Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1914 — DO ONE THING AT A TIME [ARTICLE]

DO ONE THING AT A TIME

Too Many Housekeepers Lack System , and as a Result Work Hard With Little Results. There is a good old saying which is familiar in its excelleht advice to “let the head save the heels.” But jhe nervous, energetic modern woman, whose head, full of a score of things to be done immediately, is usually far in advance of her'Keels, finds the ancient and honorable axiom, “one thing at a time,” far better suited to her case. The woman who, passing through her bedroom to get her pocketbook out of a bureau drawer.to pay the milkman, notices that the bed valance is awry, stoops to adjust it and observes dust on the table leg near by, pauses to seize the duster fron\ its bag, remarks that, the duster should gojnto the wash, steps into the bathroom to drop it in the laundry bag, remembers that the laundry bag should be mended this week, carries it to her sewing table, notes that she will need more white spool cotton before the dressmaker comes, catches up a pencil to jot down the memorandum and thereupon discovers on her memo pad..£alf a dozen things which must positively be attended to before lunch time, is very likely tq have a nervous breakdown before her vacation time comes around, and her husband probably wonders what on earth she has had to make her so nervous. Every good housekeeper knows that enough small matters can be carried in the head in one morning to keep the heels of three maids, a hired man and all the children running most of the afternoon; and in these days when bridge, charitable interests, and club affairs occupy one part of the feminine mind and household business the other, the woman who refuses to allow herself to be harassed and distracted by too mapy thoughts at once, but who attends to one thing at a time with her whole- mind, is she who keeps serene and avoids the great American breakdown at fifty.