does.
People do not keep Lent all the year, however; it is an especial
season for an especial purpose. At some time of serious difficulty in
household affairs, it may become necessary to save in this Lenten
way, but the usual, regular sort of saving, which is a duty for life
with most of us, should be done as far as possible by a decision once
carefully made, and afterward automatically carried out.
I wish I could in some way show the pleasant side of the matter of
savings. There is much comfort and gladness in the possession of a
small reserve fund. The mere sight of the big, ugly Savings Bank
which contains it can give new courage. We look up at the building in
passing and know we have there the chance to start again if we are not
succeeding; a holiday if we very much need one; weeks to recover in if
we are ill; protection from dependence upon other people; the power to
keep some one we love from suffering; and the joy of sometimes giving a
gift.
* * * * *
And now, a word more on the subject of choices.
In a little town I know, there live two old women. One will not go
to prayer meeting because she cannot afford to put five cents into
the collection basket; the other goes every week and contributes one
bright penny. She devoutly brightens it on a piece of old carpet before
she starts. As it is such a little gift, it must be made as fair as
possible.
There is a stern business principle in the whole of life. It is that
law of choice of which we spoke at first. If we have a thing, we must
in some way pay for it, we cannot have the thing and its price too. We
pay in various commodities: in work, in money, in time, in ability,
in thoughtfulness, in suffering; but in some way we pay. It is not a
harsh and ungenerous law; it is to be rejoiced in. God meant us to be
self-supporting, not objects of charity.
The trouble with His law is made by us. Some of us try to get out of
paying at all; some of us are angry because we would rather pay in
something we have not. We would rather pay for food and clothes with
money only, instead of with a little money and much thought and labour.
We would like to buy our friend a birthday gift, instead of writing
that birthday letter which costs us thoughtfulness and an ache in our
pride. Because we cannot afford a holiday, we will not pay for comfort
and pleasantness at home with the coin of gaiety, or a favourite
dessert, or a new book from the Library.
Each of you, and I, whatever our incomes, have our choices of this kind
to make, and the price of them to pay.
* * * * *
--It is prayer-meeting night. Shall we stay at home?--Or rub up a
penny?
III
THE ACCOUNTS
WHEN a family have made a plan of yearly expenditure, they must have
some way of testing at short intervals whether they are keeping to it
or not, and some record by which at the end of the year they can tell
whether their plan is a good one. These tests and records are furnished
by _accounts_.
Accounts are as old as the brick books of Assyria. They have been found
necessary to business transactions for ages. One of the reasons that
housekeeping does not receive its proper recognition as a business and
a profession is that it does not bear the stamp of either in the form
of accurate accounts and statistics. Perhaps these are lacking because
so many women are driven to tears or fury by accounts. It is odd
that they are, too, for they keep golf and tennis scores, and devote
themselves to whist, and are madly fascinated with jig-saw puzzles, and
all these things are a good deal like accounts.
A favourite excuse for not keeping accounts is this: "I have just
so much, and I can't spend what I haven't, so what's the use?" This
ignores two things. The first is, that spending a little more than
one's income, and thus gradually running up a debt, is an extremely
easy thing to do. The second is, that people who do not plan their
expenditures, deprive themselves of the chance to choose what their
expenditures shall be made for. If you plan to have strawberries and
cream on the first Monday in February, and bread and tea on the next
Saturday, and you like that, then there is nothing more to say--except
to hope for improvement in the next generation. If, however, in the
exuberance of appetite or hospitality you have strawberries and cream
on the first Monday in February, and are awfully surprised to find you
can only afford bread and tea on Saturday--then you need to realize
that you have deprived yourself of the freedom of choice, whether right
or wrong, and that you had better keep a few accounts. The moment a
family have one penny more than they need to buy the food which will
keep them alive, there comes to be an element of choice in the spending
of that penny. When the penny grows to an amount not easily calculated
mentally, that freedom of choice is only obtainable by accepting the
bondage of some sort of accounts. It is like the bondage of the truth,
it makes us free.
There are many methods and variations of methods of keeping accounts.
Mr. Morrison's woman with thirty shillings a week undoubtedly kept her
accounts in her head, but she kept them. Many women keep accounts with
a collection of small boxes or envelopes, each marked with the name
of the commodity for which the money within is to be used. They find
it easier to calculate with the actual money than with figures. It is
well enough if they cannot do better, but it is primitive. I suppose
that some six or seven thousand years ago, it was the latest thing in
account keeping. No woman wants to be as far behind the style as that.
Accounts kept in figures have several obvious advantages. The symbol
of five thousand dollars--$5,000--takes less room than that amount in
money, and is no temptation to a thief. Another advantage is, that
these symbols of money do not have to be paid out, but remain in a
book, and furnish a record of just what has been bought and what money
remains. They also make it clear to the owner of the money whether
she has had what she most needed or not. That is one of the reasons
accounts are so disagreeable; they often say, "You made a fool of
yourself that time."
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
The Account Book]
There are two sides in accounts, which are usually represented by
opposite pages in a book. The right-hand page is the _Credit_ side; the
left hand page is the _Debit_ side. On the right hand, or Credit, page
are written the sums of money we have or acquire. Credit is related
to the word creed. The reason for this relationship is, that a credit
page represents how much we may be believed in financially; and to what
amount people believed in us who paid us for work; and to what amount
people believed in us who gave us gifts in money. On the left-hand, or
Debit, page are written the sums of money we have paid out. The word
debit is related to due and duty and _devoir_. Therefore, on this page
go the amounts which have been _due_ to others for the things which we
have had, and which it has been our _duty_ to pay because we have had
these things. If we are honourable people, we will do our _devoir_ in
this matter.
At the end of a day, or a week, or a month, as seems best, the account
is balanced. This word _balanced_ is a metaphor. By its means the
credit and the debit pages are changed into the pans of a pair of
scales, and the account is balanced when they hang even. That is, when
the items on the debit page add up to the same amount that the items
on the credit page add up to, the account balances. But suppose the
pages do not add up to the same amount--they rarely do, and they rarely
should--What then? Then the metaphor of the balance suggests what to
do. If one scalepan is lighter than the other, put a weight into it. If
the debit side is lighter, that is, if it is less than the credit side,
add on the amount which will make it even with the credit side, and
write beside that amount, "Balance." In that case, there is a little
money yet unspent, and when the next two pages of the accounts are
begun this money yet unspent is put down at the head of the credit page
like this:
Balance on hand $2.39
If, on the contrary, the credit side is less than the debit side,
add the balance there. This means that something has been bought
which has not been paid for, and the meaning of another word related
to debit becomes intrusive--_debt_. Debt is sometimes a temporary
necessity--like oxygen pumped into lungs which can no longer pump for
themselves; sometimes it is a calamity, sometimes it is a disgrace; and
it is always dangerous.
Two pages of an account such as a girl might keep of her personal
expenses, when balanced at the end of a week, look like this:--
+--------+------------++---------++--------+---------------++---------+
| 1909 | _Cash_ || _Dr._ || 1909 | _Cash_ || _Cr._ |
+--------+------------++----+----++--------+---------------++----+----+
| July 1 | Veil || | 50 || July 1 | Bal. on hand || | 25 |
| " " | Soda || | 20 || " " | Allowance || 10 | 00 |
| " 3 | Gloves || 2 | 00 || " 3 | Birthday || 5 | 00 |
| " 4 | Church || | 25 || | || | |
| " 5 | Carfare || | 10 || | || | |
| " " | Shampoo || | 75 || | || | |
| " 6 | Postage || | 20 || | || | |
| " " | Carfare || | 10 || | || | |
| " 7 | Balance || 11 | 15 || | || | |
| | ++----+----++--------+---------------++----+----+
| | || 15 | 25 || | || 15 | 25 |
+--------+------------++----+----++--------+---------------++----+----+
The person to whom this account belongs has a balance on hand of
$11.15 to put at the head of the next credit page. She is evidently an
exemplary person for she has spent just about a fourth of her money in
a fourth of the month.
One would think that simple household accounts might be kept like this
personal cash-account. They could, except that it is desirable, almost
necessary, that household accounts should be divided into departments.
The departments will be those which have been decided upon in the plan
of expenditure, such as food, clothes, fuel, savings, etc. There are
several ways in which accounts can be kept in departments. Two or three
of the simplest are suggested here. The rule for selecting a method is,
use the one which confuses you least.
One method is, to begin in different parts of an account-book,
accounts for each department like the simple cash-account above. It is
convenient to have an indexed book, or else to paste slips on the pages
where each account begins, which will stick out beyond the leaves and
indicate by a word or an initial what department will be found there.
The book should be one made for accounts, for then it will be ruled
correctly. In each place where a department begins, write the name of
the department at the head of opposite pages. On the credit page put
down the amount allotted to this department for a week or month. This
amount is copied from the plan of expenditure, which should be written
down in the beginning or end of the book. On the debit page write the
names of the items for which the money is spent and the dates. It is
safer to balance house-accounts once a week. This prevents the use
of more than the week's allowance, or if it has been necessary to
use more, this serves as a warning to spend less than the allowance
the next week. Below is a brief, two-weeks' account for the Clothes
Department.
+-------+------------+---------++-------+-------------------+---------+
| 1909 | _Clothes_ | _Dr._ || 1909 | _Clothes_ | _Cr._ |
+-------+------------+---------++-------+-------------------+----+----+
| May 1 | Hat | 8 | 00 || May 1 | Month's allowance | 25 | 00 |
| " 3 | Buttons | | 20 || | | | |
| " 5 | Shoes | 5 | 00 || | | | |
| " 7 | Balance | 11 | 80 || | | | |
| | +----+----++ | +----+----+
| | | 25 | 00 || | | 25 | 00 |
+-------+------------+---------++-------+-------------------+---------+
| May 8 | Thread | | 30 || May 8 | Bal. on hand | 11 | 80 |
| " 12 | Silk | 2 | 00 || | | | |
| " " | Socks | 3 | 00 || | | | |
| " 14 | Balance | 6 | 50 || | | | |
| | +----+----++ | +----+----+
| | | 11 | 80 || | | 11 | 80 |
+-------+------------+---------++-------+-------------------+---------+
If it should happen that one department has to help another department,
put the amount down on the credit page as: From X--Department--$10.00;
just as the birthday present is put down in the personal account.
Here is another method, which is easy to understand, but tends to
become clumsy if the details are many. For this, one should have a book
with an unusually large page, and wider than it is high. Rule it like
this form below. It saves confusion if the vertical rulings are done
in red ink.
Key[*]
Gr. =Groceries
Cl. =Clothes
Car.=Carfare
Ch. =Church
+--------++------++------++------++------++------++------++-------+
| 1909 ||_Fuel_||_Gr._ ||_Meat_||_Cl._ ||_Car._||_Ch._ ||_Wages_|
+========++==+===++==+===++==+===++==+===++==+===++==+===++==+====+
| Aug. 1 || | || | || | || | || |20 || |35 || | |
| " 2 || 6|00 || 1|00 || |98 || | || |10 || | || | |
| " 3 || | || |60 || 1|10 || 3|00 || |20 || | || | |
| " 4 || | || |72 || | || | || |10 || | || | |
| " 5 || |30 || | || |60 || |15 || |10 || | || | |
| " 6 || | || |20 || | || 1|00 || |10 || 1|00 || | |
| " 7 || | || 1|68 || 1|90 || | || |25 || | || 5|00 |
+--------++--+---++--+---++--+---++--+---++--+---++--+---++--+----+
| Week's || | || | || | || | || | || | || | |
| Total || 6|30 || 4|20 || 4|58 || 4|15 || 1|05 || 1|35 || 5|00 |
+--------++--+---++--+---++--+---++--+---++--+---++--+---++--+----+
[* Transcriber's Note: Key added by transcriber to make table less
wide.]
At the end of the week, the amount at the foot of each of these columns
should be compared with the weekly amount for that department allowed
in the plan of expenditure. If the week's total is more than the
allowance, the amount it has exceeded should be put down in red ink at
the head of the column for the next week. This will serve as a reminder
that when that column is added up, it should be possible to add in the
red number without exceeding the week's allowance for that department.
This method has the disadvantage that it does not record the items for
which the money was spent. It is practicable, however, especially for
a housekeeper who only manages the part of the income devoted to the
food supply. Often, in this case, items can be obtained, if desired,
from the little books of the butcher or the grocer in which purchases
are charged for a week or a month.
This method does not show the credit side of the accounts. The previous
method has a credit side, but it is theoretical. That is, the amounts
on the credit pages were taken from the plan, they are not a record of
actual checks or amounts of money in which the income was received.
This defect in these methods must be remedied.
It can be done by devoting a page of the account book to the dates on
which, and the amounts in which, the actual credits come in. They will
be salary, wages, interest on investments, gifts, etc.; or the sum of
money from the business which supports the family, which at stated
times is deposited in a bank or given into the hands of the housekeeper
for the living expenses. It is necessary to see that these things
come in regularly; if they do the housekeeping plan may safely remain
unchanged. If they decrease, a way must quickly be found to lessen the
expenses; if they increase, one must decide slowly what is the wisest
thing to do with the surplus.
If this way of recording actual credits does not seem convenient, a
general account can be kept to supplement the detailed accounts. It
will be well to have a small account book especially for this purpose.
Two of its pages will look like the example below. The items on the
debit page are gathered from detailed accounts such as have been
described. Completed for a month, it should be balanced as any account
is balanced.
+-------+-----------------+---------++--------+-----------------+----------+
| | | || | | |
| 1909 | _General Acc._ | _Dr._ || 1909 | _General Acc._ | _Cr._ |
+-------+-----------------+---------++--------+-----------------+----------+
|Jan. 1 | Savings for Jan.| 5 | 00 || Jan. 1 | Salary | 125 | 00 |
|" 3 | Rent " " | 35 | 00 || " 15 | Interest on | 15 | 00 |
|" 31 | Clothes " " | 20 | 00 || | (investment) | | |
|" " | Food " " | 38 | 00 || " 25 | Extra work | 10 | 00 |
|" " | Fuel " " | 8 | 00 || | | | |
+-------+-----------------+----+----++--------+-----------------+-----+----+
Many people keep no accounts except in their checkbooks. That is,
they write down carefully therein the date and source of every check
deposited; and on the stub of each check drawn they write the purpose
for which the money is to be used. This method is much better than no
account keeping, but it is hardly detailed enough for a house account
in which there are many items too small to be paid by check. After
every three or four checks there is apt to be one marked "Incidentals,"
or "General Expenses." Into these indefinite checks often go the
trip the family meant to take, the table linen they meant to buy,
the savings they meant to put away, and at the end of a year it is
impossible to say what they had instead.
Unless purchases are always paid for in cash, charge-accounts will
have to have a place in the house account book. Some people have
passbooks kept by the baker and the butcher and the grocer, and pay
these accounts weekly. Others have charge-accounts with all their
tradespeople and pay their bills monthly. If one has a charge-account
with a firm, purchases made from them should invariably be charged.
Paying for one purchase, and charging the next makes a tangle which
neither the purchaser nor the shopkeeper can hope to prevent.
When purchases are charged, it is well to open a little account with
the firm in the house account book. Write the name of the firm at the
head of two opposite pages. On the debit side write the purchases,
their dates and prices. On the credit side, write the dates and amounts
of any payments made to the firm, because on those amounts is based
the firm's belief in their customer. Such accounts may often take the
place of the separate accounts kept for the departments of expenditure.
The butcher's account will be the meat department; the coal and wood
dealer's account will be the fuel department; etc.
When purchases are charged it is easier to buy more than one can pay
for, than it is when they are paid for in cash. This is the cause of
the objection which some people have to "charging."
It is very needful to have a fixed time every day for attending to the
housekeeping accounts. The best time is immediately after the orders
for the day have been given; or immediately after the housekeeper
returns from market. It is well to have a little scratch-pad hung up
in the kitchen, and another on a desk in the living room, and another
upstairs, on which expenditures made at irregular times can be jotted
down. The used slips can be torn off each day, and the items put down
in the book at the regular time for the accounts.
Accounts balanced once a week are a little trouble once a week; those
kept by the month are a large trouble once a month. Accounts balanced
weekly are less apt to have mistakes in them; and they are a more
frequent warning against living beyond one's means.
To a young housekeeper wishing to look into the matter of account
keeping, I would recommend an interesting little book by Professor
Charles Waldo Haskins, called "How to Keep Household Accounts." It is
agreeable as well as useful. I wish, also, to say, in this connection,
that the methods of keeping household accounts suggested in this book
are neither professional nor authoritative; they are merely simple ways
in which accounts may be correctly kept.
Not long ago, I made bold to ask an interesting and successful business
man if he kept detailed accounts. He took out of an inside pocket a
worn, narrow-paged diary. In it, under each date, was recorded every
cent he spent--even to cigars and organ grinders. He showed it as if he
did not quite like to, and yet as if he were determined to stand up for
it--somewhat as a man acknowledges an unpopular conviction. He said,
"It seems awfully close--no, I mean it seems awfully careful, but I
want to _know_."
You may guess what it was he wanted to know.
IV
THE SCHEDULE
IN MAKING and using a housework schedule the housekeeper has a narrow
path to tread, between chaos on the one hand and slavery on the other.
If the idea of a housework schedule appeals to her, it would be wise
for her to make as slight a schedule and be as little bound by it, as
possible. If, on the contrary, she feels sympathy with the woman who
thought it would be more interesting to do the washing on a different
day each week, she should by all means have a rather detailed schedule
and faithfully keep to it.
A work schedule saves the time and strain which, without it, would be
expended each day in deciding what was to be done; it prevents those
who do the work or help with it from waiting round to be told what to
do; and it keeps one day from being too hard and the next too easy.
But we must not have a schedule which makes the accomplishment of a
certain amount of housework in a given time seem a more important duty
than the little pleasant acts which make the comfort and pleasure of a
home. If the man of the house wants his wife or daughter to walk to the
car with him after breakfast, she should be able to go without feeling
anxious or preoccupied. The coming of an unexpected guest should not be
thought a torment and a calamity because it disorders a schedule. When
a small head is thrust under one's elbow and a small voice says, "'Want
to be loved now," confusion to anything which inclines us to say, "Run
away, you bother me."
A household run on a strict schedule becomes an institution, not a
home; on the other hand, a household in which the work is done at any
time or no time is neither clean, restful nor knit together with the
bonds of mutual service and mutual compliance.
Housework is some of it daily, and some of it periodical. Bedmaking is
daily; sweeping is periodical. There is also work which may be done
by the workers in the house, or by others coming from without. In one
family the laundry work, bread making, window cleaning, floor polishing
and the like will be done by those in the house; in another, these
things will be done out of the house, or by people who come in to do
them.
(_a_) DAILY WORK
The following is a list of daily work in an average house. Besides
these things some piece of periodical work is done each day.
Fire made or made up.
Shades rolled up; windows opened a few minutes; suggestions
of yesterday removed.
(In summer, veranda arranged.)
Breakfast prepared, served and cleared away.
Pantry and kitchen put in order.
Menu made and orders given.
Downstairs rooms put in order.
Bedrooms put in order.
Bathroom put in order.
Accounts.
Preparations for second and third meals.
Second meal served and cleared away.
Rest.
Third meal prepared, served and cleared away.
Outside affairs usually decide the time at which these activities are
performed. Meal hours in most cases depend on the work hours of some of
the family, and on the meal hours depend the times when other things
are done. Who shall do the work depends on the number of workers, the
occupations which they have beside housework, and the periodical work
of the day.
If there is one woman in the house, she must go through this list of
things, doing each slightly or elaborately, as she is able and as they
require. On the days when there is washing or sweeping or baking to
do she will have to abbreviate other things. Upstairs and down she
will merely put things in their places and remove visible dust; she
will leave the table set until after luncheon, on washdays until after
dinner; she will have planned the meals for this day the day before,
and she will hurry all the work a little.
In a house where there is a mistress and a maid, the mistress will pick
out from the daily work the things she wishes to do. She will perhaps
set the table, put the house in order, plan the meals, go to market and
make her accounts before luncheon. On washing and ironing days, if no
extra person comes in to help, she will add to this the chamber-work
and perhaps the washing of the breakfast dishes. Probably on those
mornings she will not go to market.
When there are two maids in the house, the second will do the work
suggested in the former case for the mistress on a washday, with the
exception of the menu and the accounts, and with the addition of
waiting on the table, washing the dishes, and some preparations for
the meals which are not actual cooking.
When there is a third maid the upstairs part of the house will be
her domain, and she will probably do some personal services for the
mistress. In a large family she will help to wait on the table, and to
wash the dinner dishes. After breakfast she will be busy with upstairs
work and some sweeping, and after luncheon she will rest and dress and
then answer the doorbell and the telephone during the time that the
waitress is resting and dressing.
A fourth maid is usually a laundress, a fifth would do the rougher and
simpler part of the kitchen work, and a sixth--but there, a housekeeper
with five or six maids will not need suggestions from this book.
In households where there are several servants, their meals are added
to the list of daily work. These come before those served to the family
with sometimes the exception of dinner. When this exception is made,
"tea" keeps the time between luncheon and dinner from being too long.
It has always seemed to me that separate meals should be arranged for
as soon as a family decide to keep a servant whose regular duty it is
to wait on the table. A particularly tangible shadow lies upon a meal
which is served by some one who after a long morning's work may be
faint and hungry for the food she brings to you.
(_b_) PERIODICAL WORK
The following is a list of periodical work for an average house.
Washing.
Ironing.
Sorting and mending linen and clothes.
Sweeping and dusting.
Bread baking.
Thorough cleaning of the kitchen.
Cleaning garbage can, and surroundings.
Cleaning refrigerator and food receptacles.
Arrangements for days out.
Preparations for Saturday and Sunday.
* * * * *
Polishing furniture and floors.
Cleaning silver.
Cleaning of linen closet and others.
Care of cellar.
When can these things be done, and who is to do them?
We will consider the laundry work first. This should be the periodical
work for two days of the week; if it runs over it crowds other things,
and indicates that the wash is larger than we may have it with the
present number and quality of workers. On the days devoted to laundry
work, the daily work should be as brief and the meals as simple as
possible. Of course, when there is a woman in the house, or who comes
into the house especially to do washing and ironing, the usual schedule
can be adhered to.
The day on which the washing is done is a matter of choice. It is
traditional to wash on Monday, but some people say that Tuesday is
better. If a woman comes in to do the washing it must be done when she
can come. The advocates of washing on Monday say that as it is the
longest and heaviest weekly job, it is best got out of the way as early
in the week as possible; that the work of the week seems to wait round
until the laundry work is finished; they say, too, that it is easier to
wash on Monday because other people are washing.
The advocates of Tuesday say that as more of the family are at home
on Sunday and as the regular clearing up is not done, the house needs
especial attention on Monday; also, that they do not like putting
clothes to soak the last thing Sunday night.
If circumstances leave one free to choose the day, it is as well to try
each long enough to get used to it, and then to decide on the one which
proves easiest for every one concerned.
In the household with one maid, the mistress should help on the
days the laundry is done with the daily work and in some cases with
the laundry itself. In the two-maid household, the cook washes, the
waitress assists, and the mistress frequently does some of the daily
work. In the three-maid household it is possible for each to do her
usual part of the daily work and give some assistance with the laundry.
The sorting and mending of the clean clothes is the work of the
mistress or of an upstairs maid. The sorting should be done when the
wash is finished. The mending, if heavy, often has to wait for odd
times.
The next heaviest periodical work to the washing is the weekly
cleaning. In a household with two maids or less, the cleaning should
not be the periodical work on more than two days, one for upstairs, one
for down. The living room and the dining room will probably have to be
thoroughly cleaned each week, but the other rooms can usually be done
in alternate weeks with the help of the daily setting in order and the
careful use of a sweeper two or three times in the interval. It is more
immaculate and more agreeable to have all the rooms thoroughly cleaned
each week, but in a fairly large house with two women to do the work
this ideal may become a grievous burden.
In houses in which there is an ample number of servants, the cleaning
of the downstairs rooms, daily and periodical, is often done before
breakfast. It is the ideal way of accomplishing this disturbing and
uncomfortable job, but it cannot be so done unless there are enough
workers in the house to divide the work into distinct departments.
Baking, cleaning the refrigerator and food receptacles, cleaning the
kitchen and looking after the garbage can is the work of the cook. If
there is another maid in the house, the cook has the four days of the
week not used for the laundry work when she may do these things. If
she is the maid-of-all-work, she will have the two days left from the
laundry and sweeping in which to do them and many others.
Bread baking is usually done twice or three times a week. Cake baking,
nowadays, is an irregular performance. As making bread is not a day's
work, it can be combined with other pieces of work, preferably with
those which are done in the kitchen. It combines nicely with cleaning
the refrigerator and food receptacles because one of these is for bread
and should be perfectly fresh for the new batch. A careful housewife
sometimes makes the cleaning of the refrigerator her own work, but even
so, she will appoint a time for doing it. A good refrigerator need
be cleaned only once or twice a week, a poor one may have to be done
oftener.
A garbage can should be cleaned as often as it is emptied, and should
with its surroundings be watched all the time, lest the cover is left
off or any scraps or splashes are left outside to draw flies and make
disagreeable odours.
A kitchen in which much work is done needs a thorough weekly cleaning.
People are apt to do this on Saturday, but there will be many
households in which it will be unwise to do so. If the master of the
house has a half holiday on Saturday, and the mistress of the house
does the housework, the work of Saturday morning must be only the daily
work and such preparations as will leave Saturday afternoon and Sunday
as free from work as possible. Some extra cooking, marketing and menu
making, some adornment of the house and laying out of fresh table linen
will be desirable and necessary; but kitchen cleaning, the changing of
bed linen, or the making up of weekly accounts, should be appointed for
some other day in the week.
If the housewife has servants to help her, she can have more work done
on Saturday, but even then, she will guard against having things done
which make the house seem unrestful, or which occupy her.
Arrangements for "days out" are merely adjustments by which one
person's work is done by others. If there is one maid, the mistress
takes her place; if two, one does the necessary work of both, the
mistress helping a little. For the day a maid goes out no periodical
work belonging to her department must be appointed. "Sundays out," like
the days, are merely an adjustment of duties to allow for fewer workers.
Some of the periodical work is much more occasional than that already
mentioned. This must be fitted in, sometimes by leaving more frequent
work undone for one day, but usually by appointing it for a day when
there happens to be a little less to do than usual. The silver, for
instance, usually need not be done more than once a fortnight or once a
month, and can be fitted into a morning when there is no sweeping, or
into a rainy Monday. Other infrequent work can be managed in the same
way.
In simple households a detailed written schedule is not necessary
perhaps nor desirable, unless it be for periodical work and the "days
out." For these a schedule like the one herewith might be made. This
one is for two maids and includes some infrequent work.
+--------+--------+--------+----------+--------+----------+---------+--------+
| | _Mond._| _Tues._| _Wed._ |_Thurs._| _Fri._ | _Sat._ | _Sun._ |
|--------+--------+--------+----------+--------+----------+---------+--------|
|COOK | Washing| Ironing| Bake | Day | Put | Bake | Sunday |
| | | | Clean | out | cellar | Clean | out |
| | | |refrig., | | in | kitchen | |
| | | |etc. Take | | order | | |
| | | |waitress's| | | | |
| | | | work | | | | |
|--------+--------+--------+----------+--------+----------+---------+--------|
|WAITRESS| Washing| Ironing| Day out | Sweep | Sweep | Clean | Take |
| | | | |upstairs|downstairs| silver | cook's |
| | | | | | | | work |
|--------+--------+--------+----------+--------+----------+---------+--------|
|MISTRESS| Help | Help |Sort and | Help | Help | Get out | Help |
| | a | a |mend wash | with | a | clean | with |
| | little | little |Help with | work | little | linen | work |
| | | | work | | | and set | |
| | | | | | | closet | |
| | | | | | | in order| |
+--------+--------+--------+----------+--------+----------+---------+--------+
[*Transcriber's Note: Days of the week were abbreviated by the
transcriber to make the table more narrow.]
(_c_) SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES
One or two general remarks about schedules are necessary before the
subject can be closed.
As far as possible heavy, dirty work should be done in the morning, the
workers are more able to do it then, and besides, the cook does not
wish to do such things when getting the dinner, nor the waitress when
she should be dressed for the afternoon, nor the mistress at the social
time of the day.
In making a work schedule, a savings fund is as necessary as in making
a plan of expenditure. If every one in the house is doing as much as is
possible, there is no allowance for accident, or illness, or unexpected
demands. A little strength which is not nerves should be left in you
and in your handmaidens at the end of the day. Housework extends over
an exceedingly long day. At present, the only way to remedy this seems
to be to arrange that each worker get a little rest some time in the
day. I have put this as a necessary item in the table of daily work.
If no savings fund of strength is possible, more workers are needed, or
better workers; or, if this is impossible, the style of living should
be modified until it is appropriate to the force of workers.
The schedule is not the important thing, but the work; and there are
things more important even than the work. For instance, a reasonable
degree of liberty for the whole household.
The family, unless they take part in the work, should not be conscious
of the work schedule. It is a framework to be carefully draped; a new
kind of family skeleton to be kept in the closet as carefully as the
old kind. It is necessary because it makes easy, natural regularity
possible, and without it, as we have said, there is neither character,
nor peace, nor mutual service in a home.
The housework must be done--well and regularly done--and to accomplish
this, days must be alike, and weeks must be alike, and months and
years alike. But they must be as the leaves on a tree are--alike to
the casual glance, yet really somewhat different because capable of
infinite adaptability.
V
POSSESSIONS
THE time and strength necessary for housework, and the comfort and
happiness resulting from the work depend much upon something which
housekeepers have to a great extent the power to control. I mean the
quantity and kind of things they have in their houses.
Much time and money and weary labour would be saved, much comfort and
loveliness would be gained if we could persuade ourselves to follow
William Morris's rule:
"Have nothing in your rooms which you do not think to be beautiful and
know to be useful."
Were this rule suddenly put in practice, what a bundling out of
rubbish would ensue. A Bonfire of Vanities would rise in no time,
built of little tables and pedestals, cushions and bows, curtains,
vases, pictures that no future generations would call us vandals for
destroying, fringes and ruffles, souvenirs of travel, broken and
mended objects from the top shelves of closets, bronze and china
statuettes, and that whole miserable race of blotters which do not
blot, book-racks which faint under the weight of books, pen-wipers
which would be insulted if they were inked, collapsible waste-baskets
always in a state of collapse, holders that hold nothing, cases that
fit nothing, impervious pin cushions!
May the smoke of them ascend!
One would think that this rule of use and beauty were austere enough,
yet many people, before they acquire even a useful or a beautiful
object, must consider whether there is room for it in their home,
whether the members of the household have time and strength to take
care of it, and whether it is appropriate to their possessions and to
their way of living.
The amount of space we have about us seriously effects our health
of body and mind. The more furniture there is in a room, the less
air space there is. The sense of oppression one feels in a room
crowded with furniture is not imagination, there is literally much
less air to breathe. It is also not merely an idea that a house full
of ornaments and pictures is not restful to live in. One knows what
matchless weariness results from hours spent in a museum; it is caused
by continually readjusting one's eyes, and thoughts, and emotions to
an endless succession of things. A room crowded with ornaments and
pictures is a miniature museum. With familiarity one may cease to see
the individual objects the room contains, but this is indifference, not
peace.
Those who have not done housework with their own brains and bodies
cannot realize how many thousands of times every object in a house has
to be touched and moved merely for the sake of cleanliness and order.
It seems a small matter whether there are six pictures in a room or
eight, whether flower vases are kept in the china closet or on the tops
of book shelves and tables, whether there are five little fal-lals
on a mantelshelf or twenty-five; but I hardly think it is a small
matter whether a woman spend a half-hour with her children, or out of
doors, or reading a book, or spends it in dusting tormenting trifles.
These considerations are equally important when the work is done by
maids; there are always enough useful things to do in a house to fill
reasonable work hours.
One must ask, then, even when a useful or beautiful object is in
question, Have I room for it? and, Is it worth the time and strength
needed to care for it? And then one more question: Is this thing I
desire suitable? That is, will it make the rest of the furniture which
cannot now be renewed look shabby? Shall I feel that it is too good for
the sun to shine upon, or the family to use? Will it set up a standard
which I cannot keep up to without feverish effort?
In order to select or to weed out possessions in a reasonable way,
attachments have to be kept in check; one must keep in mind that the
family are more worthy of regard than the family chairs, and one must
have such respect for oneself as a spiritual and intellectual creature
that one will not fall in love with a silver-service or a set of
ancient plates. I can think of few things more humiliating than the
fact that families can be divided by old furniture; that sisters can
be estranged by silver sugar-tongs; that lives can be spoiled, hearts
broken and fortunes spent in the service of possessions which should
exist only for the temporary comfort and happiness of their owners.
All this does not mean that our homes should be bare as hospitals, and
ugly as barracks, and that, if the furniture is shabby, we ought not
to have the one beautiful picture, or the good piano, or the hoard of
books, which may be the treasure of the family. Nor does it mean that
we ought not to love our household goods.
We want our homes as complete in comforts and appliances as we can
reasonably afford. We want them lovely to look at. And we shall be
all the better if we have an affection for every stick they contain.
Scrooge hugged his own bed-curtains, because the sight of them assured
him that he was at home. For the same reason we love the things we
live with, and the place where we live. We like to come back after an
absence and find the same things in the same places, and get an extra
welcome from every one of them.
This is incidentally an argument against frequently changing the
arrangement of the furniture, as some housewives think it economical
and diverting to do. Such changes destroy that settled, established
look which is homelike, and very comfortable to live with. Do you know
about the man who was not afraid of burglars when he got up at night,
but was awfully afraid of bureaus and rocking-chairs which his wife
found a new place for every week?
We naturally become attached to things which we like, and which we have
taken thought to get, and which we have looked after year after year.
Heirlooms are the result of such care and affection and companionship
continuing year after year, generation after generation until the
objects on which this care has been expended seem to become a part of
ourselves and our lives, until they seem to have absorbed some of the
personality and affection of those who no longer dwell with them, nor
with us.
But when possessions begin to seem something more than tables and
tea-cups and silver spoons, have a care--they're not.
VI
CARE OF FITTINGS AND FURNITURE
EVERY house contains a great variety of objects and substances. If
these are to be kept clean and in good condition, one must know what
they are and what to do for them.
_The Ceiling._--In the first place each room has a ceiling. Ceilings
are usually plain and light coloured, because they are not easy to look
at and because they are reflectors. They are not ornamented on account
of our necks; they are not made dark coloured on account of the light
bills.
Ceilings for the most part need little care. When the room is cleaned,
they should be wiped, either with a long-handled mop with a wool
head--dry--or with a broom in a bag. The former is harder to get but
is better, because the combined length of the ordinary broom and the
ordinary woman is not usually enough to reach the ceiling effectually
and without strain. Besides, many brooms are too heavy to use above
one's head. Such wiping nicely done is all the regular care a ceiling
needs, whether it is whitewashed or frescoed.
_The Walls._--Walls are panelled, or painted, or calcimined, or covered
with fabric or paper. Wood, paint and calcimine are considered cleaner
than other coverings, but all can be kept up to an ordinary standard of
cleanliness.
Panelling should be carefully wiped with the wool-headed mop used for
the ceiling, or with a cloth where it is within reach. If the wood is
dark and polished, it may now and again be rubbed with a little good
furniture polish; if it is light or unpolished it is better to content
oneself with wiping off the dust.
Fabric-covered walls should be cleaned once or twice a year with a
vacuum cleaner. If this is not possible, they may be as often brushed.
This must not be done violently, but carefully, and preferably with a
hair broom--a white hair broom such as one uses for clothes, if the
wall covering is especially handsome or delicate in colour.
Painted walls may be wiped with a dry or dampened mop, or they may be
washed with soap and water, or even with disinfectant, should this
happen to be desirable.
Calcimined walls may be wiped only with a soft mop, or very gently
with a broom in a bag. Mop or broom bag must often be shaken out of
the window, otherwise the walls will be smirched or clouded. Very
little in the way of restoration or cleaning should be attempted with
calcimine, for it almost invariably makes a bad matter worse. Spots
such as are made by hands or heads can sometimes be removed by rubbing
them with a piece of dry bread, or with some corn meal. It is safe to
experiment with any _dry_ remedy; but a wet remedy will always fail.
Even calcimine itself, put over a spot or a scar, will leave a mark.
Papered walls may be wiped with a dry mop, or a broom in a bag. They
are not as easily smirched as calcimine, but one must frequently shake
out of doors, or else change any brush or cloth used for wiping walls.
If you need a reason for wiping walls and ceilings, look at the mop or
the cover of the broom with which you have done the work. Dirt is the
enemy of health and loveliness.
_Woodwork._--When woodwork is cleaned, all cracks, ornaments and
irregularities should first be gone over with a small, soft brush. A
flat brush such as is used for varnishing is good.
If the woodwork is not polished, it should next be carefully--that
is, every inch of it--wiped and rubbed with a soft, dry cloth, or if
the room is exceedingly dusty, with a cloth very slightly dampened.
Any sort of oil, or polish, or even water is apt to darken or spot
unpolished wood. In the case of baseboards and window ledges, however,
a little dressing of some kind should occasionally be rubbed into them,
for they have to be defended from dampness in the one case, and hard
usage in the second. A little of the polish used for floors will do
very well for this purpose.
If woodwork is polished, the dust should be wiped off after the
cracks have been cleaned with the little brush. It should then be
rubbed briskly with a flannel or soft cotton cloth dampened with good
furniture polish. Kerosene, which is usually at hand, is inexpensive
and excellent for this and other purposes of the kind. But use this or
polish sparingly.
Painted woodwork should ordinarily be dusted with a little brush and
then wiped just as if it were hard wood. Once in a while, it should
be wiped with slightly warm suds made with mild soap. It should not
be soaped nor made very wet, and should be wiped dry as soon as it is
washed. Spots which will not yield to this cleaning can be removed with
alcohol or kerosene.
_Floors._--Some people will tell you that uncarpeted floors are a great
deal of trouble, and some will say that they are very little. Perhaps
part of the trouble which they seem to give is due to the fact that
people keep their floors cleaner than their carpets. Dust _shows_, as
we say, on a bare floor; it lies under furniture and blows about in
fluffs. If the floor is carpeted, that very same dust, also the dust of
other days when no sweeping is done, sinks into the carpet and assists
in making colds and throat disorders and a stuffy smell. If we really
minded dust, we would mind it just as much buried in the carpet as
rolling round in fluffs. But we don't mind dust, we mind being thought
dusty. If we have the same standard of cleanliness for the carpet as
for the floor, the floor is the easier to care for.
Uncarpeted floors are usually finished with oil, shellac, stain, wax or
some other smooth, preservative substance. Floors thus finished require
three kinds of care; refinishing, polishing and dusting.
_Dusting._--Dusting should be done, if possible, every day. It does not
require much time or strength. With a good mop or a broom in a bag,
floors can be as quickly and lightly dusted as polished desks or tables.
_Polishing._--The frequency with which floors require polishing
depends on the finish, the amount of wear, and the standard of
appearance required. Some people polish them once a week, some once a
fortnight, some once a month; others have their floors refinished twice
a year and do nothing to them in the intervals except dust them.
Waxed floors are polished differently from those finished with oil or
shellac.
To polish a waxed floor, first remove all dust with a hair broom, a
wool mop, or a broom in a bag. Then rub carefully and energetically
every inch of the floor with a heavy polisher until the polish is
restored. The best polishers are costly, but others, less expensive,
are made of strips of felt or chamois. They can also be home-made from
a block of heavy wood with a hole bored diagonally in the top large
enough to hold an old broom handle or a mop-stick. The bottom of the
block must have several thicknesses of heavy material tacked over it.
Old flannel, old bath towels, and old carpet are good for this purpose.
Floors not finished with wax are polished with oil or some patent
polish. Many patent mixtures for this purpose are exceedingly good.
Besides these, two parts linseed oil to one part kerosene is a good
polish; also one-half turpentine to one-half crude oil. Kerosene
used by itself both cleans and polishes floors, but its odour is an
objection to its use.
As in the cases of the waxed floor, all dust must be removed before the
polishing begins. When this is accomplished, rub the floor with a soft
thick cloth dampened with polish. There should always be much rubbing
and little oil. A quart of floor polish should last months. If by
mistake too much oil is applied, rub the floor again with a dry cloth.
When finished, it should feel smooth to the hand, not oily.
If oily cloths are kept from one time to another, they should not be
shut up closely in a box or closet for they are liable to spontaneous
combustion.
_Refinishing._--Floors are refinished by receiving a new coat of
finish. Before this is put on, the floors should be thoroughly cleaned.
This cleaning is well done with sandpaper and turpentine. Every board
must be rubbed in the direction of the grain until it is entirely
smooth and clean. After this the floor should be wiped with a dry
cloth, and the finish applied and polished.
When it is necessary or desirable to wash a hardwood floor, it should
be done just before refinishing and with tepid water, soap that would
not hurt hands nor lace and a cloth well wrung out before it is
applied to the floor. Water is injurious to polished floors of any
kind, and to waxed floors especially.
If a floor receives hard wear in one or two places, or if something
hurtful is spilled upon it, it may be necessary to refinish these
places when the remainder of the floor does not need it. In such cases
a few square feet can be done just as a whole floor is done. The final
polishing will keep the place from looking like a patch.
_Rugs and Carpets._--Carpets tacked down close to the walls are not
as clean as loose floor covering, and they are the chief cause of the
fearful misery called house cleaning. Every other act necessary to
the cleanliness of a house can be done without turning it upside down
and driving the family to the club or the tavern except--taking up
carpets. Rugs can be gathered up and taken to the lawn or the roof to
be cleaned. The walls and floor of a room can be wiped within an hour.
Windows can be washed and furniture and brasses polished with people
sitting undisturbed in the room where it is being done.
Before the possibility of unobtrusive cleaning had dawned on me, I
was once making a visit in a large city house. My surprise was almost
painful when I saw a man cleaning the windows in the drawing room only
an hour before an afternoon reception. It did not mean that they had
been forgotten, or that the house was carelessly run--far from it--it
was merely the day for window cleaning and the man whose business
it was to do it went from room to room and cleaned them, making no
disturbance and leaving no trace.
I make my protest against carpets for the reason that it is impossible
to clean them in an unobtrusive way, and because they are the inspiring
evil genius of cleaning done with _emphasis_--done, not for the sake of
health and happiness, but for the sake of appearing to be a particular
housekeeper.
Nonetheless, if we have carpets they must be cared for. Before the
sweeping is begun, something should be scattered over the carpet to
keep the dust down. Some of the things used for this purpose are damp
tea leaves, sawdust, bran, corn meal, and shreds of newspaper. There
are also patent substances for the purpose. One must be careful that
these things mentioned are _damp_, not wet. Tea leaves should be wrung
out hard before they are scattered, and never used on any delicately
coloured carpet. Newspaper also is not safe for very delicate colours.
Any of these substances may be used in sweeping a tiled or painted
floor; and any for an unpainted wooden floor except tea leaves.
When preparing to sweep, make the room as light as possible. Sweep the
cracks along the walls and the edges of the carpet first, then sweep
as much of the room as possible in the same direction, that direction
being with the nap of the carpet, not against it. Sweep with short,
light strokes--it is sweeping, not digging. When the dust is gathered
into as small a pile as possible, take it up in a dustpan.
After sweeping it is good to wipe the carpet with a cloth wrung out
of warm, soapy water in which is a little ammonia. Turpentine is even
better than ammonia for carpets, but not for hands. Do not wet the
carpet, wipe it lightly and quickly, rinsing the cloth often, but
wringing it out hard.
One can to some extent combine this wiping process with sweeping by
dipping one's broom now and then in water in which there is a little
salt, ammonia or turpentine. Shake the broom lightly before applying it
to the carpet, or the first stroke will leave a wet spot. Salt, ammonia
and turpentine brighten the colours of a carpet, and the latter two are
objectionable to moths. It is better not to dampen carpets in any way
on rainy or humid days.
Rugs, when they cannot be carried out of the room, may be swept
according to the directions for carpets and then rolled up, or folded
round some piece of furniture difficult to move, until the floor has
been cared for. The pleasantest and best way to clean rugs, however, is
to take them out of doors and beat them on the grass or on a clothes
line. Beat them with a furniture beater, or light cane, or stick, first
on one side then on the other, then lay flat and brush the surface with
a broom. Beating is better than shaking, both for the rug and for the
shaker. When they are shaken, however, it is advisable to hold them by
the side instead of the end; they are then less likely to tear or ravel.
Matting should be swept with especial care for cracks and edges, and
crosswise of the breadths as far as possible. It should be wiped
occasionally with salt and water, which cleans it and keeps it from
becoming brittle. Many people prefer to use a hair broom for sweeping
matting.
_Shades and Curtains._--All the cleaning that shades need can be given
them by drawing them down to their full length and dusting them first
on one side then on the other with a short-handled mop, or a duster
if you can reach the roller with it. The side next the window is the
more dusty as it is the outside of the roll. When the shades have
been dusted they should be rolled to the top of the window until the
cleaning of the room is finished.
If they do not roll up tightly and at once, take the shade from the
socket, roll it up evenly, then hold the flat piece of metal which
projects from one end of the roller between your thumb and fingers and
turn the roller round and round with the other hand until it is very
hard to turn. See that the little ratchet has fitted into the notch
for it in the piece you are holding, to prevent it from flying back
when you let go. Then the shade is ready to be replaced in the sockets.
Shades which fly up unexpectedly are wound up too tight.
Curtains should be shaken and brushed, with a whisk if they are of
heavy material, with a softer brush if they are delicate. They should
then be put in bags made for the purpose, or folded over the rod and
covered with a dusting sheet until the room is clean.
_Furniture._--Upholstered furniture should if possible be put out on
a veranda where it can be aired and brushed. If this is not possible
it should be beaten or brushed when we are preparing the room for
cleaning. All creases and tufting should be carefully explored with
a whisk and the furniture afterward covered with a cloth until the
other cleaning is finished. Furniture upholstered in leather should
be wiped, not brushed, and occasionally rubbed with vinegar, and sweet
oil--proportions, one tablespoonful vinegar to three of oil. In time
this slightly darkens the colour of the leather, but it keeps it from
cracking.
On regular cleaning days polished furniture should have its carvings
and cracks brushed out with the paint brush used for the woodwork of
the room, and should then be rubbed with a very soft cloth. About once
a month--oftener if the wear is hard, less often if it is easy--it
should be rubbed with a good polish. The old furniture in France has
usually been rubbed for generations with sweet oil and vinegar, in the
proportions given above for leather furniture; probably few things are
better. Two of the polishes suggested for floors, are equally good for
furniture:
½ turpentine to ½ crude oil.
1 part kerosene to 2 parts linseed oil.
Also, equal parts turpentine, linseed oil and vinegar.
I believe that the best care an amateur can give to a very highly
polished piece of furniture like a piano, is to wash it, when it
becomes clouded, with luke-warm soapsuds. The soap should be mild,
good soap. Wash a bit of the furniture at a time and dry it carefully,
using very soft cloths; when it has all been dried, polish it with
chamois and as much energy as you can conscientiously spare.
If painted furniture looks dingy, rub it with a little kerosene.
Kerosene will usually remove spots from painted furniture--finger-marks
from white enamelled beds, for instance.
_Windows._--The woodwork of windows should be brushed and wiped free
from dust before the washing of the glass begins. It is better not to
use soap for washing windows or glass of any kind; it sometimes clouds
it, sometimes gives it a blue tinge. Put ammonia or borax in the water
used, or else rub the glass with whiting, or a scouring soap which is
not gritty. If one of these, or whiting, is used, it should be allowed
to dry and should then be rubbed off with a dry cloth or a newspaper
until the glass shines. Newspaper is as good as anything you can get
for polishing windows. There is nothing especial to say about cleaning
windows with water except wash the panes clean and dry them dry, one at
a time, beginning with those nearest the top of the sash. Do not try to
wash all the windows in a house with a pint of water and a wristband,
but the opposite extreme is as bad--worse for your dwelling. Any
method of cleaning windows by dashing quantities of water on the panes,
breaks the putty, loosens the glass, spoils the paint on the woodwork
and soaks the wood itself with water.
Mirrors should not be wet. Fly-specks and finger-marks can be removed
with a damp cloth or alcohol, and the mirror polished with whiting and
chamois.
Pictures, also, should not be wet. The frames and backs may be brushed
and wiped, and the glass cleaned with a damp cloth or with a little
alcohol.
_Brass._--Brasses, such as andirons, lamps, jardinières, candlesticks,
sconces and the like must be divided into two classes for cleaning.
Those things which are lacquered must only be washed and then polished
with flannel or chamois. Any sort of cleaning other than this will
soon remove the lacquer entirely. Unlacquered brass may be polished as
energetically and severely as any substance in the house.
Wood ashes are a good brass polish, especially pine ashes.
The bath-brick with which people clean knives will also clean brass.
An old coloured woman, who lived with me once, polished the andirons
with salt and vinegar.
These things are not as quick or as easy to use as many patent brass
cleaners which one can buy nowadays. It is just as well, however, to
know what one could do if separated from modern conveniences.
_Tiles._--Glazed tiles may be wiped with a cloth wrung out of warm
soapsuds, but water should not be put directly upon them. It tends to
soften the cement in which they are laid. Unglazed tiles are restored
to colour and cleanliness by a rubbing with linseed oil.
_Lamps._--Lamps used every night need care every day. They should be
kept full of oil for two reasons. One is, that if we then happen to use
them for an unusually long time they will not burn out; the other, is,
that if a lamp is full of oil no space is left for vapours rising from
the oil, which otherwise may become compressed in the bowl and ignite
when a match is applied to the wick. If there is a little screw-topped
opening in the lamp where it can be filled without unscrewing the
burner, use that opening for filling it. The burner should not be
unscrewed unless it must be. Great care should be taken not to fill
lamps too full; the level of the oil should be just below the lower
side of the little opening, otherwise the oil will ooze out on the lamp
and catch dust and give off a disagreeable odour.
It is better to _rub_ off the hard burned crust of a wick than to cut
it off. This leaves the wick more even and wastes it less. When it
has been rubbed smooth and soft, see that it turns up and down easily
and, if a round wick, that it is even. A flat wick should be slightly
rounded, the middle being the highest point, like this diacritic ˘,
not this ̑ one. To be perfectly sure, light the lamp for a moment,
put on the chimney, and if the flame is not the right shape alter the
wick. When this is finished, wipe the burner inside and out, above and
below, as carefully as possible. An old water-colour brush is good for
cleaning intricate burners.
The time when a lamp needs a new wick is a good time to boil the
burner. Remove the old wick and put the burner into some receptacle not
used for food, with water and washing-soda: one teaspoonful soda to one
quart water. Then boil it well. This is a good thing to do whenever a
lamp smells or gives a poor light. If a new wick and a boiled burner
do not help the matter, either the oil is poor or a new burner is
necessary.
If a new lampwick is a little too wide for a burner, draw out two or
three strands at one side. A wick should fill the opening for it,
however, quite closely, especially if it has not yet been wet.
One should have a special place for cleaning lamps, and for keeping
the oil and everything else used in their care. Nothing used for lamp
cleaning or for applying kerosene should be used for any other purpose.
Newspaper is good for cleaning lamps because when the work is finished
it can be burned. It can be used to protect the table on which the
cleaning is done, wicks can be rubbed and lamps wiped with it, and
nothing cleans chimneys so well. Chimneys polished with newspapers
rarely have to be washed. Washing is not good for them, it clouds them
and makes them break more easily.
The catches which hold the chimney must not press very tightly, for
this breaks the expanding glass; they must, though, be tight enough to
keep the chimney from falling if the lamp is moved.
When a lamp is put in its place ready for lighting, the wick should be
just visible above the socket in which it moves. It should be lighted
while still at this level, then turned higher when the chimney has had
time to heat. When the light is to be put out, turn the wick down until
it disappears into the socket. This keeps the wick from smoking and
thereby smelling. Turning a wick down, however, does not always put
out the flame; be sure that it is out before leaving the lamp for the
night.
_Plants._--It seems not unreasonable to say that plants should not
occupy the most agreeable windows of the living room, nor prevent the
proper airing of the house in winter. This does not happen as often as
it used to, but it does occasionally even now. In very few houses is
there room for more than three or four plants, if it is remembered that
the family have the first right to the light, and air, and window space.
There is also the consideration that few plants can receive better care
than many. House plants ought to be immaculate. They should be in neat
pots standing in saucers or jardinières, and should have all withered
or unsightly leaves removed and the other leaves kept free from dust.
If this is not done, they become that greatest eyesore, a degenerated
ornament.
They should be put in a bathtub or sink when the rooms are cleaned, and
sprayed and sponged and soaked. This helps to offset their unnatural
life in warm, dry rooms. Plants thrive on attention. They love to be
stirred, and watered, and sponged, and petted, and made much of. If we
have only a few, we can treat them in this way, to their pleasure and
our own.
_The Process._--We have spoken of the substances which more usually
require the care of the housekeeper outside the kitchen and pantry,
and of ways in which they can be cared for. It will be well now to
describe the order in which cleaning is done, and to say a word about
the appliances used.
The first thing when cleaning is to be done is to gather the appliances
needed for the work. If possible one should have a broom closet in
which all the objects used in cleaning can be kept, then no time is
wasted in hunting them up. Two rows of hooks, one high and one low, in
some secluded spot will do instead of a closet.
I do not say that one cannot clean a room with merely a broom and a
duster. One can sweep everything with the broom, dust everything with
the duster, and take the dust up on a newspaper. Good appliances,
however, make work more thorough, more easy, and more interesting.
Those which I suggest here are merely such as I know to be useful. As
a woman learns her work and becomes more and more interested in it she
will choose and invent appliances for herself.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
The Broom Closet]
The following are the things I like to have to clean with:
A short step-ladder, not heavy.
A wool mop head with two handles, one long, one short.
A hair broom.
A mop handle with two heavy floor cloths.
A broom of medium weight, with a slim handle.
A furniture beater.
A long-handled dust pan.
A flat paint brush.
A whisk.
A piece of chamois skin.
Two cheese-cloth dusters, one damp, one dry.
Two flannel dusters.
Several dusting sheets.
Dusters and dusting sheets can be made of very inexpensive or old
material, and they are things in which it is well not to stint oneself.
Wool-headed mops are usually called, in shops, piano dusters, but
why should pianos have a monopoly of anything so comfortable and
convenient? They are rather expensive but they last a long time, and
can be washed perfectly clean. One can get along with one head and two
handles, if necessary, by dusting the high things first, using the long
handle, then the lower things and the floor, using the short handle.
After this the head must be washed, for the floors will make it too
dirty to use for walls. Wool gathers and holds dust more than any other
substance I know.
Other appliances which are used for wiping walls and floors are string
mops, broom bags, and heavy cloths attached to a mop handle. String
mops scatter lint and it is impossible to wash them entirely clean.
Broom bags are good because they can be washed easily, and because they
make a broom into a combination appliance useful either for sweeping
or wiping. They are said to be better made with a ruffle. Mop handles
with attachments to hold the cloths are easily obtainable and much
better for all purposes than string mops. In choosing one, see that
the attachment is neither heavy nor intricate. Cloths can be easily
attached to a mop stick if a deep groove is cut in the stick two or
three inches from the end. Hold the stick with the grooved end up. Lay
over it two or three heavy cloths--in the way one would put an unfolded
handkerchief over the end of one's finger. Draw them down and tie a
string tightly round them in the groove. Then reverse the handle and
the mop is ready for use. Patent handles are better than this homely
contrivance in all but one respect: in using them one must guard
against striking furniture or baseboards with the metal piece which
holds the cloth.
Here are a few important principles of cleaning.
1. Prepare the place which is to be cleaned.
2. Begin at the top. A house is cleaned from garret to cellar, a room
from ceiling to floor, a staircase from top to bottom.
3. Do not flap round with a cloth or a feather duster. The object of
cleaning is to remove dust, getting as little into the air as possible.
4. All necessary shaking and brushing must be done before the floor is
cleaned; afterward, only _wiping_ should be done.
We will now go over the process of cleaning a room as if we were
prompting ourselves for the actual work.
Remove the plants to the sink.
Remove and carefully dust the ornaments, putting them on a tray which
can be carried into an adjoining room, or put them on a stationary
piece of furniture, which has been dusted to receive them, and cover
with a dusting sheet.
Shut the doors into adjoining rooms.
Open the windows.
Dust the shades and roll to the top of the windows.
Shake, brush and cover the curtains.
Remove the upholstered furniture and rugs if possible.
If not, brush the furniture and cover it, sweep and roll the rugs.
If there is a fireplace in the room remove the ashes and lay the fire.
Wipe the ceiling, walls, woodwork, light fixtures and pictures.
Wipe the floor, not forgetting the baseboards, or sweep the carpet.
Whatever is done to the floor is the climax of the cleaning. After that
we restore the room to order. This is the period when everything should
be done by wiping.
Clean rugs and furniture which have been put outdoors.
Wipe furniture, mirrors, picture-glasses, windows and tiles.
Restore the rugs, furniture and ornaments to their places.
Bits of special cleaning like polishing brasses, washing windows,
caring for lamps, and the like are best done at some other time than
that appointed for cleaning the room. If these jobs are included, they
make the regular cleaning too heavy and too long.
This process has been written out as if the work were to be done by one
person, which frequently is not the case. It is the logical order of
the work, however, whatever the number of workers. The outline of the
process is this:
First all brushing and dusting--everything which gets dust off other
things on to the floor.
Then the cleaning of the floor.
Then wiping away all dust made by the cleaning and restoring order.
One cannot effectually do this or any housework with one's mind on
something else. The processes are intricate and logical and require
thoughtful organization beforehand, and intense attention at the
moment. If we can think about our neighbours, or brood over our
grievances while we are cleaning, we can be quite sure that we have not
done the work as well nor as quickly as we could.
VII
UPSTAIRS WORK
"UPSTAIRS work" is, I believe a colloquialism for making beds, tidying
bedrooms, and caring for washstands and bathrooms.
_The Sequence._--A reasonable order for this work is the following:
Shut the door of the room unless the weather is warm.
Roll the shades to the top of the windows.
Open the windows top and bottom.
Open the closet doors.
Take the bedclothes from the bed and spread them across two chairs set
far enough apart to keep the clothes from lying on the floor. Spread
the lower sheet in a place by itself and remember which it is. Turn the
mattress over the foot of the bed, or turn it up on edge.
Do these things in all the rooms which are to be cared for, carefully
shutting the doors of each.
If there are washstands in the rooms, now remove the waste water and
put the stands in order.
If there are not, make the beds, beginning with the one first opened.
Dust and put the rooms in order.
Put the bathroom in order.
If the bedrooms are on more than one floor, it is well to do a floor at
a time, and the bathrooms after all the rooms are finished.
The upstairs work is then finished until the beds are opened and the
rooms put in order for the night.
_The Description._--The first five actions in this order of work are
done for the sake of letting as much light and air as possible into the
rooms and the beds.
The washstands are put in order next because this gives the beds a
longer time to air, and because it is desirable to get the waste water
out of the rooms as soon as possible.
_Washstands._--For this work one needs a pail for waste water and a
newspaper or some such thing for it to stand on; two cloths; a stiff
brush; and some sort of soap or powder which has been found good
for cleansing toilet china. Borax, ammonia and yellow soap are old
standbys for this purpose. Where there is not running water, one must
add to these a pail of water for rinsing. Many people think that the
water for this purpose must be hot, but I have found that hot water
tends to roughen and crack the glaze of toilet china, and to incline
the articles used for waste water to give off an odour. When water is
left in the pitchers it is well to use it for rinsing as this lessens
the amount of water to be carried, and insures that the water in the
pitchers is fresh each day.
Empty all the waste water into the pail brought for it. Pour a little
clean water into each thing emptied. Do not use all the clean water
for this first rinsing. With one of the cloths wipe the objects on
the washstand which have not been wet; rinse, and with this same
cloth dry the tooth mug, soap dish, pitchers and bowl. If one of the
pitchers contains water you need, attend to it after the other china
is finished. Wash the slop jar and chamber with the cleaning substance
or soap and the stiff brush. Rinse them with the remaining clean water
and dry them with the _other_ cloth. Never use for these articles the
cloth which in the next room will be needed for the cleaner china. To
have the two cloths of different materials helps the worker to remember
this. Fill the pitchers with fresh water, carry away soiled towels,
neatly spread or fold once used ones which are to be retained, and
leave everything in its place.
The daily care of a stationary basin consists merely in washing or
dusting the objects on the edge of the basin or on shelves over it,
washing and drying the basin and the frame which holds it, and wiping
dust from the pipes and fixtures underneath.
Whether the care of washstands is difficult or easy depends on the
water used, and on whether the work is done nicely every day. In
spite of daily care, very hard water will encrust the china. These
encrustations can usually be removed after they have been soaked with
vinegar for a few hours.
_Bed Making._--Making a bed is an art worth knowing, it gives such
comfort.
If the spring or other parts of the bedstead need dusting, that should
be done first, then the mattress replaced. This should be turned each
day, sometimes from end to end, sometimes from side to side, and given
as many thumps and punches as are needed to make it level and even with
the springs.
If a pad or cover of any kind is needed over the mattress, that is put
on first and spread very smoothly, or, if wide enough, it is drawn very
tightly and tucked under the mattress.
Then put on the under sheet, right side up, with the hems at the top
and bottom, the selvages at the sides and the middle crease in the
middle of the bed. Turn the sheet smoothly under the mattress at the
head and foot. In the case of the under sheet, this turn should be a
few inches deeper at the head than at the foot; in the upper sheet the
deeper turn should be made at the foot. The person who sleeps in the
bed naturally pushes the under sheet down, and pulls the upper sheet up.
To fold the corners, stand at the foot or head of the bed. Keeping the
fold even, hold the sheet straight out from the side of the bed. Put
your other hand under the corner of the mattress and run it round on
the fold of the sheet until the thumb is even with the upper edge of
the mattress. Hold it there. Then fold smoothly under the mattress the
part of the sheet you have held out and withdraw your hand which you
will find is in a sort of little pocket. This is sometimes called a pie
corner, and it is rather like the fold for a mitred corner in a hem.
When finished, the under sheet should be tight stretched and smooth.
Spread the upper sheet on the bed wrong side up, then when the hem is
turned back at the head of the bed, it will be right side out. Turn the
sheet under at the foot twelve inches if possible. Turn the corners at
the foot but do not turn the sides under nor the corners at the head.
See that the sheet lies straight, and smooth out all wrinkles.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
Straight and Smooth]
Put on the blankets, their upper edges reaching to the place where
you intend to make the backward fold in the sheet. Fold them under
about twelve inches at the foot, not at all at the sides; smooth them
carefully.
If two people sleep in a bed or if the blankets are narrow, put a
single blanket on crosswise, placing one of the selvages even with the
edge of the mattress at the foot of the bed, then the ends will hang
some distance over the sides. Some people fold double blankets evenly,
some prefer to fold them with one binding a good way below the other
binding. This preference depends on whether one likes the upper part of
the bed covering thick or thin, and also whether the blanket is long
enough to turn under at the foot when folded evenly. The fold, not the
bindings should be at the foot of the bed, in order that, if too warm,
one thickness of the blanket can be easily thrown back.
When all the bedclothes are on, with the exception of the spread, turn
back the edge of the upper sheet over the blankets, leaving about a
foot of the under sheet exposed. Then fold all the coverings neatly
under the mattress at the sides, drawing them smooth and straight.
The spread is put over the whole bed. It should hang over at the sides
and foot, far enough to hide the mattress, springs and all under parts
of the bed which are not of the same material or finish as the upper
parts.
Bolsters are laid flat either under or over the spread at the head of
the bed. They are not so invariably used as in times past.
If there is no bolster, two pillows are sometimes laid flat in its
place, and two pillows set on edge upon them. If there is a bolster,
the pillows are set edgewise upon it. They must be well beaten,
smoothed and set up securely.
If shams are used they should be spread over the pillows and bolster
as smoothly as possible. They are usually supported by tapes fastened
across the upper corners of the shams on the wrong side, and slipped
over the corners of the pillows.
In places where dust and smuts must be constantly guarded against, one
must either use shams or else cover the pillows with the spread. This
last is often not an agreeable arrangement to the eye, but it is better
than smirched and dingy pillows.
Bed linen is changed according to the quantity of linen the housewife
possesses, the amount of laundry she can have done, and her own taste
in the matter. The common tradition is a sheet a week for each bed,
and a pillowcase a week for each pillow regularly used. In this case,
the upper sheet becomes the lower sheet during the second week of its
wear. This change is made because it is more agreeable to have the
cleaner linen nearest one's face, and turned out to view when the bed
is opened for the night.
If you do not sleep long and soundly after reading this description of
bed making, I am sure it isn't my fault.
When the bed has been made, the room should be put in order; clothes
put in the closet and the closet door shut, the sweeper run over the
rugs if needful, all visible dust removed, articles on bureaus and
tables put in their accustomed places, all drawers tightly closed,
faded flowers and burnt matches removed, and everything _straightened_.
Then partly close the windows, draw the shades to the same level at
each window, and go on to the next room.
In extremely damp or extremely cold weather, one may have to get along
with less airing, but it should not be lessened except for grave cause.
In some houses, it will be more convenient to make all the beds before
doing any dusting. If there are people in the house who do not leave
their rooms until after breakfast, or who wish to occupy them very
soon after breakfast, such rooms will have to be done separately and
later or earlier than the others.
In the evening, bedrooms should be prepared for the night. Waste water
should be carried away, pitchers filled, washstands tidied and beds
opened. Shams and spread are removed from each bed and neatly folded.
Leaving the sheet folded over the other bedclothes as it is already,
turn them all back until they make a straight wide fold across the bed
a little above the middle. Then straighten the coverings at the sides
and tuck them under the mattress again, making everything very neat
and straight. Put the pillows on the bed as the person who occupies it
likes to have them. This can sometimes be discovered by noticing in the
morning how the pillows are placed, unless the person is so exemplary
as to open his own bed for airing. If you are preparing the bed for
a stranger put the bolster and pillows back on the bed and allow the
guest to arrange them later.
The night clothes and wrapper belonging to the occupant of the room
should be laid across the foot of the bed or over a chair, and bedroom
slippers put beside them on the floor.
This part of the upstairs work adds exceedingly to the comfort of
a family, but I think it is one of the things to be left undone in
households where the work is heavy and the workers few.
_Bathroom._--The bathroom, like other rooms, needs some daily care and
some periodical care.
Daily the stationary basin must be cared for as previously described.
The tub and its fixtures must be washed, and wiped entirely dry. For
this it is good to have a stiff brush with a handle and a soft cloth.
Both these conveniences should always be kept hanging on a hook near
the tub. It is only common decency after one has used a bathtub to
rinse and wipe it for the sake of the next person. If a brush and neat
cloth are kept near the tub, the good-intentioned will find it easier
to cleanse the tub, and the lazy will have less excuse for not doing it.
The wood and metal parts of the closet should be wiped, first with a
damp cloth, then with a dry one. The china parts should be scrubbed
thoroughly with soap and one of the long-handled brushes made for this
purpose. When the scrubbing is finished, flush the closet and rinse it
with the brush, then flush again. Leave the cover open. The bathroom
should be thoroughly aired and as much sun as possible let in while
the upstairs work is being done.
Once a week, or twice a week, the bathroom will need a more thorough
cleaning. Wipe the ceiling and walls with water if the finish permits.
If not, with a dry cloth or mop. Wash all the fixtures, the woodwork
and the floor with soap and water, and carefully dry them. Do not
forget the outsides of the tub and basin. If the fixtures are nickel,
they should be polished when they really need it, not oftener, with
some patent nickel polish or with whiting. The woodwork of the closet
should be rubbed with oil, especially if the finish begins to be worn.
This prevents the wood from absorbing impurities.
If there are rugs in the bathroom, they should be washed as soon as
they show need. No rug which cannot be washed should be allowed in an
ordinary bathroom.
Many people recommend flushing waste-pipes now and then with a strong
hot solution of washing soda. The overflow pipes should be included in
this performance. Good, new plumbing, however can probably be spared
treatment of this sort.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
Air, Sun, and Water]
Bedrooms are cleaned every week or every fortnight in the same way that
other rooms are. They are apt, however, to contain closets and these
require some special care.
_Closets._--When a room is being prepared for cleaning, the floor
and baseboards of the closet should be wiped with a dry mop or
cloth--anything which will not make a dust--and the door tightly
closed. Once in a while, before the cleaning of the room if there
is time, if not, on some other day, the clothing should be removed
from the closet, the walls wiped, and everything washed which can
be,--hooks, wire hangers, the rods on which these hang, shelves and
floor should be washed with water in which has been put a generous
quantity of ammonia, borax or boracic acid. These things are not liked
by the various small insects which annoy housewives. They also help to
prevent mustiness and "close" odours. After the washing, everything
should be carefully wiped dry, and as much light and air let into the
closet as possible. The contents should not be put in again until
this drying and airing is finished. Do not wash closets on a rainy or
humid day. If they have a musty or unpleasant odour, a few drops of
oil of lavender put on a shelf or on the floor will help to remove it.
A little chloride of lime, poured into a saucer and set on the floor
of the closet, will also remove odours. Little bags of lavender or
rose-geranium leaves laid on closet shelves add much to the daintiness
and freshness of the clothes kept there. The shelves should be covered
with white paper cut, not folded, to fit the shelf. Folds afford
harbourage for insects. Floors should be left without covering of any
sort. Ideally, they are of hard wood like the floor of the room.
Clothes get more air, and are less creased and rumpled if they are hung
on hangers suspended on a pole or wire, than when they are hung one
piece on top of another on hooks fastened into the wall. Even in a wall
closet, not more than ten inches deep, one gains space by stretching a
strong wire from opposite hooks, and putting hangers on this. Four or
five waists or dresses will hang without crushing on such a ten-inch
wire. A closet with a shelf in it offers better hanging-space if hooks
are put at intervals into the under side of the shelf. A hook like two
J's, back to back, is made especially for this purpose.
* * * * *
It is well to give bedrooms a look of peacefulness. Some things which
help in this are: perfect cleanliness, few decorations, few colours,
a bed which looks like a bed, a regard for the occupant's wishes to
have personal possessions one way rather than another, and something
else--I have no name for it, but it is there because the housewife has
wished, as she made the bed and arranged the room, that the person who
sleeps there may have rest and quiet of heart.
She has folded into the sheets perhaps this prayer:
_And four great Angels guard this bed,
Two at the foot and two at the head._
VIII
DINING-ROOM AND PANTRY WORK
THE dining room is put in order daily and cleaned periodically in the
same way that the other rooms in the house are cared for. The daily
care of this room, however, has to be a little more thoroughly and
thoughtfully given. It should be noticeably neat, carefully aired, and
a trifle cooler than a living room. Pure air and the restfulness of
order are favourable and refining to appetite.
To allow fruit or any kind of food to stand in the dining room is a
poor custom. Such things attract flies, create an odour of food in the
room, and encourage the indulgent habit of eating bits now and then
between meals.
The plant or flowers used on the table need a little care each day.
Water in which flowers stand, quickly becomes discoloured enough to
show dark against a white cloth, and soon gives off an unpleasant
odour. Even when there is little time for looking after such things,
one can take the flowers out, holding them in position, quickly clip
off the ends of the stems and the leaves that are wet, and put them
back into fresh water. A plant should be watered each day and have dust
and withered leaves removed from it.
The hours for meals should be times of rest and social pleasure, they
cannot be if disagreeable sights, sounds, or smells accompany them.
Keep the dining room neat, aired and cool. In a clean, well-kept
room there will be less fault-finding, scolding and gloom than in a
neglected one. Such a room will also help people to be agreeable,
attentive and interesting, in harmony with their surroundings.
_The Table._--If the dining table has a polished top it will need
special and frequent care. Some people prefer a table of which the top
is a plain white wood because it does not need special care. Such a
table must of course be kept covered with a linen cloth at meals and a
table cover at other times.
A polished table must be constantly guarded from heat and scratches,
and must be polished at regular intervals. Where very hot dishes are
to be placed the table should have added to the usual protection of an
undercloth the further protection of asbestos or basketwork mats. These
can be hidden, if you wish, with linen carving cloths or doilies.
Rub the table briskly for a few moments every day with a soft cloth or
a piece of chamois skin. About once a week polish it more carefully.
Before either of these performances remove any stickiness or greasiness
with a damp cloth.
The mixture of sweet oil and vinegar recommended for furniture is
excellent for a table. (1 tablespoonful of vinegar to 3 of sweet oil.)
A mixture of equal parts sweet oil and turpentine is also good. Rub the
table thoroughly with a soft cloth dampened with the mixture, then rub
it with a clean cloth.
Dull spots occasionally appear even on the most carefully guarded
tables. Long and frequent polishing will sometimes remove these. If the
finish is seriously injured, however, amateur efforts to restore it are
more likely to make it worse than better.
On account of frequent rubbing and unavoidable wear, the table-leaves
in use should often be changed for those not in use, the whole table
will then be of the same colour and in the same condition.
_Table Setting._--Before beginning to set the table, see that it is the
right size. Neither people nor dishes should be crowded if this can
possibly be avoided; it is also undesirable to have the table too large
for the number at the meal.
For dinner the table is first spread with a cotton-flannel or felt
undercloth. This is not only to save a polished table from injuries;
it improves the appearance of any table and prevents noise. Over it is
laid the linen cloth, the middle crease running the length of the table
exactly in the middle.
In some households a smaller, lighter tablecloth is used for breakfast
and luncheon. In others, a luncheon cloth of embroidered linen, lace or
drawn work is used for these less formal meals. In others, the table
is left bare and doilies spread where plates and dishes are to be set.
Many people who use doilies or a luncheon cloth for luncheon prefer a
covered table at breakfast. These are all matters of taste or economy
with one exception. It is the custom to spread the table for dinner
with a cloth which entirely covers it.
When the tablecloth has been laid, a centrepiece of linen or lace is
sometimes placed upon it in the centre of the table. If carving is to
be done, a carving cloth is placed at the foot of the table in such a
position that the platter will stand in the middle of it.
All the table linen, when removed, should be refolded in the creases
made by the iron. Centrepieces and doilies should be laid flat in a
drawer or the former rolled on a roller. A little care in this matter
keeps the cloths fresh longer and protects delicate linen from too
frequent washing.
A napkin is laid at each place, on the right or in the centre. Napkins
should match the tablecloth but this is not always possible because
they have to be changed more frequently than the cloth. Fresh napkins
every day at dinner is the agreeable and not extreme method of changing
them; to have fresh ones at every meal is rarely possible or necessary
except in hotels; a change twice a week is the minimum at which any
degree of comfort can be maintained.
When all the linen necessary is on the table, place exactly in the
middle of the linen centrepiece the vase of flowers, plant or dish
of fruit which is to be the centre decoration of the table. It makes
variety and daintiness if this decoration is flowers or a plant or even
a silver or glass vase rather than food in any form. A pretty thing
helps to remind us that eating is not the only thing for which we come
together. It may also afford a topic for pleasant conversation.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
Order and Daintiness]
After the centre decoration is placed put on candlesticks or lamps,
carafes, decanters, salts and peppers and any large objects which are
to be used, leaving places for bread plates, relish dishes and the
like. These things should be arranged symmetrically, not as if they
were men on a checker-board, but with the sort of symmetry which the
leaves on a vine have. If there is not some evidence of design in the
arrangement of a table, it will look littered.
Add now to the napkin at each place, everything which will be needed
during the meal, or until the serving of the sweet at luncheon or at
dinner, or until the serving of fruit as a last course at any meal. The
finger bowl, doily and silver needed for these courses are frequently
arranged on the plate to be used and brought to each place at the
beginning of the course.
At the left of the place lay the forks in the order in which they are
to be used; at the right lay the knives in the same order with their
edges toward the plates; at the right of the knives lay the soup spoon.
If the dessert spoon is put on the table it is placed at the right of
the knives and the soup spoon. Spoons are laid on the table with the
hollow of the bowl up, and forks with the ends of the tines up.
Besides the silver each place needs a glass for water--glasses are
turned up, not down--and others suitable for any beverages which are to
be served. A salt cellar will be needed if individual salts are used.
These are not regarded favourably at present but are tolerated if each
has a spoon. And either a small butter plate or a bread and butter
plate and butter knife are put at each place except sometimes at dinner
when butter is not served. When meals are formally served a plate is
put at each place which is removed when the first course is brought.
One cannot lay places correctly without knowing the menu for the meal.
The food to be eaten determines the objects needed for eating it.
When the table is set with the exception of the food, the sideboard or
serving table, or both should be arranged. On these are put dessert
or fruit plates arranged with finger bowls and silver, all the china
not to be heated which will be needed for the courses of the meal,
any seasonings or bottled sauces which the family are in the habit of
asking for, a crumb tray and napkin or scraper, a small napkin or doily
with which a spot of gravy or fruit juice could be quickly removed from
the tablecloth, a water pitcher and a serving tray. If after-dinner
coffee is made on the table, it is convenient to set out all the
articles needed for this on a tray on the sideboard. Room must be kept
on the serving table for the vegetable dishes which are usually left
there during the course to which they belong.
A few minutes before a meal is served is the time to place food such
as pickles, jelly, bread, butter and milk on the table or the serving
table and to fill the glasses with water. If ice is put into each glass
it should be done carefully with a spoon. It adds to the appearance of
butter balls and helps to keep them cool if a lettuce leaf is laid in
the dish under them. They keep their shape and firmness better if kept
in a bowl of water when in the refrigerator. At luncheon or breakfast
bread is served on a plate or tray, or the loaf, board and knife are
put on the table. At dinner a piece of bread is laid by each place or
tucked into each napkin. Hot biscuits keep hot longer if a napkin is
spread over the plate and folded over them. Cold bread or crackers,
also cheese, are often served on a folded napkin, they look better so
than on a plate.
In laying the table, time, steps and thought can be saved by taking
as many things as possible from one place at one time. That is,
after the linen is on the table. First put on everything needed from
the sideboard, then everything needed from the china closet, then
everything needed from the pantry. All the articles from each place
can sometimes be brought in one trip with the help of a tray. If the
flat silver is kept in a basket, it is better to carry the basket from
place to place and take out what is needed. This saves steps and some
handling of the silver.
When the places where the dishes and silver are to be kept are first
decided upon, and when the order in which the table is set is first
learned, both should be done with the thought of saving steps and of
opening drawers and doors as seldom as possible.
Tables should be set without noise. Not only because it is disagreeable
to hear the rattling of dishes but because thumps, and clatter, and
jingle mean scars on the table, nicks in the china, scratches on the
silver and a lack of that dainty carefulness without which a table is
never perfectly set.
_Waiting._--"Waiting" requires more "head" than other household
employments. One can keep accounts slowly and laboriously, one
can sweep without possessing much tact, one can even cook without
possessing a great degree of administrative ability, or do laundry work
without a good memory. To "wait" cleverly requires all these qualities.
The object of waiting is that the needs and wants of those seated at
table shall be supplied without effort, often without consciousness on
their part. It also preserves the orderliness of the table, and makes
inquiries about people's wishes unnecessary. One occasionally hears the
objection made to careful waiting that it makes people thoughtless
for the comfort of others. I would suggest that conversation made
agreeable and amusing to others requires greater and more continued
thoughtfulness than passing the beans and the butter.
The waitress should have in her mind a plan of the meal including not
only the food but also the china, silver and linen needed for serving
it. If a meal is more than two courses long, it is often better to have
the plan written out. This is a little trouble, but saves mistakes, and
the necessity of stopping to think when one has not time to think.
The waitress is expected to be in the dining room when the family enter
for the meal. She should be ready to serve the first course as soon
as they are seated. If this course is oysters or grape-fruit or some
such thing, plates containing it are set before each guest. Two plates
can be brought at once if there are no plates already on the table; if
there are, the waitress can only bring one plate for she must remove
the empty plate before she can set the other down. When the plates
are all on the table she will then pass anything which accompanies
the course. Sometimes various small relishes and biscuits suc
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