Method in Housekeeping
By Mrs. F. M. Colby
MANY housekeepers fail, there is no doubt, more from lack of system than anything else. Lack of early training and experience in most cases accounts for this failing. By far too large a number of housekeepers have little knowledge of the business until they marry. Few girls take kindly to the kitchen; they prefer to do fancy work, play on the piano, or sit in the parlor with their best finery on, rather than soil their delicate digits with flour, dust, or dishwater. When at last they “get a man,” they hurry into the kitchen, take a few lessons in concocting nice cake and cookies, and baking pies, and graduate full-fledged cooks. The fact is they have not learned to cook at all, and know nothing of housekeeping. As a result the first years of their married life are rendered more or less miserable by this want of knowledge. The many perhaps succeed in a measure in the end; some never learn. They do things better than this in Germany, and the new world is not so old but that it can learn something from the very old. German cooking and German habits of eating are very unlike ours. Many of their dishes would be repulsive to us, but it is a good custom among the German girls that all must learn how to cook. In that country there is a department of industry designed especially for women, and it constitutes the chief glory in that land of scholars and scientists. No young lady is regarded as having a finished education unless she has spent at least one year in the house of some good family learning the art of housekeeping. If you understand things and have a method yourself, you can soon teach a competent, tractable servant. No woman can teach what she does not know, so every young housekeeper must perforce learn to teach; that is, to keep house. The selection of food itself is a vast subject, and an interesting one, too, and to be able to get the best results from the raw material must of necessity be an art. The housewife always should have a threefold aim in her culinary method—economy, palatableness, and wholesomeness. In families where the income is limited, and only a small sum can be devoted to the cuisine, it is something of an art to keep the table expenses within that limit. The great secret is to have the principal dishes of comparatively cheap materials. Thus if you are obliged to indulge in an expensive dish, make the others in use the same day less than the usual cost, in this way averaging the daily expenditures. A friend of mine, who has a servant, and insists upon having her routine followed, has the order in which the work is to be done written on a card, and hung in a prominent place in the kitchen. This helps to jog an irregular memory. First, after the girl has dressed herself and aired her room, she is to open the house; secondly, clean the steps and walks; thirdly, light the fire, sift the ashes, and bring in the day’s supply of coal and wood; fourthly, dust the rooms, and set the table; fifthly, get breakfast and serve. After breakfast comes the dishwashing and the tidying up for the day. Then the regular work of the day follows. Of course, this order is optional and can be varied, but have a system of some kind, and do not trust to haphazard. Order is heaven’s first law, and nowhere is it more necessary than in housekeeping. Order is thrift, economy, health, happiness; lack of system is waste, hurry, unthrift, unhappiness. There is no doubt that many homes are broken up by a want of system on the part of the housewife. More depends upon this than one may suppose at first thought. Home making is pre-eminently woman’s work. In order to best succeed there must be method and thrift. This much depends upon the bread giver, that is, the lady of the house, man’s helpmeet. If you had lived in the days of chivalry, and were to send your husband to the wars, you would have laced on his armor tightly, not loosely. Man, to-day, does not march off to a crusade, but every day he goes forth to struggle among his kind in the world’s battle. His house is his armor. See to it that it is kept polished and free from any specks of rust, and its rivets all tight. Do not suffer the honor of manhood to fall by any weakness, any carelessness, of your own. It is best to learn early that while your picture, or song, or story may prove13a failure, a dainty, cheerful home is a continual poem that will attract and charm even the rudest and most ignorant of men.—Mrs. F. M. Colby, in the New York Observer.