FALSE ECONOMY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21559, 23 January 1940, Page 10

FALSE ECONOMY

BEWARE OF WASTE INGENUITY A mother showed me a dress which her 19 years old daughter had made from a pair of discarded curtains (says a London writer). “Isn’t it marvellously ingenious of her?” she asked proudly. Well, the frock wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t very fresh. It looked as laboured as it had been —the result of hour upon hour of tiring stitchery, piecing the bits together, after work at the office was over. The girl earns very little money, and I am afraid that if she goes on toiling in her spare time over such tedious economies as this, being content with such makeshift she will not get very far. Her ambition, at her age, should be to earn more money so that she can afford to buy better things. She should be going to evening classes to equip herself for higher paid work. Her energy is being frittered, exhausted, in a blind alley direction, in economy of the wrong kind. Another girl came to see me, in an old frock which she had just had dyed. Dyeing cost 8/6. She had spent 8/6 on belt, buttons, and new frilling for neck and sleeves making a total of 17/-. She made the frock herself in the first place and the cost had been 16/-. Had she stopped to think before running to the dyers, perhaps she would have decided it would be an economy to make a new one instead. I know an elderly widow with two sons; the boys do not earn much and she has a struggle to make ends meet. She suffers from a bad form of rheumatism, which is slowly crippling her, because of her incessant work rbout the house. Her health will become a grim and expensive problem for her sons to cope with in a few years’ time. She tells me that she must go on, as there is no other way, no question of affording help.

But isn’t this wrong economy? She could obtain enough money to pay for reliable daily help by letting two of her furnished rooms or the money from one paying guest would make the same difference. She is a conscientious woman, but she is not being sensible in the right way. The obvious economy is not always the *best one. Sometimes instead of trying to economise so that you can go on in the same way, it is far wiser to look around for an entirely different outlet; to start afresh on new lines. KEEP THAT SECOND CUP HOT! Tea-cosies with an ordinary filling are usually bulky—and even then they do not always succeed in their purpose of keeping the teapot and its contents hot. You can have a tea-cosy with a neat line if you line it with chamois leather instead of with cotton wool. Simply tack the chamois lining in very lightly, so that it may easily be removed for washing. A charming tea-easy can be made by knitting a "skirt” in thick wool, using two pretty contrasting colours, and surmounting it with a lady’s head in china. The wool plus the chamois leather lining make a perfect heat preserver.