Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar91912newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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E SHOULD be more miserly with our time than with our money." So said Queen Chris- tina of Sweden, more than two hundred and fifty years ago. It is a far reach from a queen of a country to a queen of a kitchen, and yet this maxim should mean as much in the kitchen of to-day as it would have meant to that queen of long ago. Kitchen economy does not mean the care of scraps alone. It means a wise use of time as well as a wise use of ma- terials. How often we see one who can "turn off" more work in an hour than another can in half a day. It is not because the hands work so much faster, but because the one understands how to dove-tail the multitude of various motions, and also to make "her head save her heels" (as my grandmother used to say), while the other does not. To begin with, we must put a proper valuation upon the kitchen and its relation to the whole house. It is a fancy of mine that the kitchen is to the whole house what the spinal column is to the whole body. To follow this fancy, what would the body be without a good spine? How many of us know spineless people? Also (too well), how many of us know spineless homes? Now, the average woman who has trouble with her back sets to work to correct that trouble, and science is brought to the rescue. She follows well-laid rules for developing her strength, and nothing is left undone which can help produce a perfect result. Generally, if she is honest in her desire for strength, an excellent result is gained. It is not so with the backbone of the house. The de- spised kitchen, which is a good part of every woman's kingdom, is left to suffer, many, many times, in the hands of ignorance, whether that of the mistress or of the maid. How many women make a study of the time it takes to do certain tasks, and, putting these tasks together, proceed to consider how much a maid should be asked to do? If satisfied with such investigation for themselves, how many women proceed to teach a maid how she may do as they have done? This is a large part of kitchen economy, and until our housekeepers become just such investigators and teachers, spineless homes will continue to exist. We have to eat three times a day, most of us, and some- one must prepare the food for our meals and clean the utensils and dishes used three times a day. This is im- perative. Why should not the woman of moderate means in a small household recognize the fact, and, instead of leav- ing such a monumental care entirely to a possibly incom- petent maid, thus forever remaining more or less incom- petent herself, employ her brains in organizing and systema- tizing her own kitchen so that it will become a real back- bone to the house? I have never been able to understand why so many women who can afford but one servant—not always that—though mistresses of the house, yet remain anything but housewives in anything approaching the true sense of the word. The day for scouring, kitchen work, cooking and wash- ing dishes, is long past. Girls, wondering what to do with their lives after leaving school, seldom consider going into mother's kitchen to solve this problem. And yet, what greater work could they be doing than training themselves to become the backbone of another home? One must know by positive experience in the mother's home before she can lead and direct another—her own—home successfully; and mother should always be willing to teach and train this beginner for her life's work, always keeping before her this fact,—that to be a true and qualified homemaker is the greatest profession open to a woman. But—is mother qualified? If not, it is high time she realized that she must
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The manner in which bread for the morning meal is placed upon the home table is of importance to housewives who wish to have attractive tables

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