From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

At first the only upstairs rooms that will have to be furnished are Angelina’s bedroom, Edwin’s dressing-room, one spare room, and a room for the maid or maids, leaving any othe...

There are several things of course to be considered in the first choice of a nursery, and, unfortunately, in far too many cases economy has to be considered even before what is...

In my first chapter I laid just a little stress on the word ‘suitable’; but in looking back at it, I find I did not say half what I intended to on the subject of making that mos...

I have been so continually asked what is the very smallest possible sum of money that will suffice to furnish a little house for a young couple beginning life, that I have drawn...

It is quite useless to attempt to have a pretty drawing-room, unless the owner really means to have it in constant use, and intends to sit in it regularly. I am quite convinced...

I think it is a most excellent plan to have the bedrooms on one floor of a house furnished as much as possible alike; that is to say, if economy be an object, and also if, as in...

In a small house entertaining one’s friends is too often a most arduous and tiresome business, because we will one and all of us attempt to do a great deal too much, and appear...

There comes a time in most households when the mistress has perforce to contemplate an enforced retirement from public life; and I wish to impress upon all those who may be in a...

Of course, in writing on the subject of curtains, we must begin first by saying that a great deal depends upon the shape and size of the windows, for all these particulars have...

I am going to devote this chapter entirely to the matter of money--that is to say, to indicating how the income should be apportioned, and what it costs to feed a small family w...

The other day I was asked, as I so often am by young couples, to go with them to look over a house they had just taken, and to give them some advice on the decoration and manage...

In the selection of the schoolroom there are several things to be thought of; but if the nursery be done away with, and there should be no upstairs sitting-room, I strongly advi...

Even in a small house I very strongly advise the third room to be set aside emphatically for the mistress’s own room--sacred to her own pursuits, and far too sacred to be smoked...

Before I proceed to touch on the most important question of all, that of the nurseries, I will say a few words on the subject of the servants’ bedrooms, for these are far too se...

In the following chapters I propose to give young housekeepers, just launching their bark on the troubled seas of domesticity, the benefit of the experience that has been bought...

There is yet a more critical time for the parents, I think, than even the schoolroom time, and that is, first of all, when the boys go off to school; and, secondly, when we have...

One of the very first things to be recollected, either in the kitchen or housemaid’s pantry, is that there should be a place for everything, and yet no holes or corners where di...

Perhaps the most difficult part of a house to really make look nice is the hall, especially in one of the small houses of the period, where that tiresome man, the builder, appea...

There is no doubt in my mind that the proper furniture for Edwin’s dressing-room has not yet been evolved out of the inner consciousness of some enterprising and clever designer...

In life, as in everything else, it is extremely difficult to draw the line anywhere. I want both my young people to care about their house, and know every detail of its manageme...