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.
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
| COOK | Washing | Ironing | Bake Clean refrig., etc. Take waitress's work | Day out | Put cellar in order | Bake Clean kitchen | Sunday out |
| WAITRESS | Washing | Ironing | Day out | Sweep upstairs | Sweep downstairs | Clean silver | Take cook's work |
| MISTRESS | Help a little | Help a little | Sort and mend wash Help with work | Help with work | Help a little | Get out clean linen and set closet in order | Help with work |