"My day is arranged thus. Foreign-fashion breakfast, put ready over night on a tray (covered), with coffee and milk ready mixed. This I heat. I light the geyser, and while the water heats have my breakfast in bed. In cold weather I can switch on my bedroom fire from my bed, and as my gas-ring has a long tube, heat my coffee without getting out of bed if I please.
"After breakfast I get up and put on an overall instead of my dress. With no fires and no washstand work and my long-handled cleaners the work is quickly done. I prepare what I need for lunch and dinner; food is so simple a matter when you live alone: my lunch, for example, is generally milk pudding, cheese and fruit, and my dinner of two courses, meat or fish and sweet or cheese, and often I buy cooked food if I am very busy.
"I work from eleven until three or four. Then I go out and generally have tea with friends or at my club.
"I come in, dine, tidy up, put breakfast ready, and often work for an hour or two, or read, and go to bed.
"I give up Friday to special turning out and cleaning, mending, etc.
"My entertaining consists of tea or dinner (not more than four). Then I have a waitress who clears away and washes up. For such dinners I have soup, fish au gratin, stewed pigeons with savoury rice, or chicken en casserole, potato croquettes, cold sweet, cheese, coffee, dessert. The kind of dinner which can all be put ready for the waitress down to the last detail.
"I should detest to exist in a squalid muddle, but really it is not necessary to do so. Living as I do I can save money. If I kept a servant I should spend all I earn and be no more comfortable."
About Washing Up.
"I wonder if ladies who do their own work realise that it is possible to wash up and still keep one's hands nice by using rubber gloves and different sized mops. When I began to do my own work for a family of husband and four children I had great trouble with my nails splitting. Now my hands are as nice as ever they were. I have three mops of different sizes, one with a brush on the back for hard rubbing. I wear a rubber glove on my left hand (they cost 1s. 3d. a pair, and I have had one pair for months) and use the water practically boiling, as one can tilt up plates, etc., out of the water with the mop, and plates slipped into a rack will then require no drying. My saucepan brush has a long handle and the wire bristles are put in on the slant. I can wash up after any meal without wetting one finger. I have an old skewer stuck in the woodwork beside the sink, and on to it I slip the glove to dry between washings up. I have found it a great saving of time and trouble, too, to have long-handled sweeping brushes, and I have ordered a long-handled hard scrubbing brush, mop, and wringer, so that I can do the scullery and kitchen, etc., without getting down on my knees or putting my hands in water."