The Complete Home | Page 8

and the home
life is given added enjoyment. Not all of us, however, can fit ourselves
to new ideas, and it is better to suit ourselves than to be uncomfortable
and feel out of place in the home.
[Illustration: A homelike living room.]
The living-room plan in a small house reduces the reception hall to
something little more than a vestibule, but where six rooms are
exceeded the reception hall may be enlarged and made serviceable. The
first impression counts for much, not only with our guests but with
ourselves, and if the hall be appropriately finished and fitted it seems
fairly to envelop one with its welcome. One thing that must be insured,
whatever form the entrance may take, is that it shall not be necessary to
pass through the living room to reach other parts of the house.

THE DINING ROOM AND KITCHEN
Vastness is not essential to the dining room. Under usual conditions we
are not likely to seat more than a dozen persons at our table, and a
dinner party exceeding that number is too large for common enjoyment.
Connection with the kitchen should be convenient without having the
proximity too obvious. City kitchens are now usually made just large
enough to accommodate required paraphernalia and to afford sufficient
freeway for the cook. Many families do no home baking, and where
fruit and vegetables are preserved the basement is utilized.
Compactness in the kitchen saves hundreds of steps in the course of a
day, and though it is difficult for us to forget the spacious room thought
necessary by our parents, we may well learn, for our own comfort, to
profit by the modern reasoning that opposes waste space. Still, it is
better to defy modern tendencies and even to pain the architect than

that the faithful house-keeper who clings tenaciously to the old idea
should be made miserable. Some persons feel perpetually cramped in a
small room, whereas others only note the snugness of it.

THE SLEEPING ROOMS
The general well-being of the family is more directly affected by the
character of the bed chambers than by any other department of the
house. However we may permit ourselves to be skimped in the living
rooms, it is imperative that the sleeping apartments should be large--not
barnlike, of course--well lighted, dry, and airy. Three large rooms are in
every way preferable to four small ones. It is, to be sure, sometimes
difficult to put the windows where they will let in the sunlight, the
registers where they will heat, and the wall space where it will permit
the sleeper to have fresh air without a draught. But marvels in the way
of ingenious planning have been evolved where necessity, the mother
of invention, has ruled; and assuredly there is no greater necessity than
a healthful bedroom.
The children's bedroom in the house of six to eight rooms is likely to be
utilized as a nursery or playroom on rainy days or in winter. It should
have an abundance of sunlight. The largest and best room of all should
be used by the heads of the household. To reserve the choicest
apartment for the chance guest is an absurdity that sensible people have
abandoned. If we must, we may surrender our room temporarily to the
visitor, but the persons who live in a house twelve months of the year
are entitled to the best it affords. Flat living has taught us to make use
of all our rooms, and perhaps its influence is against hospitality; but we
need not neglect that very important feature of a happy home in doing
ourselves simple justice.

THINKING IT OUT
If we would be quite sure of it--to use a Hibernianism--we should live
in our house at least a year before it is built. We need an imagination

that will not only perceive our castle in all its stages of construction but
will picture us in possession. Advice is not to be disdained, and a good
architect we shall find to be a blessing; but the happiness of our home
will be in double measure if we can feel that something of ourselves
has gone into its creation. And this something we should not expect to
manifest genius, or even originality, but tasteful discrimination.
CHAPTER II
FLOORS, WALLS, AND WINDOWS
Tradition has established the condition of her floors as the prime test of
a good house-keeper, and the amount of effort that faithful homemakers
have had to waste upon splintery, carelessly laid cheap boards would, if
it could be represented in money, buy marble footing for all of us.
But we don't want marble floors. We are not building a palace or a
showplace, but a house to live in. We are not seeking magnificence, but
comfort and durability (which