METHODICAL HOUSEKEEPING.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2065, 6 October 1880, Page 3

METHODICAL HOUSEKEEPING.

[Prom the “Queen.”]

I am about to handle what I feal to bo a somewhat delicate subject, since so many housewives of my acquaintance have, in course of conversation on domestic matters declared themselves, not certainly to be incapable of method in housekeeping, but to be infinitely above it. “ Method,” they think, “is the attribute of single women.” They have not around them the distracting cares and claims of their married sisters. _ They can arrange their time, portion out their day’s work, keep accurate accounts and voluminous diaries, keep their cupboards, drawers, and bookshelves tidy, remember the day of the month and the day of the week, as well as what is in the larder ; they can answer their friends’ letters and exercise all their faculties generally. But for married ladies there is an excuse. According to their own view of the matter, in many oases rigid discipline in every day life is absolutely out of the question for them. They cannot be expected to follow any sort of routine, or to render any account for their time. They are always busy, and that is quite enough. The days pass in a sort of breathless, unpunctual, piecemeal fashion, Thursday coming before they knew Tuesday was over, and Wednesday’s work treading on the heels of Friday’*. “ But that does not matter,” these unmethodical housewives protest, in self-defence. “We never have time to remember what day it is ; it always cornea right in the end. We married people cannot live by rule as if wo were still in the schoolroom. All that mechanical routine is for old maids’ establishments ; it really does not make a house any pleasanter to be managed by clock-work;” and so on. This is all very well, and housewives of this description often succeed wonderfully in putting an outside gloss over everything which makes the uninitiated think them model managers. But it is only an outside gloss, like the apron which a servant throws on to hide an untidy dress. A glimpse underneath will reveal grave deficiencies. In some of these unmethodical households the meals may be on special occasions well served, the table garnished with flowers, the rooms tastefully arranged, the servants apparently well trained. But let the guest who think* it all perfection take a look behind the scenes, and witness what goes on on ordinary days—the scramble, the hurry- scurry, the discomfort of mistress, servants and family, when there is no attempt at routine, and the domestic barque is allowed to drift haphazard over the waves of circumstances. Thera is no particular day for giving out stores or for ordering in groceries. Consequently the household is perpetually “ out of ” tea and sugar, as well as candles and soap and similar commodities ; and servants must needs be despatched in a violent hurry at inconvenient hours to obtain these commodities at some neighbouring shop, where the goods are probably inferior. When vou sit down to write a letter in an establishment of this kind, you must expect to find the inkstands dried up ; the pons, if they are quills, split up the centre ; if steel, like so many rusty nails ; half a sheet of note paper in the blotting.book, which has apparently done service for many months; no envelopes in the envelope case ; and a general neglect of minor matters which leads one to think “ method ” is not such a bad thing after all. And in every department of the house it will be the same—the keys always lost, and nothing to be found when it is wanted, except on those special occasions which I have mentioned, when a sudden, unwonted tug is given to the helm of the domestic barque, and it is steered steadily for a few days only, to fall back into a more irregular course afterwards.

I have myself kept house for several years, and was at first, not being given naturally to exactitude, and my husband being a strict disciplinarian, much worried by having to adopt rules for everyday life. But I found that carelessness and disregard to comparative trifles, were such heinous offences in my lord’s eyes, that I was compelled to learn method, nolens nolens. So I set to work in good earnest. I wrote lists for the servants of each day’s work, and kept them rigidly up to the mark in following my programme. I made a day for sorting and giving out the linen, a day for giving out stores, a morning for overlooking and settling the accounts ot the week, a stated time for attending to the stationery department, filling the inkstands, replenishing the blotting cases, and taking care that pons fit to write with were always ready to hand; then once a week I sorted and put away the newspapers which were lying about, and saw that the library books were changed; and, of course, I had a special and unalterable morning for mending, sowing on buttons, and darning Books. By all this strict adherence to routine, I found it easier in one way to accomplish all I had to do. But that it required great self-denial and self-restraint I do not deny, and it allowed very little scope for idle visiting or idle reading. I had to set up an “at home” day, and to be" not at home” almost every other flay of the week, and my friends were often annoyed at my having so little time to devote to them. Still, that mattered little so long as my husband was made comfortable ; and I really reaped the reward of my efforts by gaining his approval of the manner in which I worked my domestic machinery. I firmly believe that the habit of method, if persevered in, trains the mind and strengthens the memory. I used to find, going out in the morning with a number of commissions to do, that if I met any friends or acquaintances on the road, and stopped to chat with them, half ot my errands would go out of my head, and I often forgot the very things which were most important. So I adopted the plan of writing a list every day on a little card, which I slipped into the band of my purse, referring to it when necessary. One’s little domestic wants look so trilling, and even 'ridiculous, when written down, that I was rather afraid sometimes of dropping this card, lest anyone picking it up should imagine me to be demented, especially as I thought this habit paculiar to myself. I was therefore greatly amused, as well as encouraged, when one day in a shop I happened to find left upon the counter alist of commissions very similar to my own, evidently dropped by a previous customer. “ Half a-pound of butter; eggs wanted; apple tart for Sunday; stamps; one yard of lining muslin ; call at the butcher’s,” was set down in due form, and I wondered whether the housewife who had lost it would bo able to remember ell she had to do,or>ould have felt as distracted as I should had the catastrophe occurred to me. I must, in conclusion, admit that different temperaments and different circumstances and surroundings render the art of method in housekeeping more or less difficult, and that such a course as I have described— i. c., a day for everything and everything on its day, as it wore--might not be possible for everyone. ; But there is no doubt, according to the laws

of nature, that a certain system in all things is necessary. "There must be organisation in housekeeping as well ae in higher matters, or the result is oboes.