Convenient Houses, With Fifty Plans for the Housekeeper

by Louis H. Gibson

For the preparation of bread, cake, pastries, etc., the pantry is provided. In it are places for everything which can be used for such preparation. One can go out of the heat and noise of the kitchen into a little room which holds everything that can possibly be needed, and there prepare those articles of food which take the most time and careful attention. In [Fig. 2] are two windows; under one is the dough-board. This is a table fastened to the wall at a convenient height for moulding and general work of this character. On one end is a piece of marble, twelve inches wide by sixteen long, which is used for moulding purposes. The advantages of such a piece of marble are numerous. It is as easily cleaned as a dish and requires no scouring, and, as dough does not readily stick to it, moulding can be done without the trouble which comes from the use of a board. This piece of marble is not fastened to the dough-board, as is sometimes done. Where it is set into the board there will always be creases in which dough will lodge, and it can only be cleaned with the greatest trouble. Where it is free, it can be raised from the board occasionally, and everything thoroughly cleaned.

At the right of the board is the flour-bin, which contains places for various kinds of flour and meal. Next to it is the refrigerator. Over the refrigerator is a window which opens on the porch, and through which the ice may be placed without the iceman going through the kitchen with his wet feet and dripping load.

At the left of the dough-board are shelves for keeping stores. The lower shelves are enclosed by doors and provided with a lock, so that extra stores may be placed there for safe keeping, where this is found desirable. The upper shelves are exposed. On them are kept sugar, tea, coffee, baking-powder, and kindred stores, which are in every-day use, and can be reached easier if there are no doors to be opened and closed. They should be kept in air-tight cans, which prevent their exposure to dust, insects, and air. Back of the door opening into the kitchen are hooks for the utensils which more properly belong in the pantry than the kitchen.

Many housekeepers prefer to keep the refrigerator in the cellar, on account of the waste in the ice. This waste, to the mind of the writer, is a small matter. The time spent by either housekeeper or servant in going into the cellar could much better be occupied in doing something else which would save more than does keeping the refrigerator below. Then, again, when it is kept in the pantry it can readily be provided with a zinc drain to the outside, which saves some little labor. In the cellar such a drain would only be possible where sand could be reached. A refrigerator should never, under any circumstances, be drained into the sewer, as is sometimes done.

The utensils which properly belong to the kitchen are kept in an old-fashioned kitchen safe, rather than in a closet opening out from the kitchen. A safe is more readily cleaned than a closet, and the perforated metal doors render the upper part of it an excellent place for storing cold food, which it is not desirable to keep in the refrigerator. Then if, as may happen in any kitchen which is left to the care of servants, vermin should take possession, the safe can be moved from the room, and trouble from this source avoided.

The entrance to the cellar is near the table, as marked. At the head of the cellar are placed brooms, mops, and dust-pans, and above these, well away from the head when going below, is a shelf upon which two buckets can be placed.

Back of the range is a small wooden box, thirty inches long by twenty-two inches wide and twelve inches deep, which is provided with a door and shelves. These shelves, as well as the top and bottom, have holes bored through them in order to allow the passage of hot air. In this box scrubbing-rags and brushes dry at once, and never have a bad odor. The box is of the same wood as the other kitchen finish, and looks as if it were a part of it.

A soap-box, with construction similar to the above, may be provided. It should have a tin-pipe connection with flue or other ventilating apparatus. It will dry the soap and render its use less wasteful.