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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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