NEW HOUSEKEEPING PLANS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 4474, 15 February 1917, Page 2

NEW HOUSEKEEPING PLANS.

SOME ENGLISH PLANS. New housekeeping plans are being seriously considered in England and other places as well, to fit in with the new order of things, namely, the absence of so many husbands, fathers, and brothers, arid the (almost) impossibility of getting adequate domestic help. In England communal housekeeping is now seriously presenting itself as a solution of the difficulty. A writer in an exchange points out a possible solution, or at least a feasible suggestion, to help out the matter. As rents for large houses are comparatively cheaper than those for Hats or smaller houses, the English suggestion is to bring in two, three , or more families into one large house, with a superintendent, or • ‘house mother,” who will plan the meals, superintend the children, and so on. For women who go out to work in shops, offices, etc., this scheme would be most helpful. Each family group would have would be the necessary number of sit its own room or rooms, and there ting rooms to keep up the feeling of privacy. The only communal part of the establishment would be the diningroom. Soldiers on leave could join their own family groups without that over-weening sense of the presence of outsiders which a boarding-house usually exudes. The intimacies of a boarding-house become intolerable after a- while, and as a sort of compromise between that and the great loneliness of the little, house with its. breadwinner away and the responsibilities all on the woman, the communal house would perhaps he a successful solution of the matter. The question of service is, of course, the great difficulty. The only solution is for each resident to do her own work, and have a charwoman'to do the “turning out.” To have a staff of servants would wreck the whole scheme on the rocks of extravagant expenditure. The cooking would have to be done by stay-at-home residents, and minoi .arrangements allow for a children’s diningroom, and washing up in rotation. This scheme is not so impossible as l A would have heen before the days of convalescent bourns worked , entirely by voluntary staffs, who undertake the duties for the good of all, and the old uncomplimentary delusion that women cannot live together without quarrelling has given up the ghost. 'l'he financial aspect would have to he. regulated by a small managing committee, and each family' would, have to contribute an amount according to their number. Tlie communal suggestion has simply arisen from the needs of to-day, and is one of. the efforts made to simplify things lor women who have families and are obliged to work out of their homes.