Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 193, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1910 — PLAN THE KITCHEN [ARTICLE]

PLAN THE KITCHEN

l-TS ARRANGEMENT A MATTER OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE. Makes All the Difference In the World to the Housewife Who Manages to Get Along Without J Servants. The internal arrangements of a house have a great deal to do with the comfort of living without “ servants. So much did we feel this to be the case that we determined to build our own cottage when we settled to adopt this mode of life. In so many houses the Inconvenient position of staircases, the length of passages, the relative position of one room to another, leads to far more work than there really should be any need for. The same may be said of badly designed fireplaces, awkward arrangements for washing and bathing, and of the many other details with which work is connected in daily life. In arranging the rooms downstairs the relative position of kitchen, store 1 cupboards, pantry, and larder will be the most Important consideration. This is where the work is done, and the movements between cooking stove, saucepan shelves, sink, store cupboards . and larder should be reduced to as few steps as possible. A. study of this just makes all the difference when you do your own work. The' larder should face the north, so that it is always cool, and its shelves should be of slate. The copk’s tablet should have store cupboards behind It against a wall up to the ceiling, with l shelves 11 inches wide, and with sliding doors in front. Below the table should be cupboards for utensils, pie dishes, basins, molds, cake tins and so on. Close by should be other shelves for saucepans, frying pans, kettles and so forth.

The cooking stove should be placed , so that you can walk around it. It should stand upon a tiled hearth, and* the walls at back and sides should be tiled. Rails should be fixed- at back and sides on which to air linen, which I? then kept all out of the way and free from dust. The prettiest way to arrange the cooking stove is to copy the Dutch fashion and have a wooden paneled canopy above it, with a short vallance hanging down to the plate rack; on this canopy can be fixed Delft plated bowls or the pretty little Dutch figures. Top ventilation should be arranged for above all cooking stoves; heat and fumes are thus carried out of the room at once. Further, the skylight affording this ventilation shpuld be open* in more than one direction; then whichever way the wind is blowing there will always be a lee side and no down draught The sink should be fireclay and enameled white Inside. It should be rather deep; then it can be used for washing smaller articles at home. Draining boards of whitewash should be placed at either side of the sink, and these should have some semicircular grooves cut in them, not V-shaped; the latter hold water. The sink should be only a step or two from the cooking stove; then saucepans can. be rinsed out at once after the dish is cooked. If nothing in a saucepan is allowed to catch fire or burn, or to dry hard, they are no trouble at all to keep perfectly clean and in good order. The long time that saucepans last is one of the most noticeable advantages of living without servants. Saving of expense is effected in many little ways like this, which are difficult to detect in detail, but the effect of which can be easily seen when the quarter’s expenditure is analyzed.