Housework

“ A household run on a strict schedule becomes an institution, not a home; on the other hand, a household in which the work is done at any time or no time is neither clean, restful nor knit together with the bonds of mutual service and mutual compliance.
Housework is some of it daily, and some of it periodical. Bedmaking is daily; sweeping is periodical. There is also work which may be done by the workers in the house, or by others coming from without. In one family the laundry work, bread making, window cleaning, floor polishing and the like will be done by those in the house ”

“ Those who have not done housework with their own brains and bodies cannot realize how many thousands of times every object in a house has to be touched and moved merely for the sake of cleanliness and order. It seems a small matter whether there are six pictures in a room or eight, whether flower vases are kept in the china closet or on the tops of book shelves and tables, whether there are five little fal-lals on a mantelshelf or twenty-five ”

“ In the present comparison of housework with work in factories, stores, and offices, a recital of the advantages of domestic service, even under the present method of housekeeping, must not be omitted, for such advantages are important, although unfortunately they do not outweigh the present disadvantages. ”

“ They make beds and sweep and clean house. I have known a boy of eleven to acquire sufficient knowledge of housework so that, at his mother's death, he was able to do all the work for a family of four. ”

“ If it be admitted, then, that housework is in itself a desirable and suitable occupation for women who must earn their living by manual labor, it can not be the work itself, but the conditions surrounding it that make it so distasteful to the modern working woman.
PART II BUSINESS PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO HOUSEWORK Living outside place of employment. Housework limited to eight hours a day. Housework limited to six days a week. The observance of legal holidays. Extra pay for overtime. ”

“ The young women take care of children. If it were not for the popular feeling with respect to housework, they might be employed in many other ways. There is a whole class of tasks, like the cleaning of silver, the making of beds, and the serving of meals, which require less skill and experience than cooking and less strength than the heavy cleaning. ”

“ Done faithfully and with spirit, it leaves in ordinary households a frequent hour for sewing or chatting, one or two afternoons of each week, and almost invariably every evening. More leisure, we honestly believe, than either a clerk, seamstress or teacher finds. It is healthy. Compare the effects upon the constitution, of housework and of those employments which keep the worker sitting or standing most of the day. ”

“ For the first time in her life, this housewife asked herself the following questions: Why should she allow her household employees to live in her house? Why should she consent to board them at her expense? Why should she continue to place at their disposal a bedroom each, a private bathroom, a sitting room or a dining room? Why should she allow them to make use of her kitchen and laundry to do their own personal washing, even providing them with soap and starch, irons and an ironing board, fuel and gas? Why should she do all this for them when no business employer, man or woman, ever does it? ”

“ Her share in the housework is ample and joyous. She says: "Myself and two grown sisters, both younger than I, take turns about doing the entire housework. The rest work in the garden and the field, irrigating, hoeing, etc. I prefer outside work too, but I always wash and iron, even when I am working outside." Her home conveniences are a washing-machine, a pump in the house, running water at the door, a telephone, the daily weather reports, a typewriter, a sewing-machine, screened windows and doors, and homemade soap. ”

“ A household employee ought to have her hours of work as clearly defined as if she were a business employee, and there is no reason why the eight-hour labor law could not be applied as successfully to housework as to any other enterprise. ”

“ THE time and strength necessary for housework, and the comfort and happiness resulting from the work depend much upon something which housekeepers have to a great extent the power to control. I mean the quantity and kind of things they have in their houses. ”

“ How many, and which of these small services you are able to do, depend on how long your school hours are, and on what sort of health you have, and on how much of the housework is done by the family. It is not fatal if you do not do any of them, provided your reason is not laziness or selfishness. ”

“ Two very important points must always be borne in mind in order to obtain the greatest advantage from an eight hour schedule, especially in families where only one employee is engaged to do the housework. ”

“ This little girl likes especially to play "Monday, I wash my dollies' clothes"—because she has a tub and a washboard, and a wringer that will really let buttons through, and clothespins and a clothes-horse, and all the garret to put up lines in. Housework, you know, is so much more fun if you have the right things to do it with. ”

“ If the librarian needs special equipment, does not the butler need appliances [137] adapted for his work? If the instructor needs the materials for investigation if his work is not to perish of dry rot, should not the houseworker have at hand all the materials needed if her work is to represent progress? If the parlor gains in attractiveness if its colors are harmonious, will not the kitchen gain if thought is given to appropriate decoration? ”

“ Again, work in a private house is infinitely more desirable, from the point of view of the influence of one's surroundings, than daily labor in a factory or store. The variety of domestic duties, the freedom of moving about from one room to another, of sitting or standing to do one's work, are much to be preferred to the work that compels the worker to stand or sit in one place all day long. ”

“ When confronted with this accusation, she asserts that the maintenance of a home is neither a business nor a profession, and that in consequence it ought not to be compared with them nor be judged by the same standards. ”

“ By adhering strictly to these two points, the housewife will soon perceive that she can dispense with the services of her employee for the remaining hours of the day without much inconvenience to herself or her family. She may even find it more pleasant than otherwise to be relieved from the sight and sound of household work, for at least a few hours a day, when she is in her own home. ”

“ When Adam delved and Eve span, the fiction that man is incapable of housework was first established. ”

“ There would be no longer the necessity of putting aside and of furnishing certain rooms of the house for their accommodation: a practice which in the majority of families is quite a serious inconvenience and always an expense. ”

“ Some housewives, from motives of kindness and consideration for the welfare of those in their employ, have special meals prepared for them and served in a dining-room of their own at hours which do not conflict with the meals of the family. ”

“ It takes a stolid, enduring temperament to bear factory labor. Now look at Marianne’s house and family, and see what is insured to your protégée there.
“In the first place, a home,—a neat, quiet chamber, quite as good as she has probably been accustomed to,—the very best of food, served in a pleasant, light, airy kitchen, which is one of the most agreeable rooms in the house, and the table and table service quite equal to those of most farmers and mechanics. ”

“ The three other domestic occupations, washing, ironing and cleaning, will be socialized just like cooking. The central kitchen will be supplemented by a central laundry, supplying the neigbborhood with immaculate linen, and the laundry, like the kitchen, will be conducted by experts; the laundress, like the cook, will be a skilled worker at her trade, and will labor with the aid of the most advanced, mechanical devices. ”

“ To keep a house and grounds in good order, purchase every article for daily use, keep the wardrobes of half a dozen human beings in proper trim, take the children to dentists, shoemakers, and different schools, or find teachers at home, altogether made sufficient work to keep one brain busy, as well as all the hands I could impress into the service. Then, too, the novelty of housekeeping had passed away, and much that was once attractive in domestic life was now irksome. ”

“ Some extra cooking, marketing and menu making, some adornment of the house and laying out of fresh table linen will be desirable and necessary; but kitchen cleaning, the changing of bed linen, or the making up of weekly accounts, should be appointed for some other day in the week.
If the housewife has servants to help her, she can have more work done on Saturday, but even then, she will guard against having things done which [111] make the house seem unrestful, or which occupy her.
Arrangements for "days out" are merely adjustments by which one person's work is done by others. ”

“ Beyond the overwhelming cares of the table the other home industries involve the care and replenishment of furniture and clothes. Hour after hour, day after day, the child sees his mother devoting her entire life to attendance upon these things—the daily cleaning, the weekly cleaning, the spring and fall cleaning, the sewing and mending at all times. ”

“ The arrangement of rooms, and the proper supply of conveniences, are other points, in which, economy of labor and comfort is often disregarded. For example, a kitchen will be in one story, a sitting-room in another, and the nursery in a third. Nothing is more injurious, to a feeble woman, than going up and down stairs; and yet, in order to gain two large parlors, to show to a few friends, or to strangers, immense sacrifices of health, comfort, and money, are made. If it be possible, the nursery, sitting-parlor, and kitchen, ought always to be on the same floor. ”

“ Really, the first article of furniture which should be brought into the house is a well-equipped tool-chest, and the first room which should be fitted up is the workshop. A vast amount of labor will be saved thereby in unpacking, adjusting, repairing, and polishing the old and the new household articles, so that life in the new home be begun under the favorable auspices of the great household deity, the Goddess of Order. ”

“ The great tendency of the day in building is fortunately toward increased simplicity and toward a quality which we may call "livableness." This tendency we shall do well to fix in our teaching.
In general, the good house is plain, substantial, convenient, and suited to its surroundings. Efficient housekeeping is largely conditioned by such very practical details as closets and pantries, the relative positions of sink and stove, the height of work tables and shelves, the distance from range to dining table, the ease or difficulty of cleaning woodwork, laundry facilities, and the like. ”

“ A yet stranger business was that of a ghostly servant-maid, who used to be heard in the kitchen at deepest midnight, grinding coffee, cooking, ironing,—performing, in short, all kinds of domestic labour—although no traces of anything accomplished could be detected the next morning. ”

“ Special skill in arranging rooms, hanging pictures, preparing for lunches, teas, or other social entertainments, repairing furniture and wardrobes, fine laundry-work, special table-service, etc., could be performed for housekeepers by those who retain their own homes and yet are able and anxious to give a few hours daily to outside work. The exchange, through a bureau of information, could accomplish much for both those wishing work and those wishing workers, as well as in a business way for itself. ”

“ The wife and mother divides her time between nursery, sewing-room, and kitchen, while school-children are out of the house nearly as much as they are in it—at least during their waking hours. But no matter how widely the little flock may be scattered by their different employments, always twice and often three times a [Pg 2] day they are all together in this common rallying-place of the home. ”

“ So, examine an hourful of household work, and you will find it all alive with plans, contrivances, forethoughts, afterthoughts, happy thoughts, and countless trifling experiences, minute, it may be, but full of animation. The puddle is often set in commotion by a passing breeze, or by a stone dropping in. Well, household work, too, has its breezes of hurry and flurry, besides its regular trade-winds, which blow morning, noon, and night. ”

“ Labour Making.—A House-Hunting Experience.
"It has fallen to my lot of late to inspect quite a large number of furnished houses and flats, and although my peregrinations have been limited to dwellings in what are known as 'good situations,' [76] at fairly high rents, I have found such dirt and disorder as surely should only be excused by dire poverty.
"As a general rule the sitting-rooms were more or less clean, but in few cases did bathrooms and lavatories, kitchen and servants' premises fulfil the pleasant anticipations induced by the sight of the drawing-room. ”

“ The subjects included are the principles and processes involved in cookery, laundry-work, and household management, the last comprising such diverse matters as the selection and furnishing of various types of houses, repairing furniture, the choice and care of household linens, simple upholstery, management of income, first-aid, home-nursing, and the care of infants and young children. Many training-schools arrange for their students to gain experience in a crêche or similar institution, and to visit homes of various types. ”

“ We have the regular daily labour of serving meals and "clearing up," we have the regular daily labour of keeping the home in order; then we have the washing day, ironing day, baking day, and sweeping day. Some make a special mending day also. This division, best observed by the most competent, is a heroic monument to the undying efforts of the human worker to specialise. But we have left out one, and the most important one, of our home industries—the care of children. ”