THE HOUSE OF MY DREAMS.

Otago Witness, Issue 4048, 13 October 1931, Page 66

THE HOUSE OF MY DREAMS.

By Mary Fox-Davies. I have never seen my dream house; perhaps I shall never see it, for unless I can some day’ in the far-off future build it myself I have little hope of finding it. But listen while I tell you about it. It may have any’ kind of an outside—pretty' if possible, of course—but we live inside our houses, we don’t camp in the garden to look at them, and to me the inside is the thing that matters.

It is a house of few stairs, no corners, and wide, airy rooms. The windows do not lift up and down by the aid of sash cords which are always breaking; they open outwards, and the hinges are so arranged that they can be cleaned easily from the inside. Each window has a top part which can be opened separately. My' bedrooms would need very little furniture. No heavywardrobes, almost impossible to move, would be found there, no chests of drawers, no wash-stands. Along tile sides of the room would run built-in cupboards, and these cupboards would be wonderful things, for they would hold everything that belongs to the toilet of any woman. Incidentally, there would be a special space for boots and shoes and another place for spare blankets for the bed. It is a most unusual thing to find in any average bedroom any place for shoes; cither they’ must rest on the floor, where they get dusty, or one of the wardrobe drawers must be given up to them. And who does not know the misery’ of a suddenly cold night and no extra blanket available because they are all packed away in the linen cupboa rd ?

No wash-stands, I said. But I should have one, all the same. It would be in a cupboard, well hidden from sight. In-

side the cupboard would be a big fitted basin, with glass shelves above it to hold bath salts, toilet bottles, and all the numerous delicious things one wants and likes and does not know where to put on the ordinary wash-stand. On the door of the cupboard would be glass rods to hold any number of towels. * ¥ ¥ So long as my bed is comfortable I don’t care what sort it is, but —it shan’t have any knobs on it! Who was the fiend who first invented knobs on bedposts? Every time the bed is made the sheets and blankets catch on these knobs and have to be disentangled. My bathroom must have a built-in bath. How it is that women have die patience to grovel under baths in the endeavour to keep the floor underneath free from dust I know not. In my dream house they won’t have to! It will have hot driers for towels, of course. Hotwater cans can always be bought to match or contrast with the colour of the bathroom. ¥ * ¥ Why should a house be built with a kitchen in which the cook must do hetwork of cooking, and a scullery only' big enough usually to hold a sink and a shelf or two for saucepans? My dream house will have two rooms for kitchen purposes; one will answer the end of a scullery, but all the work will be done, there; the other can be made pleasant ami comfortable for the maid, or. if a maidless household, for the family to use as a dining room. Cooking can be done by electricity or gas in the scullery; there will be the most modern of kitchen cupboards, with tins to hold everything, and a pastry board which lets down. A cupboard with plenty of shelves to hold pots and pans, everything to hand. And the one side- of the room filled with a large sink and a draining board each side of it, with plate-racks above. And not only for plates. There should be fittings to hold cups and saucers also, to save the need for drying them. Think how these racks would save time and trouble. Coloured tiles all round the scullery walls that could be washed down and look as new; all shelves covered with coloured oilcloth that is easily kept clean. Do you like my scullery? Perhaps, some day, I shall have my dream house.—Glasgow Weekly Herald.