I don’t believe many busy women can save as much as a third from their lighter days, but I do firmly believe that nearly every one of you can save some part of it. Maybe it is only half an hour, but much can be done in even that little space several times a week. What we need in our daily work is more generalship. Your body is like an army blundering around without a leader unless you guide it with your head. That is what your head is for—to save your body and help it accomplish more. The trouble is that we all get into a rut too easily and go on doing our work in the same old way for years. We quit thinking, quit using generalship.
What each of us needs to do many times a year is to sit down and carefully consider her own work. Does too much time go to one thing and too little to another? Can we omit any of it without harm to anybody? Is there some way of doing this duty more quickly without slighting it? Would such a simple thing as changing the height of the sink, the kitchen table, the wash-bench, save time, strength and aching back? Will a plain shelf or two along the kitchen wall make work easier? Would an hour spent on a carefully planned rearrangement of the kitchen utensils and supplies save many hours during the coming months? There is no end to the useless things one can buy for a kitchen, yet there are many appliances and arrangements that, some in one household, some in another, will pay for themselves many times over in a year. Read advertisements, papers, magazines—you can glance through the advertisement pages in a very few minutes—perhaps go to demonstrations by agents of practical devices for lightening housework. Notice what your friends are using. Look much and buy little. But keep yourself awake to new ideas, and now and then when you are sure of your ground adopt some of them. Where there is no outlay of money necessary try frequent experiments, but not many at a time. If any of your family or friends are of an inventive turn of mind, call them in for consultation. The most valuable inventions are the simplest ones.
You cannot believe all you read or hear about, but you can generally believe your own eyes if you use them carefully. Go to those of your friends who seem to manage their work well. If they have any utensils or appliances that actual experience has proved good investments, note them carefully. Maybe you or some of your family can make something that answers the same purpose. If not, sleep on the question and if your judgment still says that it will pay in the end to get it, try hard to raise the money. Even on a basis of dollars and cents it may pay in the long run. And it is generally a question of more than money—a question of body, mind and soul.
Note carefully how other good housekeepers manage their work. There is a practical study for you! You have probably watched them many times before this, but now watch them with seeing eyes.
Turn your attention to the tasks that burden you heavily. Here reforms are needed most. You will hardly be ready to assert that you are doing these tasks in the very best way in the world. Find out why not, and then try to improve on the old method.
After you have thought over your work in general sit down some evening and plan out the duties of the next day as far as you know them. Forget how you used to manage. Maybe you will be able to make only one or two small changes the first time. That is a good beginning. Try again later. Keep your wits about you and your thinking-cap on all the time. It will pay.
As the world grows older it accomplishes more in a given time than it used to do. They can make a hundred things now in the time it took to make one fifty years ago. Are you a part of the world and its progress or are you something left behind in the onward march? Not your fault? Well, you can be pretty sure that it is partly your fault and that you can remedy some of it if you only will.
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