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