The great advantage of Millville to us all lies in the fact that my wife is a good organizer. She immediately saw that the introduction of electricity into the cottage enabled her to assign chores to us all. These chores were assigned so that the establishment ran like clock-work. On Monday morning in a large room, called the wash room, she arranged the soiled clothes in five piles. Pile No. 1 contained sheets and pillow cases; No. 2, white shirts, shirtwaists, and other starched clothes; No. 3, underclothes; No. 4, towels, etc., and No. 5, coloured clothes. Here stood a washing machine run by electric motor and a wringer run by the same motor ([Fig. 143]). By the side of it sat a tub for rinsing water and next to that a tub for bluing water. Two boys placed a wash boiler over a two-burner oil stove, put five pails of water into it, and cut up one cake of laundry soap which they also put in. When this was boiling hot, about half of it was poured into the washing machine. The other half was to take its place later in the washing machine. The first pile of clothes was put in and the motor run for five minutes. This batch was then run through the wringer into the rinsing water, and then again through the wringer into the bluing water, and then through the wringer a third time into the clothes basket, and hung upon the line out doors in the clear sunshine, which did more than all else to make them sweet and clean. A basket of such clothes from the line makes you want to plunge your face right into it and take a good whiff. There is nothing like it except a mow full of new hay. The piles of soiled clothes follow one another through this series of tubs on about a fifteen to twenty minutes headway, so that the whole family washing is done wholly by two boys inside of two hours. Each pile after the first is given ten minutes in the washing machine.
Fig. 144
On Tuesday the ironing is done with electric irons ([Fig. 144]). On Friday the house is cleaned by the vacuum cleaner, run by electricity ([Fig. 145]).
Fig. 145
On Saturday a lot of baking is done in a series of fireless cookers ([Fig. 146]).
The sewing machine runs more than ever before. I hear "It is such fun to sew with an electric motor." And the electric fan which Harold installed for his mother over the sewing machine "makes that the coolest spot in the house."