American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes — John Shaqi
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian HomesStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
Fig. 11 is an ottoman, made as a box, with a lid on hinges. A cushion
is fastened to this lid by strings at each corner, passing through
holes in the box lid and tied inside. The cushion to be cut square,
with side pieces; stuffed with hair, and stitched through like a
mattress. Side handles are made by cords fastened inside with knots.
The box must be two inches larger at the bottom than at the top, and
the lid and cushion the same size as the bottom, to give it a tasteful
shape. This ottoman is set on casters, and is a great convenience for
holding articles, while serving also as a seat.
The expense of the screen, where lumber averages $4 a hundred, and
carpenter labor $3 a day, would be about $30, and the two couches about
$6. The material for covering might be cheap and yet pretty. A woman
with these directions, and a son or husband who would use plane and
saw, could thus secure much additional room, and also what amounts to
two bureaus, two large trunks, one large wardrobe, and a wash-stand,
for less than $20--the mere cost of materials. The screen and couches
can be so arranged as to have one room serve first as a large and airy
sleeping-room; then, in the morning, it may be used as sitting-room
one side of the screen, and breakfast-room the other; and lastly,
through the day it can be made a large parlor on the front side, and
a sewing or retiring-room the other side. The needless spaces usually
devoted to kitchen, entries, halls, back-stairs, pantries, store-rooms,
and closets, by this method would be used in adding to the size of the
large room, so variously used by day and by night.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.]
Fig. 12 is an enlarged plan of the kitchen and stove-room. The chimney
and stove-room are contrived to ventilate the whole house, by a mode
exhibited in another chapter.
Between the two rooms glazed sliding-doors, passing each other, serve
to shut out heat and smells from the kitchen. The sides of the
stove-room must be lined with shelves; those on the side by the cellar
stairs, to be one foot wide, and eighteen inches apart; on the other
side, shelves may be narrower, eight inches wide and nine inches apart.
Boxes with lids, to receive stove utensils, must be placed near the
stove.
On these shelves, and in the closet and boxes, can be placed every
material used for cooking, all the table and cooking utensils, and all
the articles used in house work, and yet much spare room will be left.
The cook's galley in a steamship has every article and utensil used
in cooking for two hundred persons, in a space not larger than this
stove-room, and so arranged that with one or two steps the cook can
reach all he uses.
In contrast to this, in most large houses, the table furniture, the
cooking materials and utensils, the sink, and the eating-room, are at
such distances apart, that half the time and strength is employed in
walking back and forth to collect and return the articles used.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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