IDEAL BACHELOR HOME

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 84, 6 October 1933, Page 11

IDEAL BACHELOR HOME

BUSINESS WOMAN'S FLAT

A consistent effort i£-.being viva.de these days to provide -working and professional women with practical, comfortable homes that have a certain, individuality, yet can at the same time be run inexpensively and easily . (writes Shirley Darbyshire in the "Daily Mail")- Thfl most; ambitious of these experiments is now nearing,completion. A block of flats will be opened at Hampstead in the early autumn, and will offer to its tenants amenities- that have hitherto been associated only with luxury flats. ■ : Twenty-two "one-person flats" will be available at a rental of £96 a year. But this rental does not pay simply for the flat; it includes rates and central heating, hot water, and the cleaning and tidying of the. rooms.by . efficient maids. , Arrangement* can also be made to extend the service to include such duties as laundry, mending, darning, and the cleaning of suits. and dresses, all jobs which the busy woman often has very little time?for. . COMFORT AND CHASM. The flats themselves are charming. They consist of a good-sized livingroom, a kitchenette, a dressing-rocm, and bathroom. The living-room is ready furnished with a divan bed and a gliding table that pulls out from the wall to accommodate •. four or five people. Supplementary, furniture can either be bought or can be acquired oh the hire-purchase system, the instalments being added on to the Tent of the flat. A Bliding door from the living-room leads to the dressing-room, which is most efficiently equipped with built-in furniture—cupboards and drawers, a dressing table and mirror, and a lavatory basin—while opening out from the dressing-room is the bathroom. Fewfwomen will be able to resist the charms^ of the white-painted kitchen. It measures four feet eight inches by five feetj and within that small space every labour-saving contrivance seems to have found a home. , Feminine ambition invariably yearns for •&& labour-saving comforts of an elecsris cooker and. an electric re-: frigSrator. Both, these luxuries are included in the rent .of the Hampgtead flats, and the rest of the kitchenette is given over to shelves and cupboards that seem to fulfil every domestic need. •': THE MODEL KITCHEN. There is a plate-rack near the sink, and beneath the sink is a cupboard for taking a white enamelled garbage pail, one of those practical pails whose lids are automatically lifted by pressing a pedal with your foot. One of the drawers, too, is, in reality, a tin-lined bread box—indeed, everything has been thought of in this miniature model of an ideal kitchen. Larger flats will be available in the same building. These have been designed for two people. Naturally, the rental is rather higher, but when shared by two people the charges remain exceptionally reasonable.