If the idea of a housework schedule appeals to her, it would be wise for her to make as slight a schedule and be as little bound by it, as possible. If, on the contrary, she feels sympathy with the woman who thought it would be more interesting to do the washing on a different day each week, she should by all means have a rather detailed schedule and faithfully keep to it.

A work schedule saves the time and strain which, without it, would be expended each day in deciding what was to be done; it prevents those who do the work or help with it from waiting round to be told what to do; and it keeps one day from being too hard and the next too easy. But we must not have a schedule which makes the accomplishment of a certain amount of housework in a given time seem a more important duty than the little pleasant acts which make the comfort and pleasure of a home. If the man of the house wants his wife or daughter to walk to the car with him after breakfast, she should be able to go without feeling anxious or preoccupied. The coming of an unexpected guest should not be thought a torment and a calamity because it disorders a schedule. When a small head is thrust under one's elbow and a small voice says, "'Want to be loved now," confusion to anything which inclines us to say, "Run away, you bother me."

A household run on a strict schedule becomes an institution, not a home; on the other hand, a household in which the work is done at any time or no time is neither clean, restful nor knit together with the bonds of mutual service and mutual compliance.

Housework is some of it daily, and some of it periodical. Bedmaking is daily; sweeping is periodical. There is also work which may be done by the workers in the house, or by others coming from without. In one family the laundry work, bread making, window cleaning, floor polishing and the like will be done by those in the house; in another, these things will be done out of the house, or by people who come in to do them.

(a) DAILY WORK

The following is a list of daily work in an average house. Besides these things some piece of periodical work is done each day.

• Fire made or made up.
• Shades rolled up; windows opened a few minutes; suggestions of yesterday removed.
• (In summer, veranda arranged.)
• Breakfast prepared, served and cleared away.
• Pantry and kitchen put in order.
• Menu made and orders given.
• Downstairs rooms put in order.
• Bedrooms put in order.
• Bathroom put in order.
• Accounts.
• Preparations for second and third meals.
• Second meal served and cleared away.
• Rest.
• Third meal prepared, served and cleared away.

Outside affairs usually decide the time at which these activities are performed. Meal hours in most cases depend on the work hours of some of the family, and on the meal hours depend the times when other things are done. Who shall do the work depends on the number of workers, the occupations which they have beside housework, and the periodical work of the day.

If there is one woman in the house, she must go through this list of things, doing each slightly or elaborately, as she is able and as they require. On the days when there is washing or sweeping or baking to do she will have to abbreviate other things. Upstairs and down she will merely put things in their places and remove visible dust; she will leave the table set until after luncheon, on washdays until after dinner; she will have planned the meals for this day the day before, and she will hurry all the work a little.

In a house where there is a mistress and a maid, the mistress will pick out from the daily work the things she wishes to do. She will perhaps set the table, put the house in order, plan the meals, go to market and make her accounts before luncheon. On washing and ironing days, if no extra person comes in to help, she will add to this the chamber-work and perhaps the washing of the breakfast dishes. Probably on those mornings she will not go to market.

When there are two maids in the house, the second will do the work suggested in the former case for the mistress on a washday, with the exception of the menu and the accounts, and with the addition of waiting on the table, washing the dishes, and some preparations for the meals which are not actual cooking.

When there is a third maid the upstairs part of the house will be her domain, and she will probably do some personal services for the mistress. In a large family she will help to wait on the table, and to wash the dinner dishes. After breakfast she will be busy with upstairs work and some sweeping, and after luncheon she will rest and dress and then answer the doorbell and the telephone during the time that the waitress is resting and dressing.

A fourth maid is usually a laundress, a fifth would do the rougher and simpler part of the kitchen work, and a sixth—but there, a housekeeper with five or six maids will not need suggestions from this book.

In households where there are several servants, their meals are added to the list of daily work. These come before those served to the family with sometimes the exception of dinner. When this exception is made, "tea" keeps the time between luncheon and dinner from being too long. It has always seemed to me that separate meals should be arranged for as soon as a family decide to keep a servant whose regular duty it is to wait on the table. A particularly tangible shadow lies upon a meal which is served by some one who after a long morning's work may be faint and hungry for the food she brings to you.

(b) PERIODICAL WORK

The following is a list of periodical work for an average house.

• Washing.
• Ironing.
• Sorting and mending linen and clothes.
• Sweeping and dusting.
• Bread baking.
• Thorough cleaning of the kitchen.
• Cleaning garbage can, and surroundings.
• Cleaning refrigerator and food receptacles.
• Arrangements for days out.
• Preparations for Saturday and Sunday.
• —————
• Polishing furniture and floors.
• Cleaning silver.
• Cleaning of linen closet and others.
• Care of cellar.

When can these things be done, and who is to do them?

We will consider the laundry work first. This should be the periodical work for two days of the week; if it runs over it crowds other things, and indicates that the wash is larger than we may have it with the present number and quality of workers. On the days devoted to laundry work, the daily work should be as brief and the meals as simple as possible. Of course, when there is a woman in the house, or who comes into the house especially to do washing and ironing, the usual schedule can be adhered to.

The day on which the washing is done is a matter of choice. It is traditional to wash on Monday, but some people say that Tuesday is better. If a woman comes in to do the washing it must be done when she can come. The advocates of washing on Monday say that as it is the longest and heaviest weekly job, it is best got out of the way as early in the week as possible; that the work of the week seems to wait round until the laundry work is finished; they say, too, that it is easier to wash on Monday because other people are washing.

The advocates of Tuesday say that as more of the family are at home on Sunday and as the regular clearing up is not done, the house needs especial attention on Monday; also, that they do not like putting clothes to soak the last thing Sunday night.

If circumstances leave one free to choose the day, it is as well to try each long enough to get used to it, and then to decide on the one which proves easiest for every one concerned.

In the household with one maid, the mistress should help on the days the laundry is done with the daily work and in some cases with the laundry itself. In the two-maid household, the cook washes, the waitress assists, and the mistress frequently does some of the daily work. In the three-maid household it is possible for each to do her usual part of the daily work and give some assistance with the laundry.

The sorting and mending of the clean clothes is the work of the mistress or of an upstairs maid. The sorting should be done when the wash is finished. The mending, if heavy, often has to wait for odd times.

The next heaviest periodical work to the washing is the weekly cleaning. In a household with two maids or less, the cleaning should not be the periodical work on more than two days, one for upstairs, one for down. The living room and the dining room will probably have to be thoroughly cleaned each week, but the other rooms can usually be done in alternate weeks with the help of the daily setting in order and the careful use of a sweeper two or three times in the interval. It is more immaculate and more agreeable to have all the rooms thoroughly cleaned each week, but in a fairly large house with two women to do the work this ideal may become a grievous burden.

In houses in which there is an ample number of servants, the cleaning of the downstairs rooms, daily and periodical, is often done before breakfast. It is the ideal way of accomplishing this disturbing and uncomfortable job, but it cannot be so done unless there are enough workers in the house to divide the work into distinct departments.

Baking, cleaning the refrigerator and food receptacles, cleaning the kitchen and looking after the garbage can is the work of the cook. If there is another maid in the house, the cook has the four days of the week not used for the laundry work when she may do these things. If she is the maid-of-all-work, she will have the two days left from the laundry and sweeping in which to do them and many others.

Bread baking is usually done twice or three times a week. Cake baking, nowadays, is an irregular performance. As making bread is not a day's work, it can be combined with other pieces of work, preferably with those which are done in the kitchen. It combines nicely with cleaning the refrigerator and food receptacles because one of these is for bread and should be perfectly fresh for the new batch. A careful housewife sometimes makes the cleaning of the refrigerator her own work, but even so, she will appoint a time for doing it. A good refrigerator need be cleaned only once or twice a week, a poor one may have to be done oftener.

A garbage can should be cleaned as often as it is emptied, and should with its surroundings be watched all the time, lest the cover is left off or any scraps or splashes are left outside to draw flies and make disagreeable odours.

A kitchen in which much work is done needs a thorough weekly cleaning. People are apt to do this on Saturday, but there will be many households in which it will be unwise to do so. If the master of the house has a half holiday on Saturday, and the mistress of the house does the housework, the work of Saturday morning must be only the daily work and such preparations as will leave Saturday afternoon and Sunday as free from work as possible. Some extra cooking, marketing and menu making, some adornment of the house and laying out of fresh table linen will be desirable and necessary; but kitchen cleaning, the changing of bed linen, or the making up of weekly accounts, should be appointed for some other day in the week.

If the housewife has servants to help her, she can have more work done on Saturday, but even then, she will guard against having things done which make the house seem unrestful, or which occupy her.

Arrangements for "days out" are merely adjustments by which one person's work is done by others. If there is one maid, the mistress takes her place; if two, one does the necessary work of both, the mistress helping a little. For the day a maid goes out no periodical work belonging to her department must be appointed. "Sundays out," like the days, are merely an adjustment of duties to allow for fewer workers.

Some of the periodical work is much more occasional than that already mentioned. This must be fitted in, sometimes by leaving more frequent work undone for one day, but usually by appointing it for a day when there happens to be a little less to do than usual. The silver, for instance, usually need not be done more than once a fortnight or once a month, and can be fitted into a morning when there is no sweeping, or into a rainy Monday. Other infrequent work can be managed in the same way.

In simple households a detailed written schedule is not necessary perhaps nor desirable, unless it be for periodical work and the "days out." For these a schedule like the one herewith might be made. This one is for two maids and includes some infrequent work.

One or two general remarks about schedules are necessary before the subject can be closed.

As far as possible heavy, dirty work should be done in the morning, the workers are more able to do it then, and besides, the cook does not wish to do such things when getting the dinner, nor the waitress when she should be dressed for the afternoon, nor the mistress at the social time of the day.

In making a work schedule, a savings fund is as necessary as in making a plan of expenditure. If every one in the house is doing as much as is possible, there is no allowance for accident, or illness, or unexpected demands. A little strength which is not nerves should be left in you and in your handmaidens at the end of the day. Housework extends over an exceedingly long day. At present, the only way to remedy this seems to be to arrange that each worker get a little rest some time in the day. I have put this as a necessary item in the table of daily work.

If no savings fund of strength is possible, more workers are needed, or better workers; or, if this is impossible, the style of living should be modified until it is appropriate to the force of workers.

The schedule is not the important thing, but the work; and there are things more important even than the work. For instance, a reasonable degree of liberty for the whole household.

The family, unless they take part in the work, should not be conscious of the work schedule. It is a framework to be carefully draped; a new kind of family skeleton to be kept in the closet as carefully as the old kind. It is necessary because it makes easy, natural regularity possible, and without it, as we have said, there is neither character, nor peace, nor mutual service in a home.

The housework must be done—well and regularly done—and to accomplish this, days must be alike, and weeks must be alike, and months and years alike. But they must be as the leaves on a tree are—alike to the casual glance, yet really somewhat different because capable of infinite adaptability.