The Colored Citizen

EASY HOUSEKEEPING
ACCOMPLISHED BY APPLYING BUSINESS PRINCIPLES.

A System That Secures From Each Prompt Performance of Duties—One Woman Who Applied Military Methods to Her Household and Made Them Work.

Executive ability is knowing how to distribute responsibility so that every factor not only accepts its share of duty, but continues unfailingly to do it. Persistent pursuit of this course makes the victorious general and the successful business man as well as the satisfactory housekeeper.

I do not believe, however, that there is one woman in a thousand who ever stops to contemplate this fact. Every one of the number wonders, though, why keeping house is the very hardest work in the world. And men with well disciplined offices who are able to reduce their individual labor to a minimum they regard enviously. They persuade themselves that women's work is so peculiarly intricate and exacting that it refuses to be reduced to simple rules and principles. Yet if all those uneasy, overburdened Marthas could only take a few practical lessons in a well ordered counting room they would soon solve the problem which causes them such painful wrestling.

Able business men who accomplish results are those who know how to make other people feel the importance of the trust imposed upon them, and as nine-tenths of mankind spend their best efforts in dodging responsibility there is as much real genius in stimulating a sense of it in one's employees as in actually achieving things oneself.

There is, I know, a superstition extant to the effect that a good housewife is a busy, bustling person—one always active and alert, who follows up her servants and never relaxes her vigilance from dawn till bedtime. She is not supposed to take chances on anything, but goes herself from garret to cellar daily, peers into every closet, hunts eagerly for dust, takes constant account of storeroom, pantry and kitchen and keeps a penetrating eye upon the entire menage. If man's work is from sun to sun, while woman's work is never done, the fault is every bit her own. The reason man can define his hours of toil and rest so sharply is because he knows when and where and how to put in strokes that tell; also he knows how to make those who work with and under him directly answerable for their share of the labor.

Now, the case of a woman having several small children and only one or two maids with which to keep the house. Properly managed the result should be leisure for the mistress, discipline for the maids and comfort for everybody. But nine times out of ten the chance system is in vogue. Servants are given general instructions, but they are quick to appreciate that the mistress expects to shoulder all the real responsibility herself. She means to rely upon her own vigilance rather than their fidelity for the execution of the daily tasks. Realizing this, they get in the habit of depending on her prodding to remind them of the simplest duties.

It is this spirit in the household that makes drudges of the employer, who is only given eye service and finds her domestic machinery runs with many a creak and groan.

As there is always a way to do everything right. My management conducts a home on easy principles precisely as those which regulate a counting house. But the little 10-year-old daughter whose business it is to strip withered leaves and blossoms from the plants, change the water in the vases and attend to the bedroom candlesticks must be held unswervingly to her duty. She must be taught at once that the whole family relies upon her for the faithful discharge of these tasks. Mamma must never do them for her, and thus lessen either the sense of responsibility or the force of condemnation when she is guilty of neglect.

These principles should be rigidly enforced with every factor in the household. There should be no trespassing of one person's work on another. Most women declare it much easier to do things themselves than to follow up a careless maid. But the really clever mistress knows better. She finds a way of making the servant answerable for her mistakes and continually satisfactory in the performance of her tasks.

A bright woman whose soul has sickened within her by reason of domestic irregularities worked out the following system, which proved delightfully simple and entirely efficacious. She had, it seems, been present once at a military inspection and was much impressed by the quick, businesslike manner in which the examination was conducted. After watching the officer inspect each soldier in turn as to his personal cleanliness, arms, etc., she concluded that something of the same sort might with advantage be applied to her domestic management.

Full of this idea, the clever little mistress prepared two lists—one for a morning drill. the other for afternoon parade On the first was set down in order each particular household chore that should be properly done before noon, and each day at 11:30 o'clock the entire establishment was called out for inspection.

First came the nursemaid, marshaling her charges and ready to show a row of neatly polished boots, clean, pink palms, white, well brushed teeth and sleek, shining heads. The matter of buttons, garters, finger nails, etc., was well looked into, and then the order to break ranks given.

The housemaid reported lamps cleaned dusting done, windows washed, and the stock of polishes, soaps and other requirements of her department that were needed or on hand. As the list of her tasks were set down in detail, there was never any danger of glossing them over or forgetting to enumerate them. Unless all the chamber work was completed by that hour a satisfactory explanation was required before the girl could be excused.

Living in the country, as she did, it was in the management of her kitchen, however, that the lady found this book so great a comfort. Neat columns of kitchen necessities jogged her memory as to the thousand and one little pantry details the lack of which never intrude themselves until the day's marketing is done. Cook reported dishcloths washed and drying on the line, when the chickens were fed, cows milked, and so on ad infinitum.

As at 11 o'clock, so at 4 p. m. an afternoon parade developed the condition of all domestic affairs. By that time the drudgery of the day should be done, and just as men begin winding up their business for the night so this wise lady passed her household in review and knew to a dot exactly how everything stood.—St. Louis Republic.

For cleaning out the corners in furniture and window sashes use hard wood pointed skewers, such as butchers use to do up meat in preparing it for cooking.