Join 'Don't Worry' Club

By Mrs. A.J. Wilder, Mansfield, Missouri

Conservation of a Woman’s Strength is True Preparedness

“Eliminate.-To thrust out.” Did you never hear of the science of elimination? Didn’t know there was such a science! Well, just try to eliminate, or thrust out, from your everyday life, the unnecessary, hindering things and if you do not decided that it takes a great deal of knowledge to do so successfully then I will admit that it was my mistake.

The spring rush is almost upon us. The little chickens, the garden, the spring sewing and house-cleaning will be on our hands soon, and the worst of it is they will all come together, unless we have been very wise in our planning.

It almost makes one feel like the farmer’s wife who called up the stairs to awaken the hired girl on a Monday morning. “Liza Jane,” she called, “come hurry and get up and get the breakfast. This is wash day and here it is almost 6 o’clock and the washing not done yet. Tomorrow is ironing day and the ironing not touched, next day is churning day and not begun and here the week is half gone and nothing done yet.”

You’d hardly believe it but it’s true. And it’s funny, of course, but one can just feel the worry and stain under which she was suffering. All without reason, too, as the greater part of our worry usually is.

It seems to me that the first thing that should be “thrust out” from our household arrangements it that same worry and feeling of hurry. I do not mean to eliminate haste, for sometimes, usually in fact, that is necessary, but there is a wide difference between haste and hurry. We may make haste with our hands and feet and still keep our minds unhurried. If our minds are cool and collected our “heads” will be able to “save our heels” a great deal.

An engineer friend once remarked of the housekeeping of a capable woman, “There is no lost motion there.” She never worried over her work. She appeared to have no feeling of hurry. Her mind, calm and quiet, directed the work of her hands and there was no bungling, no fruitless running here and there. Every motion and every step counted so that there was “no lost motion.”

Household help is so very hard to get especially on the farm, that, with the housekeeper, it has become a question of what to leave undone or cut out altogether from her scheme of things as well as how to do in an easier manner what must be done.

The Man of The Place loved good things to eat. Does yet, for that matter, as, indeed, I think men of all other places do. Trying to make him think I was a wonder of a wife I gratified this appetite, until at last, when planning the dinner for a feast day, I discovered to my horror that there was nothing extra I could cook to mark the day as being distinct and better than any other day. Pies, the best I could make, were common, every-day affairs. Cakes, ditto. Puddings, preserves and jellies were ordinary things. Fried, roasted, broiled and boiled poultry of all kinds was no treat, we had so much of it as well as other kinds of meat raised on the farm. By canning and pickling and preserving all kinds of vegetables and fruits we had each and every kind the year around. In fact, we were surfeited with good things to eat all the time.

As I studied the subject it was impressed upon me that in order to thoroly enjoy anything, one must feel the absence of it at times and I acted upon that theory. We have fresh fruit the year around: our apples bridging the gap from blackberries and plums in the summer to the first strawberries in the spring, and these fresh fruits are usually our desserts. Fresh fruits are better, more healthful, more economical, and so much less work to serve than pies, puddings and preserves. These things we have on our feast days, for Sunday treats and for company. They are relished so much more because they are something different..

I stopped canning vegetables altogether. There is enough variety in winter vegetables, if rightly used, and we enjoy the green garden truck all the more for having been without it for a few months. The family is just as well if not better satisfied under this treatment and a great deal of hard work is left out.

Some time ago the semi-annual house-cleaning was dropped from my program, very much to everyone’s advantage. If a room needed cleaning out of season, I used to think “Oh well, it will soon be house-cleaning time” and let it wait until then. I found that I was becoming like the man who did “wish Saturday would come so that he could take a bath.” Then I decided I would have no more house-cleaning in the accepted meaning of that word.

The first step in the new order of things was to dispense with carpets and use rugs instead. When a rug needs shaking and airing it gets it then, or as soon as possible, instead of waiting until house-cleaning time. If the windows need washing they are washed the first day I feel energetic enough. The house is gone over in this way a little at a time when it is needed and as suits my convenience and about all that is left of the bugaboo of house-cleaning is the putting up of the heater in the fall and taking it out in the spring.

Never do I have the house in a turmoil and myself exhausted as it used to be when I house-cleaned twice a year.

To be sure there are limits to the lessening of work. I could hardly go so far as a friend who said, “Why sweep? If I let it go today and tomorrow and the next day there will be just so much gained, for the floor will be just as clean when I do sweep, as it would be if I swept every day from now until then.” Still after all there is something to be said from that viewpoint. The applied science of the elimination of work can best be studied by each housekeeper for herself, but believe me, it is well worth studying.

During the first years of his married life, a man of my acquaintance, used to complain bitterly to his wife, because she did not make enough slop in the kitchen to feed a hog. “At home,” he said, “they always kept a couple of hogs and they did not cost a cent for there was always enough waste and slop from the kitchen to feed them.” How ridiculous we all are at times! This man actually thought that something was wrong instead of being thankful that there was no waste from his kitchen. The young wife was grieved, but said she did not “like to cook well enough to cook things and throw them to the hogs, for the sake of cooking more.” The food on her table was always good even if some of it was made over dishes, and after a time her husband realized that he had a treasure in the kitchen and that it was much cheaper to feet the hogs their proper food than to give them what had been prepared for human consumption.

There are so many little heedless ways in which a few cents are wasted here and a few more there. The total would be truly surprising if we should sum them up. I illustrated this to myself in an odd way lately. While looking over the pages of a catalog advertising articles from 2 cents to 10 cents the Man of The Place said, “There are a good many little tricks you’d like to have. Get what you want; they will only cost a few cents.” So I made out a list of what I wanted, things I decided I could not get along without, as I found them, one by one, on those alluring pages. I was surprised when I added up the cost to find that it amounted to $5. I put the list away intending to go over it and cut out some things to make the total less. That was several months ago and I have not yet missed any of the things I would have ordered. I have decided to let the list wait until I do.

Matches are small things to economize in, but why throw away even a match when it is just as easy to save it? In using an oil stove with several burners, I found that full half or more of the expense for matches could be saved by using the same match more than once. It was just as easy to touch the end of a used match to the flame already burning as it was to strike a new one. The only trouble necessary was to have an extra match safe in which to drop the match the first time it was used. When lighting the next burner it was just as easy to take the match from there as from the first match safe. A small thing, if you please, but small things have such a way of counting up. Everyone has heard the old saying that :”a woman can throw more out of the window with a teaspoon than a man can throw in the door with a shovel.” Of course, that is an exaggeration. I’m sure it couldn’t be done, anyway not if the man shoveled right hard!

We are told that in the struggle of the nations for existence, and in our own if it should be drawn into the vortex, a great deal depends upon the organization of the economic resources; that in the last analysis the strength of nations as of individuals rests upon the kitchens of the country.

If economy is so essential in war time why is it not a good thing in time of peace? If it so strengthens a nation in time of stress, would it not make a nation more powerful if practiced at other times? Things cannot be considered small that have so great an effect!

With worry, waste and unnecessary work eliminated from our households we would be in a state of “preparedness” to which no one could possibly have any objection. And the beauty of it is that such a state of preparedness in our home is good in war or peace, for both nations and individuals.

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "Join 'Don't Worry' Club." Missouri Ruralist (March 20, 1916): 10-11.  CLICK HERE to see this article as it originally appeared in the Missouri Ruralist.

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