Part 1

A-B-C OF HOUSEKEEPING

BY CHRISTINE TERHUNE HERRICK

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK & LONDON

HARPER’S A-B-C SERIES

A-B-C OF HOUSEKEEPING. By CHRISTINE TERHUNE HERRICK

A-B-C OF ELECTRICITY. By WILLIAM H. MEADOWCROFT

A-B-C OF GARDENING. By EBEN E. REXFORD

A-B-C OF GOOD FORM. By ANNE SEYMOUR

16mo, Cloth

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HARPER & BROTHERS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED MAY, 1915

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. CHOOSING A HOME 1

II. FURNISHING THE HOME 13

III. THE TABLE 26

IV. CONCERNING HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTS 38

V. THE HOUSE IN ORDER 50

VI. HYGIENE AND PLUMBING 63

VII. THE HOME WITHOUT A SERVANT 75

VIII. IN THE LAUNDRY 88

IX. WHEN COMPANY COMES 99

X. THE CHILD IN THE HOUSE 111

A-B-C OF HOUSEKEEPING

I

CHOOSING A HOME

The choice of a home is usually decided by the pocket-book. Other considerations carry weight, but matters of convenience, preference, and location are lighter in the scale than the sum one can afford to pay for a shelter. What proportion this will bear to the rest of the income must be settled by each one for himself after an estimate of the other expenses which must be met.

When a whole house is taken and the cost of heating and the charge of the outer premises, as well as the entire care of the place, have to be assumed by the tenant, one-fifth or one-sixth of the income is all he should give for rent. The price of coal, the wage to be paid the person who is to clean snow from the sidewalk in winter and dirt from it the rest of the year, look after the furnace and ashes, put out garbage; the consideration of the services of the one who must sweep front steps, halls, and stairs; the small repairs every house demands from time to time, will all have to be added to the sum devoted to rent. While the tenant and his wife may perform part or all of these duties, it is only reasonable that they should understand how much they are saving in actual cash, and comprehend that what they economize in this respect is the equivalent of what they would pay to the landlord were they to occupy an apartment in a flat building.

This state of affairs justifies the man who lives in an apartment in allowing a larger proportion of his income for his rooftree. The details to which I have referred just now are included in the price paid for a flat, to say nothing of the reduction of work when all the living is on one floor, when stairs do not exist for the housekeeper, and her responsibilities end at her own front door.

The selection of a location is determined by the make-up of the family and the man’s place and time of business. These considerations must be taken into account before the house-hunting is begun. Distance from the center of the town usually means a reduced rent, better air, and more attractive surroundings. To counterbalance these are the long journey back and forth, night and morning, the cost of transportation, inability to come home for the midday meal. As a rule these drawbacks do not equal the advantages to be gained by a home remote from the business district.

In order to accomplish the strenuous task of finding a home with the least outlay of labor and worry--for in any case there will be enough of both these commodities--as much planning as possible should be done in advance. The number of rooms necessary should be settled, as well as the sum which can be paid for rent. The sections of the city which are suitable should be studied and, if feasible, traversed, so as to get a general idea of them. Sometimes even a cursory inspection of a neighborhood decides the would-be tenant against it.

Then, when lists of houses or apartments have been culled from advertisements and secured from real-estate agents the actual work of house-hunting is begun. One resolution to be laid down at first and adhered to positively is not to go over a house or an apartment if the first glance shows it to be undesirable. When six rooms are the limit for a flat there is no more sense in inspecting a ten-room apartment than there is in scanning a house at twelve hundred a year if seven hundred and fifty is the extreme price that can be paid for rent. Such examination not only consumes time and strength, but it also provokes dissatisfaction with smaller and cheaper quarters which may be seen afterward.

A few essentials must be fixed in the mind, to which any house or flat should conform. It must be light--not a dim twilight illumination, but, if possible, sunshine, either direct or reflected--in the living and sleeping rooms. The kitchen must not be a dark corner, not only because such work-places affect the health of those who occupy them, but also because of the additional charge there will be for gas or electricity burned by day as well as by night.

The matter of heat must next be considered. When a house is taken the rent is usually higher if there is a first-class heating arrangement included. Old-fashioned appliances mean lower rent, but they also require increased work on the part of the tenant or servant and are often unsatisfactory in the amount of warmth they supply. A good furnace or steam-heating plant may add to the actual sum of the rent, but it is generally cheaper in the long run. The quantity of coal burned by such a plant should be ascertained before concluding to take the house.

All these questions are eliminated for the man who engages a steam-heated apartment, but he may change the place and keep the pain. The comfort of the entire winter depends upon a sufficient amount of heat, and radiators should be examined and a number of direct inquiries put so as to make sure that adequate warmth may be secured in bitter weather. The time when the heat is turned on and off should also be learned, since it is quite possible to shiver and suffer in September and May as well as at Christmas-time.

Plumbing is always to be investigated closely, whether in a house or an apartment. No amount of gilding and marble fittings can compensate for cheap plumbing and a poor supply of hot water. The dweller in a house is dependent upon his own kitchen fire for hot water, as a general thing, but in nearly all apartment-houses the hot water is declared to be supplied from the cellar. Even in high-priced flats hot water is not always ready, and queries as to this are to be voiced before the lease is signed. More than that, care must be taken to make sure that the plumbing is in perfect repair and is not likely to give way at inconvenient seasons.

All these details are essential and there are others little less important. The quantity of closet room, the pantries, the facilities for washing and drying clothes, the quiet of the house as assured or banished by the character of the neighbors and other tenants, the cleanliness of paint and paper, must all be looked after.

No matter what inducements in the way of lowered rent are offered, it is always a mistake to go into a house which is not absolutely clean. This does not mean only that it should be swept and scoured before taking possession of it, but that paint and paper should be refreshed. The latter is not to be done by pasting fresh paper on over that which already covers the walls, as is the custom of many decorators--a custom connived at by landlords because of the saving of expense it implies. The incoming tenant must insist that the walls shall be scraped clean before the new paper is hung and that fresh paint shall be used wherever it is needed. It is hard enough to keep a house spotless in the best of circumstances, and when one enters a dwelling and establishes himself in the midst of the dirt of the departed tenants the task is the most discouraging that can be undertaken.

Moreover, vermin must be banished. This is an easy thing to say, but hardly a housekeeper of middle age can be found in the length and breadth of the country who has not had a struggle with the pest in some form or other. In one home it may have been cockroaches or water-bugs; in another it may have been black or red ants; in many it has been that worst and most dreaded of plagues, bedbugs. Sporadic cases of any of these may be conquered without much difficulty, but when once the enemy is intrenched in the home it seems almost as if the only way to get rid of them finally is by burning the house down!

On all considerations, therefore, the house-hunter must make sure that vermin are not established in the new dwelling. If there is even a possibility of their presence she must insist upon radical measures being taken before she will contemplate entering the house. When the pests have been there and have been driven out it is still wise to take reasonable precautions against their return. No picture-moldings should be tolerated in the bedrooms, since these make a lurking-place for insects. The walls of sleeping-rooms should be painted rather than papered, and dark cupboards, drawers, etc., should be scoured out, disinfected, and painted.

I have dwelt upon the need of such care in the bedrooms, but it is no less essential in the kitchen and pantries. While bedbugs occasionally get a foothold even here, the usual plague is the roach or Croton-bug. He is said to be inoffensive and he does not possess the deadly odor of the _Cimex lectularius_, but apart from the damage he undoubtedly does in nibbling table-linen and the like, he is an exceedingly unpleasant housemate. He frequents uncovered garbage-pails, bread and cake boxes which have been left open, wire safes with imperfectly closing doors, and the provision compartments of refrigerators; and it does not tend to improve the appetite to have him pop out of the cereal carton or run from under the cold roast.

So every precaution should be taken against such creatures as well as against mice and rats before renting the house. Mice-holes should be choked up with broken glass and dusted with red pepper; boiling water should, when possible, be poured down the runways of insects; borax scattered about their haunts. After that, strict care in the way of keeping food put away closely, pains to see that no crumbs or drippings are allowed on the floor or the shelves, and rigorous cleanliness of every vessel which has been employed in cooking are the best agencies against the return of the adversaries.

Other points should be looked to about the kitchen. The stove is the chief consideration after light, cleanliness, and pantry space.

Locality has much to do in determining by what means cooking shall be done. In the country, where gas is not and wood or coal is burned, a good range, suitable for either, must be depended upon. Of such ranges there are many, and there are divers items to be regarded in each make. The size and fashion of the fuel-box is one. The average kitchen stove will burn a ton of coal in from five to seven weeks, the time contingent not only upon the care of the cook, but upon the size of the range. One should be selected with a maximum of heat for a minimum of fuel consumption. The range with an upper oven is easier for the cook, who by its means is spared constant stooping and bending, but some ranges with the upper oven are said to burn more fuel.

No range or stove should be considered which does not provide adequate means for heating water. When there is running hot water in the house a boiler is usually arranged at the side of the stove, but in the country, where the water must be drawn by a pump or from the well and put into the reservoir by the pailful, a large enough receptacle must be furnished to make it possible to have the supply for the day all poured in at once. In this way the man of the house may attend to this heavy duty in the morning or at night, so that no woman may have to strain her back by filling and lifting pails of water during the day.

The coal or wood stove in the country may be supplemented by an oil or gasolene stove. Of these there is a good variety, each possessing its own special merits, but they are not to be considered in renting a house, since they are purchased by the tenant, not supplied by the landlord.

In every large city, and in many small towns, cookery by gas has superseded coal and wood almost entirely. The cleanliness and convenience of gas in cooking, while inferior to those of electricity, are yet so far ahead of the other means to which we have been accustomed that the amount of time and trouble the gas saves is incalculable. The stove is generally owned by the local company, who install it and keep it in order, but in some places effort is made by the landlord to charge the tenant for the use of the stove. Common usage will have to determine the tenant’s course in the matter, but as a rule the stove is included in the rent and it is worth while for the man renting the house to make an attempt to secure this concession.

There is a difference in gas-stoves and an up-to-date kind should be selected, fitted with an upper oven as well as a lower one, and possessing such features as a low flame for simmering, a plate-warmer, the latest make of broiler, etc. The inexperienced housekeeper is frequently imposed upon and the old-fashioned stove is foisted off upon her. This should be guarded against when the house is rented.

The inside of the house has received principal attention in this consideration of the rented home. The outer surroundings usually compel a measure of thought and are obvious enough to force themselves upon even the uncritical observer. Yet there are a few points worth emphasizing.

The character of the neighborhood in a country or a small town generally proclaims itself and the details that must be noticed have to do with sanitary conditions, the presence or absence of such nuisances as unsavory factories or businesses, the vicinity of noisy occupations, the over-close proximity to public schools with the accompanying racket at certain hours of the day, etc. In the city the drawbacks may be less self-assertive but no less objectionable. Before renting a house in a street it is always wise to learn something of the people who occupy the adjoining dwellings, to make sure that there are no unpleasing features connected with the section and so insure oneself against future annoyances.

II

FURNISHING THE HOME

The first details to be regarded in furnishing a house have to do with the woodwork and walls.

Sometimes the landlord has settled these and the tenant has no choice. This is especially likely to be the case with the woodwork. If it is a cheap and unattractive variety of “hardwood,” so called, or is painted in imitation of hardwood, it is difficult to induce the owner to change this. When he will consent to paint to please the tenant selection should be made either of white or of a soft, neutral tint which will not conflict with any color of furniture. The painting which simulates the graining of a natural wood is distinctly bad and should never be tolerated except when it cannot be changed.

The kitchen should be painted throughout, walls as well as woodwork, and in some good light color, such as buff; this will give the room a bright, cheery look, and the steam which accumulates on the walls of a kitchen can be scrubbed off the paint as it cannot be from a kalsomined or papered wall.

In choosing papers, the tenant should bear in mind that they will have to be lived with for a long time, and should pick out such as can stand familiar association without becoming objectionable. Striking patterns and assertive hues should be avoided. When two or three rooms open into one another it is well to have them papered alike and thus avoid the patchy effect produced by several small rooms all with different wall-coverings. In this day cheap papers which are also pretty and artistic can easily be found and it is worth while to bestow a good deal of time and thought upon their choice.

If possible, all painting and papering should be done and the workmen out of the house before the tenant moves in. This plan permits the rooms to be cleaned and saves double toil to the housekeeper.

The furniture of the house does not always lie within the tenant’s power of selection. Few are the homes which are freshly furnished throughout by a young couple. Almost invariably there are “left-overs” and “hand-downs” which are presented to the newly married pair, and they are fortunate indeed if such relics are desirable and not discarded pieces which no one else wants.

When even a portion of the furniture is to be bought, it should not be purchased at random. “Sets” of any sort are best avoided. For the parlor of a modest establishment, wicker and willow articles are far better than the conspicuous styles which attain a sudden popularity and then become old-fashioned and out of date. Comfort should be considered in every item chosen and nothing taken merely because it looks well or is reasonable in price. While sets are deprecated, a room need not look like a harlequin collection. A certain uniformity of style and coloring is to be studied, that the apartment may produce a harmonious effect. Odd pieces, such as a deep arm-chair, a fancy tea-table, an attractive set of book-shelves, are entirely suitable and will not strike an incongruous note in the general surroundings.

Bare floors are more used now than carpets, and rugs may make islands of safety here and there on the smooth surface. When fine antique rugs have not been given and cannot be bought, the best choice is from among the many good varieties of inoffensive native rugs. Or a rug may be made of a quiet-toned carpet, the breadths sewed together to form a square of the size desired, and surrounded with a border to match. Good druggets or art-squares may be found for the dining-room, matting or bare floors and rugs will serve for the bedrooms, and hall and stairs are to be covered with the runners which come for these purposes or with a neat stair carpet in quiet colors and pattern.

The dining-room furniture demands a good deal of deliberation. It is a mistake to buy it in too great a hurry and so to be laden down with something one does not really want. The table and sideboard are usually purchased for a lifetime, and it is better to put up with makeshifts for a while on the chance of finding something really good and satisfactory than to buy in a hurry and repent at leisure.

The wood of the dining-room furniture is not so much a matter of choice in many cases as of necessity. One must buy what one can. Every one cannot have mahogany or Circassian walnut, and it is a comfort that so many of the less costly woods are made up into excellent designs. It is much better to buy a good article of a low-priced material than a cheap variety of the more expensive woods. Oak, ash, cherry, birch, gumwood and other native growths may be found in pieces of excellent lines which will satisfy even an artistic eye. When there is money enough to get all that is wanted for the dining-room, a serving-table and a china-closet of some kind may be added to the sideboard, dining-table, and chairs that rank as essentials.

The requirements of the kitchen will receive more detailed consideration later on. Among the must-haves are the range, to which reference has already been made; a good kitchen table, supplied either with a zinc top or with a shelf to draw out and use as a bread-board; a refrigerator; a wire meat-safe; liberal pantry room, shelf room, and, if possible, a kitchen cabinet.

When the bedrooms are to be furnished the same simplicity must be followed which is recommended for the other apartments. The less furniture the bedroom contains the better, from a sanitary point of view. The Biblical inventory of a bed and a table, a stool and a candlestick, had much to commend it. The bedstead should be of iron or iron and brass; the dresser, table, etc., of white enamel or some light-colored wood. The heavy pieces our grandparents took for granted are fortunately out of vogue in a modest household. A box-couch may be included in the furnishing of the room, or what is known as a utility-box for holding shirtwaists and the like, and it is to be hoped there is either abundant closet room or an extra wardrobe or clothes-press.

Such are the large and important furnishings of the house. These may be reduced or increased, simplified or elaborated, in accordance with the preference and powers of the owners of the dwelling.

Other articles, hardly less essential, have to be considered. Take the question of draperies, for instance.

Within the past few years the fashion has grown of having two and sometimes three pairs of curtains for each window--inner hangings of lace or some similar fabric, outer draperies of rich and heavy goods, and frequently these will be supplemented by sash-curtains close against the pane, to say nothing of one or two shades to the window.

This may answer for the woman who is at a loss what to do with her money and can devise no better use to make of it than a multiplication of her possessions, but the custom is not one the young housekeeper need feel it incumbent upon her to follow. One shade of a neutral tint at each window of her living-rooms, a pair of curtains of some material which can be readily washed, are all that she requires. For the principal rooms a good Madras, a pretty scrim, a pleasing though inexpensive lace (all fabrics which will look well after careful washing) will meet every necessity and present an attractive appearance.

In the chambers two shades may be demanded by those who wish to have a dark room for sleeping, but short white curtains of wash-goods, or sash-curtains, are sufficient here, and something of the same sort, but possibly a little better in quality, can be procured for the dining-room. As a rule plain, straight curtains, without ruffles, are not only more easily laundered, but look better after they are done up than those pranked out with frills.