Pine Bluff Daily Graphic

BAD MANAGEMENT.
Useless Tasks That Some Housekeepers
Impose Upon Themselves
There is a great deal of homely truth
in the remark once made by a famous
clergyman, that some people's chimneys
always smoked and their roofs
always leaked. Now, as every one
knows, there is no reason for a smoky
chimney or a leaky roof except bad
management.
It is a trifling matter to put a few
shingles on a leaking roof. It takes no
more time to build a chimney properly,
as it should be built, than to build it
improperly, and it is an easy matter to
keep it clean. Yet, every day we see
individuals enduring actual hardships,
from just such trifling causes as these.
It requires only a little management,
little calm, quiet thought and judgment,
to remedy a majority of household
troubles. Don Quixote was not
the only person that fought windmills.
Housekeepers are continually engaging
in such useless tasks. One housekeeper
has a stove, the oven of which will not
bake rapidly except when the fire is
first kindled. During the rest of the
day it remains at a slow heat. Now
there are a great many puddings and
some cakes that may be cooked by a
slow heat, just the heat which a poor
stove oven gives. Instead of contenting
herself with custards and old-fashioned
fruit cakes and such confections
as require this slow heat, she is forever
attempting to ignore the peculiarities
of her oven and insists on baking
sponge cake and pastry to the vain
wasting of flour and eggs. In nine
cases out of ten the housekeeper instead
of considering herself a bad manager,
looks upon herself as a much-abused
person.
There is hardly any household troubles
of this kind which, if taken in
time and treated with judgment, may
not be at least partly overcome. The
great fault usually consists in laying
out a given line of action and expecting
all circumstances to mold themselves
to it, instead of molding our actions to
the circumstances. Most of
the household disorder and a great
deal of discomfort may be traced to
just this thing. Not only in the kitchen,
but in the parlor does the housekeeper
attempt to carry out elaborate
theories, which she has no practical
means to fulfill. She dresses her parlor
in the miniature of a grand salon,
and poses herself in it to wait for the
society that never comes, because, forsooth,
there is no society in the place
that has time to linger in grand salons,
or has any taste for them. So all the
genuine visiting is done in the kitchen
and sitting room, and the parlor is
closed for all but two or three days in
the year, and left for moth and mold
to corrupt. All this is theoretical, not
practical, living, and is the worst of
management.
The space occupied by the shut-up
parlor should be turned into the sitting-room,
which is generally cramped
to give space to the parlor, and the
whole room should be made as light
and cheerful as possible, as a general
meeting-room of the entire family.
The money spent on the mock show of
the shut-up parlor will furnish a great
many comforts to the general sitting
room, where nothing should be too fine
and good for daily use, and everything
should be as handsome and substantial
as our means will allow. This is
the general reception room for all the
family guests.
We have little sympathy with that
zealous spirit which members of some
families exhibit in receiving their
special friends by themselves. The
rule which governs the best society insists
that a social call should include
all the feminine members of the family,
and it is altogether the wisest one.
Daughters should have no friends
whom they cannot receive in the presence
of their mothers and sisters-certainly
no male friends-and the existence
of the shut-up parlor has no excuse
except the custom of allowing
young ladies to receive their friends by
themselves. Occasionally a wedding
or a funeral calls for the opening of the
shutters, and the sun is allowed to penetrate
into this otherwise superfluous
room, to which so much family comfort
is so often sacrificed. -N. Y. Tribune.