THE LABOUR-SAVING HOUSE AS IT CAN BE
I
It was an Irishman who advised, "If ye can't be aisy, be as aisy as ye
can," and his advice was good.
Thus, if you cannot have an ideal house, have a home which is as nearly
ideal as possible, so let us consider the house as we generally find
it, and see what can be done to improve it.
Most houses built prior to the last ten years seem to have been planned
with the express desire of providing an unnecessary amount of hard
work for the unfortunate persons who inhabit them. Fifty years ago
labour was cheap and plentiful, and ideas as to hygiene stranger even
than many which still obtain. Now, however, we do know that fresh air
and light are as necessary to our well-being as sound food. This fact
is shown in an interesting fashion in Mrs. Pember Reeves' admirable
book, "Round About a Pound a Week," in which she speaks eloquently of
the way in which "basement families" deteriorate in health, although
the children may have more food than those who live in higher, airier
quarters.
Basement Houses.
Ignorance of the value of light and air, cheap labour and dear land
were no doubt the causes of basement houses, and to this day, although
labour is dear and the cost of feeding and keeping each servant has
increased, it is no uncommon thing for a housekeeper to remark, "I have
to keep an extra servant because of the basement," and perhaps another
maid is employed because of the coals and stairs.
Where the income is ample, the extra labour bill is of little
importance (speaking from the employer's point of view), but
householders of moderate and small means are rapidly discovering that
labour-making houses are not for them; that it is an economy to pay, if
needs be, a rather higher rent and to live in a healthy, light, airy
house, so planned that all unnecessary toil is abolished, and with it
the cost of much cleaning material, chimney-sweeping, whitewashing, etc.
In many cases, landlords have found it impossible to let their gloomy,
inconvenient dwellings to tenants of the desired kind, and what was
a "good neighbourhood" has sunk by degrees until the houses are
inhabited by members of that unfortunate class who are forced to take
any rooms they can obtain, and only too often pay a high price for bad
accommodation. I am not in a position to advise on the management of
house property, but I cannot but think that in many cases it would pay
the owners to modernise the houses they have to let rather than let
them deteriorate.
As I write, I have in my mind's eye a certain neighbourhood in London,
once fashionable, now inhabited by "nice" people, whose means make it
impossible for them to pay high rents. But this neighbourhood is slowly
but surely deteriorating, and rents are sinking, simply because the
houses are of a kind that necessitate at least three servants being
employed, in addition to a nurse if there are young children. With less
than three servants these houses could not be kept clean or warm.
A Typical Labour-Making House.
The accommodation in most of these streets and squares consists of:
_Basement_ (deep and rather dark).--Kitchen, pantry, servants' hall at
back (generally very dark), lavatory, coal and wine cellars; front area
(dustbin stands here), backyard; steep and dark stairs to ground floor.
_Ground Floor._--Dining-room, smoking-room, and third small dark room,
lavatory, narrow hall, and steep stairs leading to small half-landing.
_First Floor._--Double drawing-room. Above, seven bedrooms, one
lavatory, and one bathroom.
All coal for the house must be carried up one, two, or three, and
possibly four, flights of steep stairs.
There is a large kitchen range, with flues to clean twice a week, as
in order to keep up the hot-water supply much coal is burned, and the
flues become very dirty.
The chimney must also be swept every two months. Other chimneys must
be swept twice a year; if much used, three times a year. All food and
table utensils must be carried up and downstairs three times a day, and
when lunch and dinner are in progress a servant must run up and down
with clean and dirty dishes, etc.
Washstands are used in each bedroom, and hot water taken to these rooms
three or four times a day. There is but one bathroom and upstairs
lavatory; therefore there is a good deal of stair work when doing the
rooms. If there is a nursery, the nursery meals have to be carried up
and down.
Each time the hall-door bell rings, a maid must run upstairs to answer
it, and visitors and tea in the drawing-room necessitate more journeys
up and down, and the carrying of a heavy tray.
Now, with a house of this description there are certainly two ways of
converting it into a labour-saving dwelling.
A Labour-Making House Converted.
If the basement is deep and incurably dark, by far the best plan is to
dispense with it altogether so far as living-rooms are concerned, using
it merely for cellars and box-room.
"But," says the householder, "there will now be no back door. The
tradesmen will all have to come to the front door." They will. But
tradesmen call chiefly in the morning, and the few who come in the
afternoon might be instructed to go to the area door, to which the
dustman would also go, while the coals (if any are used) would be
delivered through the pavement coal-shoot as before.
Arranging thus, the house proper begins on the ground floor. The
large front room is the dining-room as before, and the double doors
between it and the erstwhile smoking-room should be plastered up on
the smoking-room side, for under the new arrangement the smoking-room
becomes the kitchen, and the small third room the pantry. The kitchen
will not be large, but neither a gas nor an electric cooker takes up
much space.
Now comes the question whether the hot-water system shall be worked by
a coke or a gas circulator. The latter gives even less trouble than
the former, but it may prove too costly in use. A coke furnace needs
to be stoked about three times a day, and is very easy to light. The
furnace might be placed in the kitchen or in the basement, and in it
can be burned practically all the rubbish, thus doing away with that
otherwise nasty necessity the dustbin, which in many parts of London
the authorities refuse to empty more than once a week.
Kitchen and pantry must be fitted with sinks, and there should be a
little gas fire, work-table, and armchair in the pantry for the use of
the house-parlourmaid.
Make your head save your hands.
This has been said millions of times, but there is still need to go
on saying it.
II
Two servants can easily do the work of a house such as this will
become, and the kitchen premises are only suitable for two servants.
Extra help, however, can always be employed in times of stress. In
order that two women may keep the house in thorough order, gas fires
should be used in all rooms other than perhaps the drawing-room and
the nursery, though now that gas fires have been brought to such a
state of perfection I can see no reason why there should not be gas in
the nurseries. The double drawing-room must be made into drawing-room
and smoking-room, thus leaving seven bedrooms as before, or it may
suit the family to keep the double drawing-room, and make an upstairs
smoking-room.
Personally I should use the first floor front room as drawing-room,
and open the doors into the smoking-room when more space was needed,
thus leaving best bed and dressing-room, two nurseries, one servants'
room, and one spare room, and a small room to be used as linen and
dress room. (Boxes could be stored in the empty basement.) Add to the
house a second bathroom and lavatory, telephone bells; use the bathroom
basins rather than the bedroom washstands (and when a bathroom can be
set apart for Monsieur and Madame, and another for nursery and maids,
this is scarcely a hardship), and you now have a house which, provided
it is not crammed with furniture, stuffy carpets, and draperies, can be
perfectly kept by two good servants, always supposing that the nurse
does not demand too much waiting on.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XIV_
A SENSIBLY-ARRANGED BOILING AND GRILLING TABLE
The burners vary from a small simmering burner to a powerful concentric
burner with two taps. This make of table can be furnished in over a
dozen different sizes. (John Wright)]
[Illustration:
_PLATE XIVa_
A large heating surface is provided, so that large or heavy utensils
such as fish kettles etc., are in no danger of being upset on account
of being top heavy, as is the case when they are balanced on an
ordinary gas ring.
In the centre of the Hot Plate is a circular plate which may be removed
when it is desired to allow the flames of the gas ring to come into
direct contact with the cooking vessel. A lifter is provided for this
purpose. (C. H. Kempton)]
Nurse and Nursery.
If this important person has a bathroom conveniently situated, gas
fires, a gas ring for heating kettles, irons, etc., and a cupboard
containing her own stock of crockery, she should give very little
trouble to the house-parlourmaid. If advisable, a charwoman one day a
week could turn out the nurseries, tidy the front area and backyard,
clean the stairs and bathrooms.
Arranging the house thus, the following work is saved: Cleaning of
kitchen range and flues, carrying of coal all over house, running up
and downstairs to answer front door, especially in morning, when the
cook is busy, carrying of trays from basement, cleaning and filling
coal scuttles, cleaning grates and fireirons, much carrying of hot
water and bedroom work, entire cleaning of basement.
If a coke furnace is used, coke is light to carry and clean to handle,
and should a buttery hatch be arranged between dining-room and kitchen,
one maid (if well trained) can wait on six or eight persons quite
satisfactorily. Then when a little dinner is given, a charwoman, at
one shilling and her supper, to help wash up, is the only outside help
which is necessary.
Now I cannot but think that a house such as I have described would let
at £120 a year, where now many of them are let at £90, and as time
goes on will fetch less and attract a less desirable style of tenant.
Considering the saving in upkeep of a basement, labour, food and keep
of one maid, and the shrinkage of general expense which occurs when
two maids are kept rather than three, it would pay the tenant well to
expend the extra £30 a year. Even were the saving of expense no object,
the additional comfort of a labour-saving house is worth the extra rent.
With the cost of heating by gas rather than coal I will deal later, but
it must always be borne in mind that with coal range and coal fires
in, say, three or four rooms in such a house the labour is made far
greater, and also the rooms become far dirtier.
In my own dining-room, where there is a gas fire, the dirt and dust is
most noticeably less than in the drawing-room, where we burn coal.
I said at the beginning of this chapter that there were at least two
methods of turning labour-making into labour-saving houses. Let us now
suppose that we have to deal with another basement house, but that in
this case the basement is neither deep nor dark.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XV_
A WELL FITTED BATHROOM WITH A GAS-HEATED TOWEL RAIL AND FIXED WASHSTAND]
A Second Suggestion for a Labour-Saving House.
The front room is quite light and cheerful, with a good view of the
street. The back room is rather dark, and has a narrow area facing into
a strip of garden. The house contains but five bedrooms, so that the
basement cannot well be spared. Here I would use the front room (made
very light and gay with paper and paint) as a combination servants'
sitting-room, pantry, and store-room. The kitchen should be tiled if
feasible--if not, papered with a white-tiled paper--and floored with
black-and-white linoleum in order to make it as light as possible.
The back area must be enlarged so as to give more light and air, and
some steps should lead into the garden, where the maids can sit in hot
weather. At present the basement consists of a front room and kitchen,
coal cellars under the pavement, a lavatory, and a little piece at the
end of the passage leading to the back area, which can be arranged for
a knife- and boot-cleaning place. But there is no larder. This must
be built. A door is cut to lead out of the kitchen into a tiny lobby,
out of this lobby one door opens into the white-tiled, well-ventilated
larder, and the other into the area.
The basement is now as light and airy as any basement can be. There
is no scullery, but that apartment is unnecessary in most houses and
certainly unnecessary in a small house where two, or at most three,
servants are employed, and which contains a pleasant room in which they
can sit and have their meals. The kitchen should be fitted with a gas
or electric cooker and a gas or coke hot-water furnace. The front room
is warmed by a gas stove, and in order to make up for the extra work
entailed by the basement, a service lift is installed, with double
hatches opening from kitchen and pantry, and from dining-room and
smoking-room, which are directly over the kitchen and pantry.
This house is completed by a ground floor cloakroom and two bathrooms,
gas fires everywhere but in the drawing-room, telephone bells, and
in each room a tiny gas ring, so that in case of illness or other
emergency hot water or hot food can be obtained without troubling the
maids. With all these labour-saving arrangements two servants are able
to do the work with ease, and to do it in such a way as is required
by English gentlepeople, who entertain more than do their compeers in
continental countries.
When planning and furnishing a house, say to yourself over and over
again, "Some one will have to keep this clean."
[Illustration:
_PLATE XVI_
THE ILLUSTRATION SHOWS A "POTTERTON" COOKER TAKEN TO PIECES FOR THE
REGULAR CLEANING GIVEN BY ALL CAREFUL COOKS.
The fitments of all modern gas cookers are readily removable, and
easily cleaned.]
III
But in addition to structural labour-saving arrangements, these
rearranged houses are furnished in a labour-saving manner.
Except in the drawing-room, there is as little furniture as possible,
for crowded rooms are difficult to clean and take a long time to keep
in order.
Wherever it is seemly, the floors are fitted with linoleum, for
no other floor covering is so cleanly or so easy to keep in good
condition. When there are rugs, they are sufficiently light to be
easily shaken. Fitted carpets are taboo. Had money been no object the
floors of the sitting-rooms would have been of polished wood, but in
these two cases the surrounds were of linoleum and the carpets square,
tightly strained and not of too thick a pile. These can be quickly
swept with a Bissel sweeper and cleaned from time to time with a
suction cleaner, while of course long-handled mops are used for the
linoleum.
In kitchen and pantry the supply of pots and pans, china, etc., is
limited to what is necessary, and but little silver is used. Most of
the food is cooked and served in casseroles, and so the washing up is
lessened. The knives are of stainless steel and merely need washing.
In the two cases quoted the people who inhabited the houses were of
the class who are accustomed to luxury, and a considerable amount of
door opening, telephone answering, and informal entertaining had to be
allowed for.
Without labour-saving arrangements, four servants, or three with a
charwoman twice a week, would have been needed to do the work really
well in the larger house, while three would have been required in the
smaller house.
But supposing that the family was small and a simpler style of living
needed, and that little or no entertaining took place, the mistress of
the house and one good servant could have done the work of either house
without undue strain and allowing each an ample amount of free time.
Those people who talk as if doing the work of the house was a
pleasant occupation for one's spare hours speak without understanding
of their words. The keeping of her house must be the profession of
the servantless woman, but by adopting labour-saving methods she may
yet have time and energy for other interests.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XVII_
JOHN WRIGHT'S B.T.U. CIRCULATOR IS INTENDED TO HEAT WATER WHICH
CIRCULATES THROUGH PIPES INTO HOT WATER STORAGE TANKS, AND IS
PARTICULARLY SUITABLE FOR CONNECTING UP TO HOT WATER APPARATUS ALREADY
IN THE HOUSE.
The No. 3020 is suitable where the Storage tank or cylinder does not
contain more than 20 gallons, and the No. 2040 will suit a tank or
cylinder of 40 gallons capacity.]