EON 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
: 
HELES Orth 
HOUSEWIFE 
TABLE AND HOUSEHOLD SUGGESTIONS OF INTER- 
EST TO EVERY HOUSEKEEPER AND HOUSEWIFE 
March, 1912 
KITCHEN ECONOMY 
By Elizabeth Atwood 
Photographs by Mary H. Northend and Charlotte Kendall Mooney 
than with our money.”’ So said Queen Chris- 
tina of Sweden, more than two hundred and 
fifty years ago. It is a far reach from a 
queen of a country to a queen of a kitchen, 
and yet this maxim should mean as much in 
the kitchen of to-day as it would have meant to that queen 
of long ago. 
Kitchen economy does not mean the care of scraps alone. 
It means a wise use of time as well as a wise use of ma- 
terials. How often we see one who can “turn off”? more 
work in an hour than another can in half a day. It is not 
because the hands work so much faster, but because the one 
understands how to dove-tail the multitude of various 
motions, and also to make “ther head save her heels” (as 
my grandmother used to say), while the other does not. 
To begin with, we must put a proper valuation upon the 
kitchen and its relation to the whole house. It is a fancy of 
mine that the kitchen is to the whole house what the spinal 
column is to the whole body. To follow this fancy, what would 
the body be without a good spine?) How many of us know 
spineless people? Also (too well), how many of us know 
spineless homes? 
Now, the average woman who has trouble with her back 
sets to work to correct that trouble, and science is brought 
to the rescue. She follows well-laid rules for developing 
her strength, and nothing is left undone which can help 
produce a perfect result. Generally, if she is honest in her 
desire for strength, an excellent result is gained. 
It is not so with the backbone of the house. The de- 
spised kitchen, which is a good part of every woman’s 
kingdom, is left to suffer, many, many times, in the hands 
of ignorance, whether that of the mistress or of the maid. 
How many women make a study of the time it takes to do 
certain tasks, and, putting these tasks together, proceed to 
consider how much a maid should be asked to do? If 
satisfied with such investigation for themselves, how many 
women proceed to teach a maid how she may do as they 
have done? This is a large part of kitchen economy, and 
until our housekeepers become just such investigators and 
teachers, spineless homes will continue to exist. 
We have to eat three times a day, most of us, and some- 
one must prepare the food for our meals and clean the 
utensils and dishes used three times a day. This is im- 
perative. Why should not the woman of moderate means 
in a small household recognize the fact, and, instead of leav- 
ing such a monumental care entirely to a possibly incom- 
petent maid, thus forever remaining more or less incom- 
petent herself, employ her brains in organizing and systema- 
tizing her own kitchen so that it will become a real back- 
bone to the house? I have never been able to understand 
why so many women who can afford but one servant—not 
always that—though mistresses of the house, yet remain 
anything but housewives in anything approaching the true 
sense of the word. 
The day for scouring, kitchen work, cooking and wash- 
ing dishes, is long past. Girls, wondering what to do with 
their lives after leaving school, seldom consider going into 
mother’s kitchen to solve this problem. And yet, what 
greater work could they be doing than training themselves 
to become the backbone of another home? One must know 
by positive experience in the mother’s home before she can 
lead and direct another—her own—home successfully; and 
mother should always be willing to teach and train this 
beginner for her life’s work, always keeping before her this 
fact,—that to be a true and qualified homemaker is the 
greatest profession open to a woman. But—is mother 
qualified? If not, it is high time she realized that she must 
The manner in which bread for the morning meal is placed upon the home table is of importance to housewives who wish to have attractive tables 
