_HOUSEHOLD ADMINISTRATION, ECONOMY, AND COMFORT_
In colonial times, before so many of the household operations were
transferred to shops and manufactories, women were producers almost as
much as men; but in modern times women are more and more concerned with
how money shall be spent. The woman is still a producer when she cooks
an egg, mends a garment, or sweeps a room; but the question of how much
or how little can be had out of the family income has become relatively
more and more her concern. In Europe, far more than in the United
States, attention is given by the women to the economical expenditure of
the family resources. A provincial French girl is trained from her
childhood for household duties. She assists her mother not only in order
to learn the finer arts of housewifery, but especially the judicious
expenditure of money. The French husband leaves the apportionment of the
family income almost wholly to his wife’s discretion.
There can be no doubt that the prosperity of the family depends quite as
much on the wise use of the income as upon the size of that income. The
first essential of good household management is that the housewife
should know definitely how much there is to spend. Nothing is more
productive of marital discontent than the habit which many husbands have
of doling out money to the wife at irregular times and in indefinite
amounts. It destroys the wife’s self-respect, it places her in a
degraded position before her children, and it removes all incentive to
thrift. It not infrequently supplies a powerful motive for deceit. If
the wife is inexperienced, unwise, or extravagant in the use of money,
so much the more reason why the husband should patiently and firmly
teach her how to spend, both for her own sake and that of the family
welfare. An arrangement by which the wife controls the expenditure of a
certain portion of the income is very easy whenever the man receives a
salary or regular daily wages. A regular income tends to develop thrift
and to teach people to avoid debt; but there is always a tendency to
live up to the limit of it, and the margin for saving and for extra
pleasures is always small. Salaried people seldom get deeply in debt,
but they as seldom become very rich.
On the other hand, whenever the family income is irregular, as from
farming and most other kinds of business, the problem of household
financiering is much more difficult and requires both greater
self-control and better judgment. It is usually possible for such
families to determine upon a definite minimum amount which may be
counted upon for ordinary living expenses. The margin above this may
vary widely, but if the scale of living be habitually adjusted to come
within the minimum income, there will be no terror of debt. The
expenditure of the surplus, when it comes, becomes a unique and
unexpected pleasure. Whatever the plan adopted for distributing the
family income, the wife should have at her command and should be
expected to live within, a definite share of the income.
After the minimum expenses of the family have been determined, the next
most important question is how and when they shall be paid out. Cash
payments are much to be preferred. They have two advantages: whoever
pays cash asks no favor of the tradesman, and commands the best quality
at a given price. The tradesman who lends money by allowing the payment
of bills to be postponed, must pay for his goods and must have interest
on the money necessary to carry on a credit business. He must
necessarily, therefore, reimburse himself by charging a higher price,
or by giving a poorer article. It should never be forgotten that credit
costs something. The cash customer is always considered a good customer,
and can always have the first choice of the market, and favors if any
are desired. Whenever monthly or quarterly bills are run, the debtor is
apt to acquire a most dangerous habit--the habit of spending now, to pay
at some future time. The more remote the time, the more dangerous the
habit. It is evident that the oftener bills are paid, the less
likelihood there is of mistakes and deceit. If bills must be run, it
should never be for longer than a month, and prompt payment of them is a
solemn obligation. The article should be done without rather than the
seller asked to wait for his money. Whatever plan the housewife adopts
will be conditioned by the customs of the locality in which she lives
and by the habits of the local tradesman.
Women waste much time and energy in buying things one by one; they spend
in this way, too, much more than they realize, and then they wonder
where the money has gone. China, linen, and the stock of clothing
necessary for changes of season, should be bought by the set, or
quantity, marked and prepared for use at regular intervals. Women buy a
collar or two, a pair of stockings, a bit of ribbon, a bread plate, a
few glasses, etc., and then are surprised that they seem to have very
little for the money. Unless the housewife be really poor, or unless the
money be doled out to her irregularly, it will invariably pay to buy in
quantity things which are not perishable, and which the household wears
out and, therefore, habitually needs. Handkerchiefs, stockings,
underclothing, china, drinking glasses, cost less by the dozen and
half-dozen than by the piece. Lamp chimneys are continually broken,
toilet paper and soap used up, yet very few housekeepers realize that
they waste both time and energy, beside suffering inconvenience, when
they buy these one at a time. Buying piecemeal is demoralizing, as well
as wasteful, because it is unsystematic. Successful housekeeping
involves attention to numberless details; if by periodic instead of
incessant attention some of these can be disposed of in the mass, there
will be immense saving of energy.
Many housekeepers will object to this, either because it involves the
immediate expenditure of a larger sum of money for one class of
articles, or because, not having more wholesome social and intellectual
interests, they find recreation in wandering from store to store, or
counter to counter, pricing much and buying little; or because they love
to find “a bargain.” The instinct to get something “cheap,” that is, to
get something for nothing, or, more properly, to get more than we pay
for, lies very deep in human nature. Because women have usually lived
from hand to mouth, without foresight, it has perhaps been exaggerated
in them. There are the bargain-hunters, and there are the
bargain-scorners; both are doubtless equally illogical. When an article
is phenomenally cheap, it is so, usually, either because too many of its
kind are on the market, or because the seller is sacrificing a normal
profit to draw general custom, or because the people who have produced
it have done so at less than a decent living wage, or because it is
going or gone out of fashion. Good buyers are rightfully suspicious of
bargains. No one should be willing to buy or use articles which have
been produced at starvation wages under wretched sanitary conditions. It
is never good economy to buy things which are gone out of fashion unless
one is quite _satisfied to be out of fashion_. If the article offered on
the bargain counter be of good quality, and in staple use in the
household, it is often well worth buying. Flannels, linens, sometimes
woolen dress goods of inconspicuous patterns, may be bought at the end
of the season much cheaper than at the beginning, and are a good
investment if one has money to spare and is sure what is going to be
needed by the family. Over against the money saved in securing a
bargain, must always be reckoned the time and energy used in finding it,
and the risks that its quality may prove inferior, or that it may be
unsuitable when finally used. If a woman has nothing better to do with
her time and strength than to hunt bargains, there is nothing further to
be said; but if she has, it is usually more economical and more
satisfactory to buy the articles needed for definite use at a reliable
place and at a fair price.
All the suggestions that have been made imply accurate knowledge on the
part of the housekeeper. A thoroughly trained housekeeper of long
experience may possibly keep all the household detail in hand without
keeping books of account, but it is absolutely impossible for the
inexperienced or unsystematic housekeeper to do so. The mental training
involved in keeping an accurate account of family income and expenditure
is as valuable as a course in mathematics. For her own self-discipline,
as well as for the better distribution of the family income, every
housekeeper should keep an itemized account. Until she can balance her
account accurately at the end of every month she has not learned the a b
c of thorough housekeeping. After having learned to do this easily, she
may, perhaps, allow herself a very small margin for those “sundries”
which have not been put down, and which would waste valuable time to
hunt out. Every housewife knows by experience that it is not the regular
meat and grocery bills that eat up the income; if adequate care is taken
of them, they can be reduced to a definite scale and kept there; but it
is the incidentals. A system of accurate accounts will speedily show how
many of these are extravagant or unnecessary. Book-keeping is a bugbear
to most women, chiefly because the system which they undertake is too
complicated. The simplest form is the best. Any blank book may be used;
put down on the right hand side everything bought; on the left side all
money received; at the end of the week or month the total sum of the
right-hand column plus the money still on hand should equal the total of
the left-hand column. If it does not, some item has been omitted or not
accurately entered. It is better in the beginning to balance the account
at least once a week, for then inaccuracies can be more easily traced.
The secret of success is to put down at the time of the transaction what
has been received and spent. When the account has been balanced, a
second step is much more interesting. In another book or in the back of
the day-book, if it be large enough, open several accounts on separate
pages, as follows: groceries, meats, fuel, clothing, subscriptions and
charities, incidentals, etc. Copy each item from the day-book into its
proper account; at the end of a month or year, by adding up these
separate accounts, the housewife can tell exactly what proportion of the
income has been spent for each class. Mr. Lawes, the famous English
agriculturist, when traveling in America, was able to quote accurately
the cost of the various items of expenditure in his own house.
Economy is a relative, not an absolute thing. Economy of money is often
wastefulness of life, yet extravagance, on the other hand, is a serious
cause of human degeneration. With the exception of poor management, poor
service is probably the most wasteful factor of all in the household,
yet there are conditions in which poor service is certainly less
wasteful of the family resources, than none at all. The end of
housekeeping is the health, comfort, and serenity of the family. The two
main factors in producing this result are the family income and the
mother’s strength and energy. Saving, however desirable, is merely an
incidental end. The mother’s intelligence, therefore, if she be in
command of her fair share of the income, must be used to save not only
money but her own resources. The lack of nutritious, palatable food and
of nursing in illness, the lack of service when the mother is weakened
by labor and child-bearing, is sometimes economy with most disastrous
results. Health and serenity are worth more to the family than houses
and a bank account. A good education given to an intelligent child is
worth ten times its cost saved up for him to inherit in middle life.
Every device, therefore, which saves the housewife’s energy is a true
economy. A clothes-washing machine, a cabinet table, a slop-hopper for
kitchen and chamber waste-liquids, are all obtainable and of special
value in saving labor. In planning the kitchen, economy of steps in
reaching water and fuel should be considered. China should be kept
either in wall cupboards opening on one side into the dining-room, on
the other into the kitchen, or in a pantry between dining-room and
kitchen. Kitchen utensils need no longer be of black, heavy, ugly iron,
but of granite ware, nickel plate, and aluminum; they may be placed in
shelves close to the range, or hung along the wall beside it. A dumb
waiter or hand elevator, from kitchen to cellar, saves much going up and
down stairs. The height of sinks and work-tables should be adapted to
that of the woman who works over them. A tall stool--a clerk’s stool--in
the kitchen allows the housewife to sit while doing some kinds of work.
Distances between sink, range, dishes, and store-room, should be as
short as possible, while the ventilation and lighting of the kitchen
should be particularly good. Every step up and down from kitchen to
shed, or kitchen to cellar, is an extra drain on the overtaxed woman.
Small, cheap contrivances, such as dish-mops, iron dish-cloths,
pan-scrapers, small scrubbing-brushes, wire screen garbage-pans, and
many others, lighten the work and make it possible for the housewife to
be more dainty in her personal appearance.
In no respect does farm life differ more from city life than in the kind
of food provided and the method of serving it. The farmer’s table is
loaded down with a great abundance and variety of food, all placed on
the table at once, and often rich and indigestible. The city table has
half as much, both in variety and quantity, served daintily in courses.
The city housewife provides variety from meal to meal, seldom repeating
any dish, except the staple ones, more than once or twice a week; the
rural housewife puts a large variety of the same things on the table at
every meal. Abundance of well cooked, appetizing food there should be,
but variety from meal to meal, and from day to day, is far preferable to
excessive variety at any one meal. Not only is it better for the
digestion to eat of a very few kinds of food at one meal; but, since
novelty stimulates appetite, any particular dish will be more appetizing
if not served too frequently. The farmer’s family, while very economical
in the expenditure of money, is often very wasteful of food. Vegetables,
fruit, chickens, pork raised on the farm, seem to cost no money, but
they cost much vital energy, which is quite as valuable. The value of
milk, butter, and eggs is recognized, because it is customary to sell
them in town; but the cost in the labor of those who raise and those who
prepare food, is often overlooked. The farmer’s table is thus not only
overloaded, but really extravagant. Here, again, quality is more
desirable than variety; simplicity should accompany abundance.
Since rural life involves a certain degree of isolation, the family must
keep in touch with the world chiefly through literature. Even at the
sacrifice of some of the rich variety of food on the table or of new
clothes, books and papers should be provided. The local newspaper is apt
to contain little beside local gossip; it should be supplemented with an
agricultural paper and a family journal, a housekeeping magazine, a
children’s magazine, if there be children, and other general magazines
if they can be afforded. But better than the general magazines, would be
the gradual purchase of the standard works of history, travel, poetry,
and fiction. A musical instrument, a small library, and interesting
games will do more than admonition to keep young people at home.
Children naturally want a good time; if it is not provided for them at
home they will go to other and perhaps less desirable places to get it.
With the increase of appliances, and with the added social and
intellectual demands, country as well as city life is becoming more
complicated and exacting. The housewife, whose physical strength is
scarcely equal to the demands of housekeeping and child-bearing, must
develop her intelligence and whet her judgment. She must find easier and
wiser ways of doing the necessary drudgery, and make brains do an
increasing part of the labor formerly accomplished by muscle.