Mrs. C. S. Peel

What this Chapter is About

A List of Daily Duties in a Labour-Making House—A House-Hunting Experience—Managing with one Servant in a Labour-Saving House.

I

Those women who have never been obliged to undertake any domestic duties have little idea of the amount of work which has to be done in the average house.

The following is a list of duties, and we must add to it the answering of bells, tidying up after untidy people, any personal services required (in many cases this is considerable), door opening, telephone answering, letter posting, note and message taking, "running out" for things which have been forgotten, whistling for cabs, waiting in the hall to see visitors out, etc., window cleaning, washing, mending, listing house linen for the laundry, extra work at special cleaning times, sweeps' visits, etc.

Household Duties.

Light kitchen fire; one or two days a week clean flues and thoroughly clean range.

Get in coal.

Clean doorstep and brasses.

Make tea, cut bread and butter, and take trays and hot water to bedrooms. Draw curtains, put washstands and possibly baths ready. Brush clothes, clean and take up boots.

Sweep stairs, do hall and sitting-rooms, grates and coals.

Get breakfast and set and serve it for servants and dining-room.

Clear and wash up. Knife cleaning. Area or backyards to brush out. Kitchen and back premises to clean.

Housework and turning out of rooms. Polishing bright metal, silver cleaning and pantry work of all kinds.

Cooking, washing up and cleaning after cooking. Keep a supply of coal ready.

Laying, serving, and washing up lunch and servants' dinner.

Tidying the washstands after lunch.

Tea. Shutting up rooms, bedroom work, hot water, etc. Wash up tea.

Dinner. Cooking, washing up and tidying. Pantry work. Servants' supper. Bedroom work, hot bottles. Bed.

These duties entail rising at any hour between six and seven, bed at any time between nine and eleven, at the best a fourteen and a half hours' day, during which hours in an easy situation the maid will have two and a half hours for meals (though parlourmaids and general servants cannot always enjoy uninterrupted meals), and about one and a half hours for reading, working, etc., leaving a ten-hour working day. From this deduct half a day a week and half of each alternate Sunday.

I contend that quite a third of this labour might be eliminated, and what remained greatly lightened by the adoption of labour-saving methods.

The following experiences are interesting as depicting the extraordinary difference in the amount of work which is exacted in a labour-making and a labour-saving home.

"It has fallen to my lot of late to inspect quite a large number of furnished houses and flats, and although my peregrinations have been limited to dwellings in what are known as 'good situations,' at fairly high rents, I have found such dirt and disorder as surely should only be excused by dire poverty.

"As a general rule the sitting-rooms were more or less clean, but in few cases did bathrooms and lavatories, kitchen and servants' premises fulfil the pleasant anticipations induced by the sight of the drawing-room.

"Stained and blackened walls, dirty-looking baths, fusty sinks, make one long for 'seven maids with seven mops,' and even with their help I, like the carpenter, am doubtful of the success of their labours.

"Three, at all events, of the flats which I visited were so furnished that it was impossible to keep them clean, while several others might have been properly kept, given the services of a housemaid determined to clean in spite of every obstacle.

"Very naturally, however, there are few such treasures to be met with, and I cannot but feel that it would be sad to waste them upon mistresses with so little idea of domestic sanitation as must have been the ladies who inhabited these flats.

"Only one of the flats and two of the houses on the long lists submitted to me did I find really well arranged and well kept. This state of affairs may be explained to some small extent by the fact that people who take a pride in their houses or who have just had them done up do not let them.

"Still, although a house may be shabby it still may be clean and arranged in such a way as to enable the servants to perform their duties with good results and no unnecessary trouble. Now, let me describe to you one flat which I regard as an example of everything which a dwelling in a dirty town should not be.

"It was an apartment consisting of three sitting-rooms, four bedrooms, bath, pantry, and kitchen. The long passage-hall of good width was very dark, partly because its four large windows had been so treated that hardly any light penetrated through them, and partly because the walls were papered dark green. As I progressed down this dismal tunnel I caught my foot in some obstruction and fell against a large piece of furniture. The servant then turned on the electric light and I discovered that the floor was covered with felt and by no less than twelve rugs, in a large hole in one of which I had caught my foot. By this time I had quite decided that nothing would induce me to take such a flat; but, like Barry Pain's Eliza, my love of looking over other people's houses is so great that I continued my tour of inspection.

"The dining-room was crammed with large and handsome pieces of furniture, so large and so many that nothing less clever than a pantomime contortionist could have waited at table when the diners had taken their places.

"The walls were dark red and dirty; the curtains of thick padded and lined tapestry were stiff and sticky with grime.

"In the drawing-room there was more really beautiful furniture and some exquisite Persian rugs on a dirty felt carpet. The curtains were of brocade, and there was a quantity of valuable china, much of it, sad to say, badly cracked.

"It was a room in which only an experienced housemaid should have been trusted, and much time should have been allowed to clean it satisfactorily. But a cook and a young house-parlourmaid were responsible for all the work of the flat. In the bedrooms dresses and coats hung on pegs on the doors, and cardboard boxes were piled on the tops of wardrobes and under the beds. The bath was minus most of its paint, the double bedroom for the servants was furnished with a strange collection of lumber, and the kitchen was frankly dirty, one corner of it being taken up by a lovely old walnut wood tallboys in a shocking state of ill-usage.

"Now, although this was certainly the worst of the flats and houses at which I looked, it was no uncommon thing to find dresses hanging out in the dust, boxes piled under beds, ill-kept baths and sinks, and floors so covered that it must take hours of work every week to keep them more or less clean.

"Indeed the result of my house-hunting led me to think that the average woman decorates, furnishes, and arranges her house in order to make it as difficult as it can be made to keep it clean."

PLATE XIX