The Library of Work and Play: Housekeeping — John Shaqi
The Library of Work and Play: HousekeepingGilman, Elizabeth Hale
General
The Library of Work and Play: Housekeeping
Gilman, Elizabeth Hale
Home economics
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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