Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife

by Marion Mills Miller

The library table should be large and simple. One that is oval in shape is the best for the family to gather about, and therefore gives the most homelike appearance. The illumination of the library should center either upon this table, if a lamp is used, or above it, if gas or electric light. The desk should have a side-light of its own.

Modern library conveniences are presented in so handy and presentable shapes that the room may be perfectly equipped as a literary workshop without crowding it, or detracting from its appearance. A dictionary holder (wooden, not wire), a revolving bookcase for other works of reference, and a card index of the library may complete the equipment. It will be well to utilize one or more of the drawers of the desk as a file for clippings. These should be kept in stout manila envelopes, slightly less in size than the width and height of the drawer, and with the names of subjects contained, and arranged in alphabetical order.

The carpet should be plain in design, and underlaid with padding. The curtains should be of heavier and darker stuff than those in the parlor, and easily adjusted to admit the light.

The library and living room are generally next each other, and so each may and should have a fireplace in the common chimney. That of the library should be of severer design; that of the living-room more homelike. Dutch tiles, with pictures that interest children, are specially appropriate for the latter.

Where the father of the family demands a "den" for reading and smoking, this may be a small room on the same general order as the library, but with an emphasis on comfort. Thus, the sofa should be replaced by a wide divan, which may also serve on occasion as a sleeping-place. The Turkish style of furnishing is the customary one; the Japanese style being a fad that came in with the aesthetic craze, was carried to an uncomfortable excess, and has gone out of fashion. The most appropriate style for an American house is American Indian. The brilliant and strikingly designed Navajo blankets may be used for both rugs and couch covers, or hung up as wall-ornaments. Moqui basketware serves equally well for useful purposes, such as scrap-baskets, and for ornamentation. The pottery of the Pueblo Indians, being naive and primitive in design, is much more intimate and therefore appropriate than the Japanese bric-a-brac which it replaces.

The living-room is the heart of the house, and everything in it should be of a nature to collect loving associations. Almost any style of furniture is admissible into it, if only it is comfortable. There should be rocking-chairs, for the woman and the neighbors who drop in to see her, other chairs stout enough for a man to tip back upon the hind legs, and little chairs, or a little settee by the fireplace, for the children. The mother's desk should stand here, plainer than the one in the library, but of design similar to it; there should be a sofa as comfortable as the library one, to which the mother should have the first right. The paper should be cheerful in its tone and with a definite design. This will become endeared by association with home to the children, and the mother should be slow to replace it. The window draperies may be home-made, such as of rough-finished silk or embroidered canvas, and the floor covered with a thick rag-carpet, preferably of a nondescript or "hit-and-miss" design. If the housekeeper thinks that this is "hominess" carried to excess, she may cover the floor with an ingrain carpet, or better, plain filling of a medium shade, on which a few rag rugs are laid, light in color. Very artistic carpets and rugs are made out of old carpets and sold at reasonable figures, and there still remain in some small towns throughout the country weavers who weave into carpets the carpet-rags sewn together by housewives for the price of their labor alone.

There is a reason additional to its economy why this practice should not die out. The tearing up into strips of old garments, and the tacking of their ends together with needle and thread is work eminently suited for children, and one in which they take great pride, as it gives them a share in the creation of a useful and beautiful household article.

The dining-room should be decorated in accordance with the quantity of daylight it receives. It should be, if possible, a light room, with preferably the morning sun. In this case, it is properly furnished and decorated in dark tones, on the order of the library; if the room is dark, the furniture, wood-finish, and wall-paper should be warm and light in feeling. The housekeeper has a wide variety of sets of dining table and chairs to choose from. Whatever she selects should be distinguished by the quality of dignity. Here is the one room in the house where formality is thoroughly in place; it is at table where bad manners are wont most to show themselves among children, and laxity in etiquette among their parents. Just as the exclusive use of the room for eating purposes saves labor in housework, so will its dignity in decoration aid in enforcing the mother's teaching of good habits to the children.

Here, if anywhere in the house, plain wall-paper should be used, since the chief decorations are the china closet, cabinet and sideboard.

The dining-room ought not to have a fire-place or stove if other means of heating it are available, since heat, like food, should be equally distributed to those at table. Preference in seating should be a matter of honor rather than of material advantage.