To prove it, just visit a man-manned restaurant or hotel kitchen some time--and there you will see the brightest, cleanest looking copper, aluminum, nickel, etc., etc., pots and pans hung up on racks near operating centers--ready to be used. If this were anti-hygiene the Board of Health would intervene. Anyhow, water is at hand in a kitchen and dust is easily swabbed out! Of course, in the new kitchen, racks are built, and you have no choice, so you accept the pleasanter condition without cavil. In this connection I can’t forbear to mention the apartment garbage can which owns a hygienic lid which sits a foot above the floor and for every useless egg shell to be thrown away the worker must needs bend double to remove the lid, empty her plate, put on the lid and raise herself up. Time and energy lost. This could easily be on a little stool under a common kitchen table in which a round hole could be cut, or alongside the garbage creating table and the stuff slid into it, if it can be bought with a sliding lid. There is also a pail whose lid is lifted by a pedal worked by the foot. HANGING WITHIN REACH To be sure, this does not mean to hang up the kitchen table or the stove, but it does mean to keep things, that are used hundreds of times every day, within the reach of your hands without superfluous stooping and bending. It means, too, that cleaning utensils, such as brooms and dusters and rags, if hung in separate racks in or outside of a closet, will live longer in good condition than if hurled into a corner of a closet where they get smashed and have their one hundred per cent. utility diminished. Where a culinary tool decreases in efficiency, the human element effort is necessarily increased, and unnecessary fatigue ensues--then: sloppy preparation of food and then, dyspepsia. Now, don’t you see the inevitable result of slipshod kitchen arrangement? If, for any reason, you like closets for pots and pans, have glass doors on them and have them no lower than thirty-two inches from the floor. This way you don’t have to stoop, the light penetrates, and an arrangement like this has only the opening and shutting of the door in its disfavor and the fitting in of the utensils each time and their possible denting. Even the finest utensils will dent with improper provocation. Open shelves are very convenient, too, if you do not care to hang things up. If you have a niche for each tool, the work becomes almost play. CHAPTER XXIX BRUSHING UP ON BRUSHES Household work is drudgery unless it is put on as nice (I say “nice” advisedly in its purest sense) a plane as any other craft. The best way of doing this is to have tools that are adapted to the different kinds of work--and furthermore, and quite as important, tools you are proud of, proud enough to keep well and advantageously.