EFFICIENCY IN THE KITCHEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 175, 26 July 1930, Page 8

EFFICIENCY IN THE KITCHEN.

With the average number of dishes ordinarily subject to washing during, an average day in an average American family it has been determined by recent analysis and tabulation of human behaviour during this process that to wash these dishes—assuming it is done in the manner custo : mary . to such a family—takes thirty-eight minutes and eight seconds and requires 1954 motions (says the "Christian Science Monitor"). As the investigators —Mary K. Heiner and N. M. Venneiy of the University of Chicago—have reported to the "Journal of Home Economics," this includes 950 motions more than are 'necessary, and the dishes could actually be washed in twenty-two minutes and fifty-eight seconds. In other words, the "application of office efficiency to the dining room and kitchen" would save the dishwasher fifteen minutes for cultural reading with ten seconds to take off the apron and take on the book. It appears, however, that the dishwasher must give up the "present standard methods of, American dishwashing." She, or he (for the task is nowadays said to be performed also by males), must be "willing to break with traditional methods," such, for example, as washing by hand and drying with towel. Thus vanishes the old-fashioned and congenial occupation, at which two have so often been company but three a crowd,- of washing and wiping! There are those who would maintain that four-handed dishwashing was highly cultural. But, say's Efficiency, why use a towel when a plate will dry by itself ? And why three dishwashings a day when one— assuming dishes enough for three meals—is sufficient? This daily ceremony, following "the best office practice," will occur "probably after breakfast," but can obviously be fitted, in. whenever the dishwasher has a spare twenty-two minutes and fifty-eight seconds. In especially well-dished families it would seem that further economy of time might be secured by having the dishwashing after every other breakfast.