Home environment

“ Home exercise.—The study of the factors making up my own environment and how I can aid in their control.
Environment.—Each one of us, no matter where he lives, comes in contact with certain surroundings. Air is everywhere around us; light is necessary to us, so much so that we use artificial light at night. The city street, with its dirty and hard paving stones, has come to take the place of the soil of the village or farm. Water and food are a necessary part of our surroundings. Our clothing, useful to maintain a certain temperature, must also be included. ”

“ FAITH The relation of environment to man’s efficiency is a vital consideration: how far it is responsible for his character, his views, and his health; what special elements in the environment are most potent and what are the most readily controlled, provided sufficient knowledge can be gained of the forces and conditions to be used.
To this end home life—in its relations to the child, the adult, and the community—is considered in connection with the effect on the home of the influences outside it, and the reaction of each on the other. ”

“ The inference, then, will be that the accommodation of the house is not the only [5] matter with which we have to concern ourselves, but that the closest attention should also be devoted to the environment. Besides the provision of an ample garden, the environment itself must be healthy and pleasant. The influence of surroundings in exalting or depressing the mind, and thus affecting the life, is a matter not only for the theorist, but for the architect.
With the provision of a garden, the tenant himself may add to the beauty of his home, and at the same time enjoy fresh air and recreation. ”

“ The importance attached to housing is much enhanced by the general tendency to lay stress on the material conditions of life, which characterizes the present age. Among material conditions environment takes a leading place, largely under the influence of the theory of evolution in a popular and probably erroneous form; and among the factors of environment the home assumes a more and more prominent position. There is reason in this, for whatever other provision be made for work or recreation the home is after all the place where people spend most of their time. ”

“ The influence of these great expositions is of a most subtle kind, not often to be traced, but there is a noticeable change in the estimation in which Home Economics is held dating from the time of the Mary Lowell Stone Home Economics Exhibit held at the Exposition in St. Louis in 1905. This illustrated the application of modern knowledge to home life, chiefly in economic and æsthetic lines, all bearing upon the health and efficiency of the people. ”

“ The implements of cooking and cleaning, for instance—where should we be if our modern squaw had to make her own utensils, as did her ancient prototype? The man, in world industry, makes not only the house, with all its elaborate labour-saving and health-protecting devices; not only the furniture of the house, the ornaments, hangings, and decorations, but the implements of the home industries as well. Go to the household furnishing store of our day—remember the one pot of the savage family to boil the meat and wash the baby—and see the difference between "homemade" and "world-made" things. ”

“ In a new home, house and barn and windmill square-cornered and prosaic, plumped down in a field with wheat coming up to the unporticoed door, a habitation unshadowed, unsheltered, unsoftened, she found a frank cleanness, as though the inhabitants looked squarely out at life, unafraid. ”

“ The nation is awake to the power of cleanliness as a factor in making an efficient physical, and thereby, indirectly, a finer [Pg 26] mental being, as a contribution to modern civilization. Every article selected for the home should have this requirement considered. ”

“ If possible, a tenement or house should be so situated as to secure good air, sunshine, good drainage, and good neighbors. A house with a southerly exposure or placed with its corners to the points of the compass has a distinct hygienic value and is always to be preferred, because it gets the sun in each room at some time during the day.
Sunshine. Abundant sunshine and light in the home are of great importance, and help to make the home healthful and more cheerful. People living in rooms which have no sun become pale and gradually lose strength. ”

“ And there is the great advantage, especially for a week-end house, that it can be started up or left at a moment's notice without trouble from water in the pipes or danger of freezing as in the hot-water systems.
Whatever the method decided upon, it is an interesting work from start to finish. One feels a thrill of adventure in evoking from the home of past generations one for twentieth-century living with all the comforts and appliances necessary. ”

“ There seems no doubt that by general agreement among the housekeepers of a given community to avail themselves more largely than at present of the results of modern industrial development, radical changes could be made in the form of the home and in its activities without decreasing the comfort and enjoyment of home life. ”

“ The structure and arrangements of a house adapted to the climate, soil, and wants of a family, including drainage, ventilation, warming, economy of labour; the management of a household in relation to individual wants and to society, including the subjects of food and waste, domestic service, petty trading, the care of the sick and prevention of disease, occupations and amusements—these and many other topics belong directly to the formation of a [Pg 246] noble Christian home. These are subjects that men and women have a direct personal interest in. ”

“ Considerations of health must include not only climatic conditions, but questions of drainage, water supply, time and comfort of transportation to work, and the sanitary condition of the neighborhood.
Prospective homemakers must learn, too, the value of reposeful surroundings and of some degree of natural beauty. They must recognize the value also of desirable social environment—that is, of such moral and intellectual surroundings as will be uplifting for the homemakers and safe for the future family. ”

“ Is it because we think that the baby, in some mysterious way, derives benefit from the exercise of our legs? Why do we always eat and sleep within doors? Why, when we plan new houses, do we not arrange them so that the kitchen and serving pantry will communicate as easily with a porch as with the indoor dining room? Why do we not have roof gardens, where we can sleep under the beautiful stars in warm weather? ”

“ Domesticity will be taught by example in some ideal home building by a kind of laboratory method. A nursery with all carefully selected appliances and adjuncts, a dining-room, a kitchen, bedroom, closets, cellars, outhouses, building, its material, the grounds, lawn, shrubbery, hothouse, library, and all the other adjuncts of the hearth will be both exemplified and taught. ”

“ The standard of living is distinctly lower in farm homes than in town and city homes of the same financial status. The house is generally comfortable, but small. It is behind the times in many easily accessible modern conveniences possessed by the great majority of city dwellers. The bath, modern plumbing and heating, the refrigerator, and other kindred appliances can be had in the country home as well as the city. ”

“ From any standpoint, comfort, sanitation, economics or art, the home is to become the greatest moulding influence in human life. Shall we remain apathetic and indifferent to this most vital problem, satisfied to increase our bank account only, or shall we awaken now and contribute our mite to a fuller national life and a higher and happier existence? ”

“ The Forecastle
WHEN a new schoolhouse or any public building is planned, every attention is given to sanitation. When a private home is being built, it is expected to be fitted with every modern convenience and every improvement conducive to good health. ”

“ You thus find in a first-class modern home peculiar warring conditions, in the adjustment of which health and comfort are by no means assured. The more advanced the home and its inhabitants, the more we find complexity and difficulty, with elements of discomfort and potential disease, involved in the integral—supposedly integral—processes of the place. The more lining and stuffing there are, the more waste matter fills the air and settles continually as dust; the more elaborate the home, the more labour is required to keep it fit for a healthy animal to live in ”

“ The progress of domestic living has been in cleanliness, in ventilation, in health, in decorum, in countless means and acts of comfort, in the concentration of all the utilities of every clime in each house. ”

“ The question of fresh air in the home is one of the most important points to be considered. The bedrooms, the living-rooms, and the kitchen should have the air changed constantly, not once or twice a day. ”

“ Demonstrate the ventilation of a room. 2. Demonstrate the dusting of a room.
By home sanitation we mean keeping the house clean and giving the forces of nature, such as sunshine, fresh air, and pure water, their fullest opportunity to work for us. By letting the out of doors indoors we give nature a fairer chance at her great task of keeping us well and happy.
The house is a protection for the family and should have healthful and cheerful surroundings. The housewife should understand the principles of home sanitation and thereby secure for her family a healthy and happy life. ”

“ And it is necessary that the warm spring days should be devoted to cleaning and renovating; but certainly not to the exclusion of real home comforts and pleasures, while this work is in progress. It is folly to commence by putting the whole house into disorder ”

“ The essentials then of good house building are, first, a dry soil, a good foundation, exposure to the sun, and, next, good plumbing by reputable men at whatever cost necessary for first-class work, warming and ventilating by open grates rather than by steam heaters and stoves, clean floors and clean walls; and now, if there be no decomposition of animal or vegetable matter allowed in the immediate vicinity of the house, we shall have done the best that the present state of science will permit toward making our houses healthful. ”

“ Our Homes.—The Cottage Homes of England being, after all, the most important of the homes of any class, should be pure in every sense. Boys and girls must grow up healthy, with clean minds, and clean bodies, and clean skins. And the first teachings and impressions they have at home must all be pure, and gentle, and firm.
It is home that teaches the child after all, more than any other schooling. A child learns before it is three whether it shall obey its mother or not. ”

“ In so far as the inner life of a home may be influenced by environments is it possible and practical to plan for the strengthening of the home life of a community and no phase of life, in country or city, is too unimportant to engage notice. ”

“ Is the temperature stifling hot? Do flies and mosquitoes find joy in the screenless [128] windows? Are the facilities for bathing a small bowl and a pitcher without a handle on the top of a triangular wash-stand? The two weeks’ vacation in an unknown part of your own home may lead to the traditional mauvais quart d’heure. What if the employee has spent a year under the protecting shelter of your roof? ”

“ Most of you cannot choose your own dwelling, but whether you live in a house, a cottage, a flat, in rooms, or even in one room of a house, you can do a very great deal to keep it healthy and pure.
Fresh air is your great friend; it will help you to fight disease better than anything else. Open all your windows as often as you can, so that the air may get into every nook and corner. ”

“ Everything that tends to increase the comfort and safety of home life must be taught, as well as everything that tends to lessen the labor of keeping a family clean, warm, and properly fed.
Accurate figures should be obtained to set before the boys and girls who will be homemakers, showing the cost, in time, labor, and money, of running a heating plant for the house as compared with several stoves scattered about in the dwelling. ”

“ But how could a home remain bare of insects? Nature abhors such a vacuum. Some men would like to cover the whole world with porcelain tiles, [187] and make old Mother Earth, as we know her, disappear from our view. They would sterilize and scrub the whole planet, so as to make the place sanitary. Well, I too feel that way at times: we all have finicky moments. But in my robust hours I sympathize with Nature. A hygienic kitchen is unnatural. It should be swarming with life. (The way mine is.)
I see a great deal of the roach when I visit my kitchen. ”

“ In some respects we have improved our houses, but we have much to learn yet. We have, for instance, yet to see that all houses, however small, shall have a proper number of bedrooms, large, light, and airy—for we spend one-third of our lives in them. We have also to see that both beauty and fitness shall be properly considered in building a house. Too often no care is taken to provide proper places where food and clothing can be kept, and where that very necessary but unpleasant process of washing and drying of clothes can be carried on without spoiling the comfort and health of the household. ”

“ So to make our homes sweet and fresh and dry we must chase the stale air away, and the moisture with it, by opening our windows and letting in the sunlight and the breeze, every day, and for as long as possible every day. Open windows and sunlight and fresh air,—all you can get,—this is the song of health, the joy of life, the only agents that will keep the eager, busy, little white blood cell healthy and willing and alert. ”