Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework: Business principles applied to houseworkBarker, C. Hélène
General
Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework: Business principles applied to housework
Barker, C. Hélène
Home economics; Household employees
There are many families who may object to all the preceding schedules
on account of the early hour in the evening for household employees
to be off duty. When the housewife has never had her housework done on
schedule time by an efficient employee, she may well think it impossible
to have the dinner dishes washed up and everything put away in order by
8 P.M. However some families do not begin dinner before half past seven,
or eight o'clock, or even later, but in these families, it is not
unusual for the breakfast hour to be very late also. In consequence
nothing is easier than to make a schedule for the day's work begin late
and end late, without making any other alteration in it.
The following schedule, however, combines an early breakfast and a late
dinner, in a family where only two employees were kept:
_First Employee_
From 7 A.M. to 12 M. 5 hours
From 5 P.M. to 8 P.M. 3 hours
-------
8 hours
_Second Employee_
From 12 M. to 5 P.M. 5 hours
From 7 P.M. to 10 P.M. 3 hours
(or from 8 to 11 P.M.)
-------
8 hours
EIGHT HOUR SCHEDULES FOR THREE EMPLOYEES
The greater the number of household employees, the easier it is to make
a satisfactory working schedule. But the temptation to specialize the
work is greater, and should be carefully guarded against. It is just as
necessary with three employees as with one for the housewife to insist
that each one be capable and willing to do all kinds of work in the
home, including sewing and taking care of children.
With three employees, the housewife ought to make them take turns in
cooking and serving one of the three meals each day. This enables them
to become familiar with the dining room and with the different dishes
for each course; it also removes any feeling of embarrassment which
naturally might be felt by an employee who is rarely called upon to cook
or serve a meal.
To have an expert needlewoman in the house is a great boon to the
housewife, and when she has three employees who can sew in her home, she
ought to insist upon a great deal of sewing and mending being done by
each one of them.
It is rare that the "servant" of to-day is a good sewer; in fact the
housewife would hesitate to ask her to do even the ordinary mending, but
when one engages household employees on an eight hour schedule, and when
there are a hundred women to choose from, it is not hard to find several
who sew well.
SCHEDULE NO. VIII
It is so easy to plan the housework for three employees that one
schedule as an example seems quite sufficient, and the only thing that
the housewife must remember is to make all the work interchangeable.
_First Employee_
From 7 A.M. to 11 A.M. 4 hours
From 12 M. to 4 P.M. 4 hours
-------
8 hours
_Second Employee_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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