The Evening Herald

Schedule to Make More Time
for
War
Work

With each added month of the war more duties are pressed upon women everywhere.

It may be the increased demands of the Red Cross, the need for canteen workers, for women to take nurses' census or do baby welfare work. In every case the homemaker is faced with the problem of how she can keep house for Uncle Sam in his various patriotic work and at the same time fill the needs of her own housekeeping.

The one solution is to more efficiently plan housework and its duties to stay by a definite schedule of work which will provide for the tasks of the home and also the outside patriotic work every woman wants to do. A schedule is merely a definite setting down of tasks and the time at which they can most conveniently be done. Everyone is familiar with a train schedule. It starts at a certain place at a definite hour and is supposed to arrive at an equally definite destination. On the way it stops at given and such stations, may take water, change tracks, engine, etc.

The object of a train schedule is to allow people to arrange their other affairs more satisfactorily. How confusing it would be if we did not know whether the train started at 8 or at 10 or where it would stop. Decidedly, we could not plan to do anything else because of the train's uncertainty.

Similarly a schedule of housework stands for definite periods prearranged stops and hours. The scheme will depend on the hours of meals, the size of the house and the number of workers. The first point is to decide what are the essential tasks that the schedule must cover, when they are to be done either daily or weekly. To start a schedule take pad and pencil and write down the hours of meals, possibly the hours best suited to marketing, either personally or by phone next the relation of the cleaning to the cooking and so on with every task and duty.

SCHEDULE PROVIDES REST OR FREE PERIOD.

Not only does it arrange when work must be done, but when free hours can be taken. Some women think that to have a schedule means only to bind themselves to one unceasing routine from which they cannot escape. On the contrary, the schedule is the only thing that will indicate hours of leisure as well as hours of work. How otherwise can a woman know what spare time she has unless she does not arrange for it in advance? It is always the women who know what they have to do and when they must do it that can be relied on for extra outside work. If the family has no small children it can usually be said that the housekeeper can devote two or three hours a day three times a week to war work and yet completely satisfy her house duties.

The schedule may be arranged for every day and weekly as well. Also it must change from time to time as new needs arise.

Here, for instance is a simple daily schedule for a woman who does her housework and yet is doing war work also.

7:20 Breakfast
8:00 Wash dishes while preparing dessert, vegetables etc. for evening meals, putting some into fireless cooker for all day cooking.
9:00 Make bed, dust rooms, collect linen for laundry.
10:20 Dressed, leaves for Red Cross workroom.
11 to 1 Make surgical dressings.
1 to 2 Lunch downtown.
2 to 2:30 Attend lecture and demonstration on food substitutes.
3:30 to 4:30 Market personally, carrying home parcels herself.
5 to 6:20 Supper preparations and serving.
7:30 to 8:15 Wash dishes put cereal and dried fruit in fireless. Set breakfast table.

War-Time
MONDAY TUESDAY
Breakfast Breakfast
Oatmeal Fruit
Raisins Hominy Grits
Scrambled eggs Top Milk
Rice Muffins Codfish Cakes
Coffee Toasted
Bun Muffin

Lunch Lunch
Emergency Soup Thrifty
Vegetable (Sprouts)
Corn Bread Potato Biscuits
Stew and Apple Pie
Tea

Dinner Dinner
Dairy Patties (Greed Beef
Small Boiled Potatoes
Lettuce Salad
Spinach Pears
Brush Cherry Syrup
Prune Jelly Prune Pie
Coffee Half Cup Coffee

WEDNESDAY THURSDAY
Breakfast Breakfast
Fruit Stewed Prunes
Sue Creamed Codfish
Oatmeal Oatmeal
Top Milk Top Milk
Muffins Muffins
Coffee Coffee

Lunch Lunch
Jam Lunch
Cheese Souffle (Cream Sauce)
Corn Cake Corn Cake
Lettuce and Cauliflower Salad
Mayonnaise Tea

Dinner Dinner
Broiled Lamb Broiled Trim
Duyer Brown Gravy
Baked Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Boiled Boston
Cabbage Baked Indian
Pudding Pudding
Liaht Lyte Coffee Half Cups Coffee

FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY
Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast
Sliced Bananas Sliced Bananas
Grape Fruit Oatmeal
Fruit Scrambled Eggs
Oatmeal (left-over)
Top Milk Top Milk
Ham Toast Coffee
Coffee

Dinner Lunch Dinner
Boiled Fowl Jam
Vegetarian Club (left-over)
Celery Sauce Boiled Fowl
Sandwich Corn Fritters
Corn Fritters Stewed Prunes
Stuffed Potatoes Grilled Potatoes
Tea Tea
Heart Lettuce Salad

Supper Supper
Assorted Sandwiches
Conservation (left-over)
Cream Puffs
Cocoa

she would have to spend the entire forenoon doing housework, as special cleaning, ironing, etc. but good planning would still leave her some free time in the afternoon. A small but important point is to arrange that the iceman and other deliveries be made as nearly as possible at the definite morning hour, to waste no extra time in unnecessary phoning, and to work with the desired object in view. Everyone knows how well and how rapidly a maid works the morning on which she has an afternoon out, or how anyone proceeds with more zest if they have some special goal to achieve. The reason why many women find housework so perpetual is because they dawdle over it, they do not have clear in their minds what they want to do when their housework is over, and consequently this mental attitude conduces toward sluggish work. 'Plan your work, then work your plan,' is a good motto for every housewife.

SCHEDULE AVOIDS INTERRUPTIONS.

'Yes, but I am always interrupted,' say so many women. Quite true even the best intentioned trains have to lose time because of a wreck ahead or for some other reason get behind time. Still, we do not plan our life according to the exception, but according to the rule. And just because she is liable to interruptions is the very reason a woman needs a schedule in order to get something done between the interruptions!

Much time is wasted in any work by not knowing what to do next. A schedule will entirely prevent this waste time. It seems strange that so many women who followed such efficient plan in an office or in outside work refuse to do so in their homes. Not long ago the writer visited a large sanitarium. Here hundreds of women were following a daily schedule. There were definite hours for bathing, for massage, walks, etc. It seemed as if they were living a different life and crowding twice as much into one day. The only explanation was that in the sanitarium they were following a schedule both of work and rest, while in the homes they proceeded after a haphazard manner.

DEFINITE PLANNING LESSENS NERVOUS TENSION.

It is indisputably true that American women suffer from nervous tension and that they waste much nervous energy. Much of this is due to the fact that they work without plan, and consequently become excited and irritable when they have extra unexpected duties thrown upon them or when things do not proceed smoothly. It will always be found that the woman who just 'pitches in' becomes more exhausted and cannot keep up her effort so long as the woman who more evenly divides her work over an extended period knowing just what is to be done and subordinating the routine work so that it requires little mental effort will allow more effort to be given to the really big things that come along.

Women who shop successfully and make easy work of it make out a list of articles in advance, they mentally note what stores they are going to first or what departments and what route they will take. This is a shopping schedule. A teacher knows what classes she has and in what order, what free period she has to herself and so on. Every business woman has, by the very nature of her work, reduced much of it to a schedule, in which she arranges her hours for dictating, for interviewing, etc. So too, those war days above all others arrange for herself a schedule of housework which will provide not only for the home duties but for that free time which Uncle Sam is urging her to give to him.

There is no reason why the home should not be put on a war basis, as well as every other industry. It may seem harsh to say, but if the home cannot be managed efficient without waste and in a business like manner what justification has it for existing? Would it not be better to have food cooked in large central kitchens, as they are now doing in England, or have women entirely removed from home responsibility in order to give all their time to war work? But it is possible to manage a home well and yet have time for outside interests. To do so, it is only necessary to apply even a part of business system and management, to use a schedule of work and follow in the home equal pep, dispatch and planning such as make other work a success. Have you a little schedule in your home? If not, start one today.