The Arrangement of Household Furnishings 1595 



penny's worth of expense, one can mentally sweep a room bare of its 

 furnishings and work out a new furnishing scheme as one would like to 

 have it. The next day that scheme may be discarded and replaced by a 

 different one. The third day a fresh idea may arrive, until the one desired 

 result is finally crystallized, after many moods and thoughts have been 

 brought to bear on the problem, and impressions have taken shape. Then 

 it is time to get pencil and paper so that all the data on walls, floors, 

 curtains, chairs, and the like, may be grouped together and used as refer- 

 ence material. 



The room or rooms in question should then be accurately measured and 

 drawn out on paper at a scale of perhaps one-quarter of an inch to the 

 foot. Every window, door, jog, or built-in feature should be exactly 

 located on the drawing, and its size marked. The various pieces of 

 furniture to be reused should be measured, and their sizes recorded. A 

 person thus has in graphic form the actual sizes and the structural con- 

 ditions of the space and the furniture at his disposal. 



some general suggestions 



It is evident that the task of selecting new furnishings becomes simple 

 in proportion as the plan of arrangement becomes definite. In order to 

 experiment intelligently with the problem of final arrangement, it is 

 necessary to canvass the details of the whole situation. The selection of 

 new things then becomes a matter of choosing such objects as will fit a 

 definite place, a definite purpose, and a more or less definite color scheme. 



Nothing so helps a tradesman to show a customer the right goods, 

 as a specific description of the article desired. If a customer asks to be 

 shown plain or two-toned wall papers in warm gray, tan, or brown, he 

 immediately classifies his request in such a way that the salesman can 

 without waste of time show whatever goods he has of the sort described. 

 Then, too, the purchaser not only sees what he asks for, but is spared 

 the bewilderment that usually results from being shown an array of 

 undesirable showy papers. 



A salesman has no way of knowing what is wanted if the customer 

 himself is vague in his request. Consequently the clerk is forced to 

 show his whole stock and to use whatever powers of suasion he has to 

 make some sort of a sale. Frequently the maze of material that is shown 

 confuses rather than clarifies the mind of the customer, so that he is 

 easily persuaded to buy something, which, on reflection, his common 

 sense or taste would declare unfit. Two or more trips to the store are 

 usually better than one, unless one's taste and decision have proved 

 especially reliable. Several shopping excursions are hardly more waste- 

 ful of time and effort than the energy that is lost through disliking or 

 regretting or even enduring for years a misfit purchase. 



