Read Ebook: Un segreto vol. 2 by Farina Salvatore

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 193 lines and 18468 words, and 4 pages

The Tiny House

If, some fine day, all housewives awoke to the fact that most of the trouble in the world originates in the kitchen, there would shortly be a little more interest in kitchen problems and not so much distaste for and neglect of this important part of the house.

Of course, women will cry out that we have never in our lives been so intent on just that one subject, kitchens, as we are today.

I admit that there is a good deal of talk going on which might lead one to believe that vacuum cleaners and electric-washing machines, etc., are to bring about the millennium for housekeepers; and there is also a good work going forward to make of housework a real profession.

But, until in the average home there comes the feeling that the kitchen--the room itself--is just as much an expression of the family life and aims and ideals as the living room or any other room, we shall be only beating about the bush in our endeavor to find a remedy for some of our perplexing troubles.

Nowadays, women who are doing much work out in the big world--the so-called "enfranchised" women--are many of them proving that they find housework no detriment to their careers and some even admit that they enjoy it.

But so far most of them have standardized their work and systematized it, with the mere idea of doing what they have to do "efficiently" and well, with the least expenditure of time and energy. And they have more than succeeded in proving the "drudgery" plea unfounded.

Now, however, we need something more. We need to make housework attractive; in other words, to put charm in the kitchen.

There is one very simple way of doing this, that is to make kitchens good to look at, and inviting as a place to stay and work.

For the professional, scientifically inclined houseworker, the most beautiful kitchen may be the white porcelain one, with cold, snowy cleanliness suggesting sterilized utensils and carefully measured food calories.

But to the woman whose cooking and dishwashing are just more or less pleasant incidents in a pleasant round of home and social duties, the kitchen must suggest another kind of beauty--not necessarily a beauty which harbors germs, nor makes the work less conveniently done, but a beauty of kindly associations with furniture and arrangements.

This attitude is laziness on our part, for we need sacrifice nothing to utility and convenience, yet may still contrive our kitchen furniture so that it, also, pleases the senses. With a little conscientious reflection on the subject we may make kitchens which have all the charm of the old, combined with all the convenience of the new; and woman will have found a place to reconcile her old and new selves, the housewife and the suffragist, the mother-by-the-fireside and the participator in public affairs. The family will have found a new-old place of reunion--the kitchen!

Granted then that our tiny house has a kitchen-with-charm, and an "other room," the rest of the available space may be divided into the requisite number of bed and living rooms, according to the needs of the family.

There is only one other very important thing to look out for; that is the matter of closets. There is no rule for the number of closets which will make the tiny house livable, but I should say, the more the merrier. If there is ever question of sacrificing a small room and gaining a large closet, by all means do it, for absolute neatness is the saving grace of small quarters, and storage places are essential, if one does not wish to live in a vortex of yesterday's and tomorrow's affairs with no room to concentrate on the present.

Inside and outside the tiny house must conform to one law--elimination of non-essentials; and the person who has a clear idea of his individual needs and has also the strength of will to limit his needs to his circumstances, will find in his tiny house a satisfaction more than compensating for any sacrifices he may have made.

Such weakness is fatal in a tiny house. But how much more fatal in a tiny garden!

Oh! the waste lands which lie beneath the sun trying to call themselves gardens! Oh! the pitiful little plots, unfenced, unused, entirely misunderstood by people who stick houses in the middle of them and call them "gardens"!

It is to be supposed that when a man gives up the comforts of town apartments and hies him to the country, it is the garden, the outdoors, which lures him.

Why is it, then, that he seems to take particular pains to arrange his garden so that it is about as much his own as Central Park is?

It might give the average man a great deal of pleasure to be able to say to all the passersby on the Mall, "This little bit of the Park belongs to me! I cut that grass, I weed those flower beds in the evening when I come home from the office; and every Saturday afternoon I take the hose and thoroughly soak that bit of lawn there, you may see me at it any week in the summer."

But then, we are not dealing with the fictitious average man, and we firmly believe that many "commuters" wonder deep down in their hearts why it is they get from their gardens so little of the pleasure they anticipated when they came to live out of the city.

Any one who has traveled abroad, has admired and perhaps coveted the gardens of England, France, and Italy. Their charm is undeniable, and thought to be too elusive for reproduction on American soil without the aid of landscape gardeners and a fair-sized fortune.

Just why we, as a nation, are beset by the idea of reproducing instead of originating beautiful gardens is a question apart from this discussion. But as soon as we try to develop, to their fullest extent, the advantages of our climate, and soil, in combination with our daily life as a people, we shall produce gardens which will equal, without necessarily resembling, those of other countries.

In every case we must, however, follow the same procedure which every successful garden is built upon, whether it be in Mesopotamia or in Long Island City. That is, we must study the place, the people, and the circumstances.

The most general fault in American gardens is their lack of privacy.

No one claims that the high walls of Italy and France or the impenetrable hedges of England would invariably suit the climate here. But there are many ways to obtain seclusion without in any way depriving us of much-needed air in summer and sun in winter. One way is by placing the house rationally upon its lot. Our custom has been to invariably build so that we had a "front yard," "back yard," and two side yards, all equally important, equally uninteresting, unbeautiful and useless.

Of course, we have the porch which in a way takes the place of the outdoor living room, always so attractive in foreign gardens. And recently some laudable efforts are being made to incorporate the porch into the house, where it belongs, as a real American institution, instead of leaving it disconsolately clinging to the outside and bearing no resemblance to the house either in shape or detail.

But after all, a porch is a porch, and a garden is a garden, and one does not take the place of the other.

Especially is this true of the tiny property.

If you have only ten feet of ground to spare outside your tiny house, plan it so that every foot contributes to your joy at being in the country. Arrange it so that on a warm summer evening when the porch seems a bit close and dark, you wander out into your garden and sit beneath the stars in quiet as profound as on the Desert of Sahara. And in the winter, let your garden provide a warm corner out of the wind, where on a bright Sunday morning you may sit and blink in the sun.

Once you have got the desire for a room outdoors, a real garden, which is neither flower beds, nor lawns, nor hedges, nor trees, but a place for your comfort, with all these things contributing to its beauty, you will know as by divine inspiration where to put each flower and bush and path. Your planting will be no longer a problem for landscape architects, but a pleasant occupation for yourself and family.

So then will your successful tiny house stand forth in its real garden, an object of pride to the community and a tribute to one man who has refused to be the impossible average, and has dared to build and plant for his own needs.

May he live forever and ever happy in his tiny house!

"You're Not Supposed To, Jimmie"

"Huh!" exclaimed Jennie, "there comes Aunt Rachel! Wonder what she wants now? Last time it was--no, it wasn't--that was the time when Jimmie Upson and his wife were here. How scandalized Aunt Rachel looked! Said I'd ruin my husband, and a lot of such tommyrot. As though Jimmie and I couldn't afford a spread now and then! I didn't, and I won't, tell Aunt Rachel that it was a special party and a special occasion. Of course, I know Jimmie isn't a millionaire, but--it's none of Aunt Rachel's business, so there!" she finished defiantly.

Aunt Rachel plodded blissfully up the walk. "Jennie'll be glad to see me, I know," she mused. "She's high-headed, but she knows a good thing when she sees it, and I help her a lot."

Jennie received her aunt with cordiality, but not effusiveness. To be discourteous was something she could not be. Besides, she liked Aunt Rachel and pitied her idiosyncrasies. "Why can't she be as nice when she goes to people's houses as she is when she is at home?" she mused. "I love to go there, and everything is just perfect, but the minute she steps outside the door--well, we all know Aunt Rachel! And she doesn't go home early either. Jimmie'll be furious. She always calls him 'James' and asks after his health and--and everything. I do so want him to like her, but I'm afraid he never will. I do wish I could get her interested in something. I have it!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "The very thing!"

Aunt Rachel looked up in surprise. "What's the matter, Jennie?" she inquired.

"Oh, nothing much, Auntie! I was just thinking aloud."

"Don't!" said Aunt Rachel. "It's a bad habit, Jennie--though I do do it myself, sometimes."

"Sometimes!" Jennie turned away to hide her smile. Why, Aunt Rachel made a business of talking aloud!

As luck would have it, the dinner went off to Aunt Rachel's satisfaction. It was good, but conservative.

"Jennie is learning," thought the old lady to herself. "After I've been here a few times more, she'll get along all right."

Aunt Rachel hadn't noticed that every idea Jennie has used was, strictly, either Jennie's own or her mother's.

"How long does your aunt expect to stay?" asked Jimmie, casually, while Jennie was clearing the table. Aunt Rachel was in the kitchen. She prided herself on never being "a burden on any one." Doubtless, some of her friends would have preferred that she be. Most of us have a skeleton we do not wish to keep on exhibition.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe a week or two," said Jennie, mischievously. "She hasn't told me yet."

"Oh!" replied Jimmie, in a disappointed voice. "Business down town"? "Dinner at the Club"? No, he couldn't keep that up indefinitely. Besides, what did a man want of a home, if he wasn't going to live in it? Covertly, Jennie watched him. She knew every expression of his face. It amused her, but she was sorry, too. "Jimmie wants awfully to flunk--and dassent," was her mental comment.

"Anything on for this evening, Jimmie?" inquired Jennie, sweetly, too sweetly, Jimmie thought. He had heard those dulcet tones before.

"Yes--no!" stammered Jimmie. How he wished he had! However, as Jennie said no more, he dismissed the subject from his mind. She probably didn't really mean anything, anyway.

When James Atherton reached home that evening, he found the house lighted from top to bottom. Beautifully dressed women were everywhere, and in their midst--Aunt Rachel, at her best!

"Ladies," she exclaimed, and Jimmie paused to listen, "I am honored--more so than you can guess--at the distinction conferred upon me. This afternoon you have seen fit to make me one of your leaders in a most important movement for civic betterment--an honor never before accorded a woman in this city--and I need not assure you that you shall not regret your choice. As a member of the Civic Betterment Committee of Loudon, I shall do my duty." "Again I thank you!" went on Aunt Rachel. "There's a work for you and for me now to do, and--" she paused impressively, "we will do it."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet