The Labour-saving House

by Mrs. C. S. Peel

Each time the hall-door bell rings, a maid must run upstairs to answer it, and visitors and tea in the drawing-room necessitate more journeys up and down, and the carrying of a heavy tray.

Now, with a house of this description there are certainly two ways of converting it into a labour-saving dwelling.

A Labour-Making House Converted.

If the basement is deep and incurably dark, by far the best plan is to dispense with it altogether so far as living-rooms are concerned, using it merely for cellars and box-room.

"But," says the householder, "there will now be no back door. The tradesmen will all have to come to the front door." They will. But tradesmen call chiefly in the morning, and the few who come in the afternoon might be instructed to go to the area door, to which the dustman would also go, while the coals (if any are used) would be delivered through the pavement coal-shoot as before.

Arranging thus, the house proper begins on the ground floor. The large front room is the dining-room as before, and the double doors between it and the erstwhile smoking-room should be plastered up on the smoking-room side, for under the new arrangement the smoking-room becomes the kitchen, and the small third room the pantry. The kitchen will not be large, but neither a gas nor an electric cooker takes up much space.

Now comes the question whether the hot-water system shall be worked by a coke or a gas circulator. The latter gives even less trouble than the former, but it may prove too costly in use. A coke furnace needs to be stoked about three times a day, and is very easy to light. The furnace might be placed in the kitchen or in the basement, and in it can be burned practically all the rubbish, thus doing away with that otherwise nasty necessity the dustbin, which in many parts of London the authorities refuse to empty more than once a week.

Kitchen and pantry must be fitted with sinks, and there should be a little gas fire, work-table, and armchair in the pantry for the use of the house-parlourmaid.

Make your head save your hands.