KITCHEN PYSCHOLOGY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 218, 14 September 1928, Page 3

KITCHEN PYSCHOLOGY

LABOUR-SAVING RESEARCH experiments in homes. Psychology hss reached the kitchen, the making of the bed and the carrying of the baby. In London within the next few months extensive research will be carried on into housekeeping methods by the National Institute of Industrial Psychology. Thcre are to be experiments in at least 1,000 homes to see what is wrong with modern methods. House work is to be weighed into foot pounds, and the waste energy is to be subtracted and the result handed back to the housewife with the intimation “That is all the energy that you should use. Sec how you have been wasting it”—or words to that effect. A start is to be made with the middle class. The house designer and the institute are to collaborate in future in the light of what is discovered from the housework. The kitchens of the test houses are to be arranged in many different ways, and the work is to be done to stopwatch. Steps are to be counted. Heights of kitchen sinks and kitchen chairs arc to be considered to save women working in uneasy positions. Washing-up is to be specially investigated, and it is believed that it can be made into very nearly a pleasure! The kitchen furniture is to be arranged so that it is nearest to its natural neighbour. Steps and stooping are to be done away with.

Then when the kitchen is done, attention will be turned to the tray that takes the food to the dining-room. It is very likely quite the wrong shape. Hours will be spent in scientific experiments in packing things on it. From one room to the other will go till the whole house is placed on a scientific basis. Beds are to have a special inquiry. It is at last realised that housekeeping employs five time’s as many people as any other industry in Great Britain. It has come as a result of comparisons of one house with another. One woman has discovered hundreds of contrivances that have made her housework easier, and another is still muddling along in the old fashioned way. Many of the time-saving methods of the big hotels will be recommended to the women who have only a tiny flat to take care of.

It is hoped the institute will evolve what will be the ideal house for the housewife. Another motive for the investigation is the domestic servant problem. Women arc wondering if they could not, by intelligent working, do much of the housework themselves. This will be made more possible by the fact that now in England it is possible to ire uniformed, trained domestic workers by the hour. They are sent to the house by an agency at any hour at the shortest notice, with at guarantee tha they are efficiently trained at housework.