WATCH YOUR STEP!

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 47, 19 November 1936, Page 6

WATCH YOUR STEP!

Feet In All “Walks” Of Life

WIVES TRAMP 13 MILES DAILY

/{AVE you ever stood for a quarter of in hour at the corner of a busy city street and watched the feet of the passers-by? In Wellington, at any rale, it is not a. pretty sight. The men escape criticism by. decently concealing their calves and ankles and wearing comfortable, low-heeled shoes. But the women! You will sec not one in twenty, and that is no exaggeration, who would be looked at twice in even a seventh-rate “beautiful leg” contest.

ZEALAND women are not suf-

ficiently “feet-conscious.” Most of them are content to “slop about so long as I am comfortable,” and the rest will crazily sacrifice health, good temper and arches to undigested fashion. Walking takes a larger part in our lives than we are accustomed to think. Research workers have recently revealed facts about the distances covered in an average day by persons in various “walks” of life, that provide material for a little serious thought. The ordinary housewife takes about 23,000 steps each day as she goes, about her chores. This means that she walks about thirteen miles a day, or nearly 5000 miles a year. On an average shopping day she travels about eight and

one-third miles, which rises to eleven miles about Christmas time.

The average distance walked in a day by any person is 19,000 steps or nearly eight miles, but the housewife takes longer journeys when “on duty” than almost any other woman. The poor nurses are rivals. They generally tramp twelve and a half miles a day and their matron covers about seven miles. Factory girls walk three miles, and salesgirls two. Even mannequins stroll 1| miles and schoolgirls run or walk every day about 111 miles. No wonder they are listless when it is time to do their homework.

Topping the list of long-distance

workers are a few unhappy men. Waiters average thirty-two miles a day—and have flat feet. Postmen come next on the list with twenty-two miles, and policemen’s beats take them on a daily journey of about twenty miles.

STATISTICS at best are treacherous things, and eveu the most accurate pedometer can give us only a wide approximation of the truth. Nevertheless, it gives clues to better planning

of our lives. Medical science flunks that the answer to the question, “How many miles do you walk every day during yotir work?’’ will reveal the cause of many occupational complaints.

Examine your working day and consider whether you could not eliminate unnecessary walking—which does not mean healthy strolls in the open-air. Above all, consider your poor feet and don’t let them plod along without any help from above. When you choose your next pair of shoes, choose them sensibly. The best shoes for you are the best-fitting, which are usually the smartest as well. They are doubly a wise purchase because you tend to take greater care of the good-looking shoes, and that means more kindness for the feet.

JE jou are one of the hiking housewives, there are more things than shoes that can give you food for thought. Investigators say that the reason many women develop large ankles a few years after marriage is the ceaseless walking in a badlyplanned home. Very few have the good fortune to be able to plan the architecture of their homes, unless it be in the direction of minor alterations. But nearly every housewife has charge of the arrangement of her furniture. And wise arrangment can save miles a day. When Professor Winifred Cullis, Professor of Physiology at London University, visited Wellington recently, she stated in an interview that “the principles of industrial psychology which speed up industry can be adopted in the home with just as great an effect. It all comes in the end to a logical disposition of material.” In other words, Professor Cullis would have you do a little experimenting in your homes. You will understand that it is reckless waste of energy to have your kitchen at the opposite end of the house from your dining-room. If it cannot be avoided, at least you make the best of the situation by buying a

dumb waiter and cutting down the number of trips to and fro. ' Neverthless, in small things this principle of non-wastage is overlooked. If your sink is two steps from the table when it need be only one, you are taking probably 250 unnecessary steps a day, which is over one-eighth of a mile. Add together several dozens of these extra steps—here in the bedroom where the dressing-table is too far from the wardrobe and the bed, there in the bathroom where the medicine chest is slung so high that you have to pull up a chair before you can see what is on the top shelf —and you have a mileage that is astonishingly large.

T KNOW the answer to this advice. “Oh, but the dining-room muse face the sun, and the dressing-table has to have the light. It is all very well to preach cutting down mileage, but there are other things to consider. We have done the best we could, with the material, to furnish a convenient home.”

But have you? Think it over and, more important, work it out. Get things down on paper in terms of measurements, lengths and angles. You’d be surprised I —G.P.D.