Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1911 — HOUSE KEEPS ITSELF [ARTICLE]

HOUSE KEEPS ITSELF

One Woman’s Experience in Automatic Housekeeping. Y- "Y '■#- Not a Bit of Bother for the Modern House Wife as Mechanical Labor Saving Appliances Are Now Applied. London. —The modern woman demands, above all else, that her time — or the greater part of It—shall be her own. She Insists on freedom to earn her own living, to acquire culture, or to educate her children and be a panion of her husband, and therefore the modern house must needs “keep” Itself. This It will not do If the vexed domestic servant question Is continually to the fore, and some women are at last grasping the great comfort of letting mechanical labor saving appliances do their work for them. I happen to know one of these present day women, says a writer in the Dally Mail. She Is married and has two children, but she Is busy every day with many interests outside her home. Yet her house is better managed than any I know. Some days ago she showed me over her dwelling, and let me Into some of her work-and-worry saving secrets. “My ‘wonder box’ is packed with insulating material and lined with steel. The children’s nurse or I merely cook our dishes on a gas stove for a few minutes, then pop them in here, and go out and forget about them. When I come back in the evening they are cooked and hot —ready to serve, in fact. The children's meal is put in earlier in the morning and is ready by midday. Delightfully simple, isn’t itr' On the sideboard were several devices for producing breakfast with the least possible effort. This meal was always cooked on the table, I learned. An egg steamer, a chafing dish, a coffee percolator and an electric radiator for making toast were the most prominent items. In a corner of the room stood a small electrically worked vacuum cleaner which made light of the toilsome business of sweeping and dusting. The floors, which were all linoleum covered, were washed with the aid of a self-wringing mop. A porcelain anthraoite stove occupied the hearth, and over this my friend waxed regretful “I bated to

give up my beloved open Art,” she confessed. “But it went dead against my principles, and it made more work than all the rest of my household put together. This stove Is the next "fleet thing, for at least I can open the front and toast my toes at it. It only requires stoking every twenty-four hours, and it makes no dust” When I demanded to see the kitchen, she told me there was none. “A kitchen only exists for the comfort of servants," she reminded me. ‘1 have no servants, so why should I have a kitchen? Come and see my workshop, though. " And She led me into a small square box of a room, containing only a sink, a gas stove, a table, and two cupbhards built into the wall. Of that coal devouring, work producing monster, the kitchen range, there was no sign. "But hot water?” I pretested. “How can one live without constant supply of hot water?" I was told to put my head inside one of the cupboards, which 1 did. but I withdrew it agqln hastily. The temperature was at least 80 degrees. The cupboard, it appeared, contained an automatic gas hot water heater, from the tank of which small pipes extended and circled round the walls. They met again in large pipes, one of which carried off the water to the kitchen sink, the other to the bathroom. The gas burners under the UnV were lighted each morning and burned at full power for tea minutes or so, till the water“Secame heated. Then the burners lowered themselves automatically to mere pin points of flame. When the tank was emptied, or partly so, it refilled itself with cold water, and the burners popped up again and heated the tankful once more. "And the cost of keeping house by your methods?" I asked. "The initial oost—of furnishing—i« perhaps rather high. But I think our weekly bills would make most hotm*keepers open their eyes." was the an swer.