A VALUABLE VIRTUE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 312, 24 March 1928, Page 20

A VALUABLE VIRTUE

TEACHING TIDINESS BY HELEN GEEIG SOUTEE. What a very great comfort and help it is to the mother of a small family of growing children when they are orderly and tidy in their habits! Yet this virtue is rarely acquired by those who have not been properly trained from their youth up. The time to begin is as soon as the baby is old enough to play with toys. If he is able to use blocks or toys, then he can pick them up and put them away, and the habit, if insisted upon, will prove a great boon to busy mother or nurse in later years. Teach the little ones to fold their clothes neatly, to tidy their cupboard and drawers periodically, and, if once in a while they forget and leave things in a litter, contrive to show them the inconvenience caused by their carelessness. If a nursery or sitting room at bedtime appears as if it had been struck by a cyclone, then the mother is to blame. I have heard it said: “Everyone condemns the mother of a family, whose drawers are chaotic, and whose possessions are flung about heedlessly. But at least some of the blame should be apportioned to her mother. It is not as a woman that she has picked up the miserable habit which has destroyed the comfort of her home. Her share of the blame is that she has failed to cure herself.” Behind the Scenfes I once knew a girl who was always perfectly turned out, a veritable fashion plate and meticulous in every way, but I had occasion to look into her bedroom and the confusion baffled description. The place looked as if it had been burgled. Wardrobe doors were wide open, drawers were left pulled out to their full extent, clothes and hats were littered about on chairs or on the floor, hats and shoes were everywhere, and apparently it would have been a matter of difficulty to insinuate a single hairpin in the chaos of her dressing table. The explanation was that she had been brought up in India, and utterly spoiled by an ayah. Boys, as well as girls, should be taught systematically to brush . their own clothes, to put them away neatly, to change their shoes, after walking, and to clear away all books and papers when they have finished with them. Order In Small Things It should be impressed upon them that they are never to leave soap in the water, that they are to set their toothbrushes to drain, that they are to close drawers and wardrobes after putting away their clothes and, generally, to leave a room as they find it. A hundred petty details of this description crop up every day, and it would often be much simpler to do such things oneself rather than insist on their doing them, yet the children who are accustomed to give such matters their attention are not conscious of doing anything at all out of the way, and the household duties are thus considerably lessened. Moreover, the habit, once formed, will remain through life, and will be of immense benefit to them when they grow up, for orderliness in small matters of daily routine, brings an orderliness of mind, which is invaluable in any walk of life, enabling the possessor to avoid those petty worries and blunders which are the penalty of slovenly thinking and careless planning.