p. 15 | PRACTICAL HOUSEKEEPING by Mrs. B. R. Nordyke

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 31, 1906

PRACTICAL HOUSEKEEPING.

By Mrs. B. R. Nordyke

ALL mothers the world over should be interested in practical, systematic housekeeping.

We find demanding our attention such home duties as housekeeping, the preparation of wholesome meals, making home neat and attractive, and maintaining a cheerful face and conversation. Then there are social duties, charitable work of various kinds, and self culture, moral and intellectual, for the sake of our families as well as for ourselves. And if the children are still young, first, last, and middle, the care of them.

All of these duties are laid before us, and every day and all day long we are trying to assign to each its share of time and attention.

We are living in a fast age. We are driven and hurried with work, often feel overpowered with the crowd of little engagements, little duties, little cares, with most of all the feeling that there is nothing to show for all the labor, that we have not done what we meant to do, that so much has been aimless and unprofitable. Is this the ideal life we want to live? Is there not some serener, nobler way? some way that perhaps we think a dear friend has attained, or whose steady, well-ordered course we look to with longing.

Whatever our work may be, it demands our best efforts. Order is Heaven's first law. Order brings its own reward, as a labor-saving machine. So we must have system and order for our foundation in housekeeping. First of all, let us ask wisdom from on high to guide us in these duties, that all may be done to the glory of God.

Importance of Arrangement.

I will suggest some remedies, some ways of making time. My first is that there should be an endeavor after system and method in arrangement. That the day's work should be planned beforehand, the day mapped out, as it were. The plan, of course, is of little value if not adhered to. Let this plan include a time for rest, for reading, for outdoor exercise, be the moments ever so few. And, if only for the sake of order and method, keep as nearly as possible to your plans. If disturbed, and things seem to turn topsy turvy, let us yield gracefully to the inevitable, but, like the stream, wind around the obstacle and again pursue our course.

My second remedy is to keep our standards within the limits of a reasonable possibility. Don't try to give all of your energies to your housekeeping, that your dwelling may be the choicest, best arranged, your cooking the most delicate and varied, your hospitality abundant, your calls all duly made, keeping up with the news of the day, and rubbing bright the intellectual powers with the friction of fresh reading and study. Don't think to do all of this and yet keep out of the retreat for the nervously prostrated. Rather leave a margin of time between, leave spaces for rest, cut off some of the unnecessary calls, the formal acquaintances, and keep your plans well within the bounds of possibility. Face the facts and arrange your affairs accordingly.

The Wearisome Usual Way.

We must not allow our occupations to be at the mercy of other people. We are so hurried and worried the day does not seem half long enough for us to accomplish the work we have undertaken. I suppose that many a day's record would read like this: A hasty bit of housekeeping, a little sweeping and dusting, a trip to town for shopping, some friend drops in, or you receive a formal caller. Little things fill the brief spaces between, and lo, the day is gone. The hour for the good man to arrive has come. The children are to be fed and put to bed. You seem to have done little, and yet feel tired. "Tired to death!" we often say. A crowd of undone things looms up before us, and the only relief is found in closing our eyes until another morning brings a repetition of the story.

All the work done is harmless, even good. So let us not weary in well-doing. Some one has well said that the kitchen is the heart of the home, and certain it is that no home can be perfectly comfortable in which the kitchen is not agreeably adjusted to its work.

The Importance of Cooking.

In cooking, the food should be prepared in a simple and healthful manner, so that it will be found more palatable as well as more wholesome because of its simplicity.

Cooking is no mean science, and it is one of the most essential in practical life. Some like the employment, while to others it is a painful drudgery. Let us not be discouraged in this work. We may not be able to realize that perfection in the performance of woman's duties as housewife as soon as we expected, for it can only be obtained by a long process of education. We can not expect to plant seeds to-day and reap fruit to-morrow. Let us carry to that effort the steady underlying determination to do this work as an angel of God might do it, and as Herbert says, "the meanest work becomes divine."

Let us regulate our lives in such a way as not to lose all of the sweetness of the present, while we strive after that which is beyond.