Chapter 1
, Verse 1.
This may not look like a technical chapter--like one with a lot of mechanical information--and it really isn’t--it intends to get behind technicalities and be a radical (don’t fear the word) over-hauling of women’s opinion on the disestablishment of old forms of kitchen usage by very slight changes in kitchen arrangement.
For years kitchens have been built with closets for kitchen pots built in “below the belt” with pernickety little doors with cranky little locks. For years these closets gave the kitchen denizen or housekeeper herself all the rhythmic exercise necessary to the development of backache and nerves and sense of touch. Into these closets you had to feel for the pan you wanted and then often had the musical treat of hearing them crash down behind something, and you must needs kneel in prayerful posture to extract the necessary pot or pan.
If there were ever a condition in the kitchen so uncongenial to the Woman-Doing-Her-Own-Work, it’s this hidden pot and pan game. If the carpenter has learned how to save his back, why not the housewife, who not only does cooking but also a hundred other things.
Avaunt ancient superstitions and affections about dark low-set closets and come out in the open on high with your utensils and whether you have a maid or not, some one’s back will be preserved, if not for higher for more things!
THE ARGUMENT FOR HANGING
I have written the above in the past tense--but it is really existent to-day in the majority of homes. “Why,” I asked a splendid housekeeper, “don’t you seal up those dark receptacles and hang up your utensils?”
“Gracious,” said she, “if I hang them up they’d get all dusty and it wouldn’t be sanitary. Ridiculous,” quoth she!
“But, my dear friend, do you think those dark closets are dust-proof and do you think darkness is a germ killer?”
The truth is these closets, away from light, are almost ominous!
“But,” continued my friend, “if I decided to hang my things up, where could I do it in this tiny kitchen? It’s all right in modern kitchens, but here it is impossible!”
Here she touched a universal note--in fact, two notes--the old fashioned kitchen, and no room. Two notes upon which the housekeeper plays monotonous choruses to excuse modern advances.
“My dear friend,” snapped I--“once upon a time I ran an experiment station in a tenement kitchen--the kitchen was four feet wide by ten feet long--in it were tubs, stove, glass closets under which were the pot and pan receptacles. I was too busy to stoop every time I needed anything so I had the carpenter nail on the wall over the tubs and over the sink a piece of wood three inches wide (this will go in even the tiniest kitchen) into which I screwed hooks, and there I hung every tool I used. Later I had a shelf nailed above it and made my work a smooth performance. I felt like a carpenter working at my bench with all my tool ‘en plein air.’” And I went on to say, as I had a good opportunity, there is no reason why your kitchen can’t be made like a tool chest. No man would tolerate breaking his very strong back to get a pan, or his nerve to pull out a drawer, which so often sticks, for a can opener! Not he.
Could you imagine a carpenter, a butcher, or any one else, who worked at everything requiring sharp tools, or fine quality tools, jumbling them all up together in a drawer that moves in and out, provoking an earthquake rhythm among the tools, or a little closet in which everything is banged to pieces and has to be groped for?
GOOD TOOLS, GOOD TREATMENT
No!--No one could. Because no tools will last under such treatment and good tools are worth keeping--and the very best are reduced to nothingness if not kept well. It’s a case, pure and simple, of noblesse oblige.
There is a good housekeeping reason, too, for things to be hung up, and this is: when things are in plain sight they become a constant curse to the cook or to the beholder if they are not scrupulously clean. In the kitchen of “suspended animation” you are pretty sure to have clean and spotless pots and pans, to have knives whose edges are not nicked, and to have egg beaters and mayonnaise mixers that are not so out of kilter that you get nervous prostration in coming in contact with a scrambled egg or Russian dressing. These are facts to grapple with.
To prove it, just visit a man-manned restaurant or hotel kitchen some time--and there you will see the brightest, cleanest looking copper, aluminum, nickel, etc., etc., pots and pans hung up on racks near operating centers--ready to be used. If this were anti-hygiene the Board of Health would intervene. Anyhow, water is at hand in a kitchen and dust is easily swabbed out!
Of course, in the new kitchen, racks are built, and you have no choice, so you accept the pleasanter condition without cavil.
In this connection I can’t forbear to mention the apartment garbage can which owns a hygienic lid which sits a foot above the floor and for every useless egg shell to be thrown away the worker must needs bend double to remove the lid, empty her plate, put on the lid and raise herself up. Time and energy lost. This could easily be on a little stool under a common kitchen table in which a round hole could be cut, or alongside the garbage creating table and the stuff slid into it, if it can be bought with a sliding lid. There is also a pail whose lid is lifted by a pedal worked by the foot.
HANGING WITHIN REACH
To be sure, this does not mean to hang up the kitchen table or the stove, but it does mean to keep things, that are used hundreds of times every day, within the reach of your hands without superfluous stooping and bending. It means, too, that cleaning utensils, such as brooms and dusters and rags, if hung in separate racks in or outside of a closet, will live longer in good condition than if hurled into a corner of a closet where they get smashed and have their one hundred per cent. utility diminished.
Where a culinary tool decreases in efficiency, the human element effort is necessarily increased, and unnecessary fatigue ensues--then: sloppy preparation of food and then, dyspepsia.
Now, don’t you see the inevitable result of slipshod kitchen arrangement?
If, for any reason, you like closets for pots and pans, have glass doors on them and have them no lower than thirty-two inches from the floor. This way you don’t have to stoop, the light penetrates, and an arrangement like this has only the opening and shutting of the door in its disfavor and the fitting in of the utensils each time and their possible denting. Even the finest utensils will dent with improper provocation. Open shelves are very convenient, too, if you do not care to hang things up.
If you have a niche for each tool, the work becomes almost play.
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