The effective small home

Contents

CHAFTEB PAGE

Introduction to Part I i

I Training the Child's Sense of Beauty . 3 II The Impossible Type of Rented House AND Things That May Be Done to Improve It 13

III A Practical Plan for the Newly Mar-

ried 24

IV How I Furnished Our New House . . 34 Introduction to Part II 51

I Suggestions for Furnishing .... 57

II Lighting Fixtures 75

III The Hanging of Curtains 79

IV Floor Coverings 89

V Tableware and Silver 94

VI Pictures and Other Ornaments . . . 103

VII System in the Household Ill

VIII Ugly Things Improved or the Art of

Making Use of What Is at Hand . .117 IX Plants^ Flowers and Fruits in House

Decoration 122

Appendix I 133

Appendix II Recipes and Suggestions . 145

Bibliography 185

Index 189

THE ILLUSTRATIONS

IN HALF-TONE

A living-room which contains expensive and inexpensive furnishings .... Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

6 6

An English style suburban house of stucco .

A Colonial house restored

A room improved by redecorating

Mahogany furniture against a background of gray walls

Two views of a well planned kitchen

A buffet both sides of which are utilized .

A hall and a dining-room entrance

A symmetrical arrangement for a dining-room

A simple and attractive guest room .

A buffet made from a kitchen cabinet

A Hepplewhite sideboard

Furniture painted at home

A washable slip cover for a wing chair .

A bathroom which contains a linen closet

Iron bedsteads made sightly by chintz coverings

A corner cupboard made from old window blinds

A day bed that conceals another bed by its valance

A kitchen 30 x 40 inches

Two views of an ingeniously made closet

Ivy used for wall decoration

40 >

THE ILLUSTRATIONS

FACINa PAGE ^

A corner effectively arranged 124

Flowers on a window sill 125 ^

A plate rack that obviates dish wiping . . . . 125 v

IN LINE

PAGE

A Colonial homestead whose gardens carry out. the motif of the architect and express the owner's individuality 4

The main section of the Colonial house after restoration 7

A home evolved from a doctor's offices . . . .14 A cupboard built to cover an unsightly partition . 15 The bathroom side of the cupboard, used as a supply closet 15

A house that was easily made livable ... .18

Designs that show what can be accomplished with

two rooms and a bath 26

The ground plan of a nine-roomed suburban home . 35

The second floor of the nine-roomed house ... 36

A plate rack easily made that can be used above a

serving table 66

Different types of doors require different curtain

treatment 81

Effective curtaining for the old-fashioned type of

high window . 81

Curtaining which does not keep out the light . . 82

Three types of over curtains 83

Decorative windows should have plain curtains . . 84 Regulate light from high casement windows by

Dutch or double curtains 86

Curtains of thick materials hung on rings take the

place of shades at casement windows ... 86 The primary use of portieres is to insure privacy . 87

THE ILLUSTRATIONS

PAOIi

A salad bowl of plain green pottery, Sedgi plates of the same shade of green and figured cruets give variety to the meal . 96

Mantel treatment in sleeping room of old Colonial

house 109

Showing what can be done with an ugly oak chiffonier 121

The lights in the window on Christmas Eve . . .127

Candle brackets ISO

Part I Introduction

"Life don't consist in holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well."

A Ranchman's Epitaph.

The ranchman's philosophy has always appealed to me, but never more so than in its application to the Effective Small Home. Such a home is, to my mind, one that affords an environment for family life which inspires high ideals, to be practiced first in the home, and afterwards in the community.

In order that the small home may be effective, both esthetically and ethically, housekeeping, which is only one factor in home-making, must be efficient; that is, there must be a definite plan whereby required results may be obtained with the least possible expenditure of time, energy, and money.

In the Bibliography is given a list of books, specializing in different phases of efficiency, which will be of service to those who wish to ii INTRODUCTION

perfect the machinery of the household. In this book, it is my aim to show that charm in the home is quite as important as efficiency, and that one need not be obtained at the expense of the other.

So many efficiency experts have minds that think in terms of proteids and calories, steps and hand movements, dollars and cents, without including the very important terms of color, form, and charming arrangement. Other writers on the subject of Interior Decorating go to the other extreme, and write in terms of color, form and arrangement exclusively.

I was immensely amused, when reading Elsie DeWolfe's delightful and valuable book, *'The House in Good Taste," to come upon this naive ending to her chapter on "Small Apartments": "As for the kitchen — that is another story. It is impossible to go into that subject. And anyway you will find the essentials supplied for you by the landlord. You won't need my advice when you need a broom or a coffee-pot or a sauce-pan — you'll go buy it." It is very evident that her book was not meant for the vast majority of women, who not only do their own decorating, but

INTRODUCTION iii

their housework as well. Since this book of mine is meant primarily for people of moderate means, instead of ignoring the kitchen, I go so far as to urge every woman to see to it that an attractive, convenient kitchen comes first in the equipment of the home of which she is high priestess, performing each day the solemn rite of preparing the food which is to insure the health of those most dear to her.

I can hear skeptical readers say: ''That may be all very well for the woman who does her own work, but what would happen to a pretty kitchen with the average maid in it?" This is what would probably happen: The average maid when first introduced to a kitchen that is "the prettiest room in the house" is apt to look rather glum. She does not feel altogether at home in it at first, for she is used to spending her time in a dark room with ugly utensils, where nothing matters so long as she does certain routine things in an indifferent sort of way. By the end of a week in my kitchen a maid has developed a pride in her surroundings: because things are "pretty" she takes better care of them: because they are arranged conveniently she finishes her work more quickly and is eager to iv INTRODUCTION

dress for the afternoon and be back again in her pretty room to read, sew, write letters or entertain her friends. She is never ashamed to take her friends into my kitchen and I am never ashamed to take my friends into hers.

It may be too much to hope that within the present generation one may go at random into people's houses and find that the fundamental principles of decorating have been observed, but the prospect is encouraging, now that the common schools are giving attention to these things, and art students are more and more entering the field of interior decoration.

The greatest scope of improvement in domestic art Hes with people of moderate means. They are the ones who are most eager for education, particularly along lines that will help them to make what little money they have go as far as possible. In order to have even the really essential things, it is necessary to make sacrifices, so they cannot afford to make mistakes. They are therefore less apt than are rich people to fill their houses with inharmonious and undesirable things.

Almost every house needs an overhauling several times a year to prevent an accumulation of unnecessary things. Fewer rather

INTRODUCTION v

than more things are needed in most houses, and fortunate is the person who has the gift of being able to look at a room in his own house in a detached way, and with a fresh and critical eye decide what may be eliminated or so changed as to be more useful or more beautiful.

The best decorators know the value of space and color as opposed to meaningless things, so that the test of an effective home, from the present high standard of decorating, is not how much it contains but how little.

Part I of this book is a narrative of personal experiences in home-making, which fitted me for the editorial work explained in Part II.

Acknowledgment is due to The Curtis Publishing Company, for permission to reprint in this volume material which has already been used by The Ladies' Home Journal.

Lilian Bayliss Green.

New York, September, 1916.

CHAPTER I Training the Child's Sense of Beauty

AT the age of three, I was one day discovered pasting the colored picture of a lion to the leg of the piano. When my mother asked me why I was doing that, I said I was "decowating." That is the only one of my childish remarks that was ever remembered, and that one probably because my whole life has been spent in decorating one thing or another, usually small houses. First came paper doll-houses, furnished with enchanting *'sets" that a clever older cousin used to cut for us out of rather stiff paper. In time we were able to cut for ourselves, and it has just occurred to me that an older person could very easily teach children to make their paper furniture after designs of the different "periods," thus familiarizing them at an early age with what is really the best in house furnishings.

The house in which I was born, though out in Ohio, looked as if it belonged in some New England village, for it was Colonial in design and painted white, with green shutters. Low and rambling, with broad gabled roofs and pil-

: yjo roc ■

A Colonial homestead whose gardens carry out the motif of the architect and express the owner's personality

lared porches, it stood in the center of a large yard full of shrubs and trees.

My mother had one side of the yard planted with sod brought from the woods, so that in the spring it was a mass of pale pink spring beauties, with violets and anemones showing here and there. Besides the rose garden, the bed

TRAINING THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 5

of perennials, and the row of poet's narcissus and jonquils that blossomed each spring at the foot of a terrace, I remember vividly the cool, shady rockery: a fairyland to a small child, filled as it was with lilies of the valley, columbines, day lilies, maidenhair fern, jack-in-thepulpits, and other woodsy things that made the setting for many a flight of a childish imagination.

My mother's garden was very expressive of her personality, but when she furnished the in* side of the house, instead of carrying the simple charm of the architect's idea into the furnishings, as would have been done in New England, she was influenced as so many brides are by the fashions of the day, so the rest of her life had to be spent with mid- Victorian furniture covered with black haircloth, lace curtains, oil paintings in heavy gilt frames, figured Brussels carpets, black marble mantels, stereotyped bric-a-brac, and white and gold china. Fortunately for us children, my mother's buoyant, happy nature and her music with which she enlivened the house did much to counteract the gloom of the furnishings, and made it homelike in spite of them.

An influence even then at work in forming my taste, were the pictures by Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane with which my father kept me supplied. Unconsciously I preferred their cheerful pleasant rooms, the colors, simple furnishings, gay chintz curtains, plain walls and symmetrical arrangement of which, all appealed to me and made me love their books. That influence has lasted all through my life, and I have always preferred a small picturesque house to a large pretentious one.

A part of the old house was torn down many years ago, but the main part has been restored and is now occupied by a woman of taste, who, recognizing the possibilities of the house, has done things to it that have completely transformed the interior. The ugly grained woodwork in the hall has been painted a cream white, which brings out detail that was quite lost before. On the walls is a landscape paper in tones of gray and gray-green, making the hall seem much wider than when it had dark paper on the walls.

When I was recently taken into our old "parlor" it was difficult to realize that in the center of this very room had once stood the marble-topped table that held a vase of wax flowers covered with a glass globe. Not a

The coloring and general character of this English stucco house are carried into the treatment of the interior

The main part of the Colonial house the plan of which IS shown on page seven

All ugly rooDi tro)isforined by changing the zvalls from red

to white

A sunny room ivith mahogany furniture admits of plain

gray walls

TRAINING THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 7 vestige of mid- Victorian ugliness remains, although the mantel is the same one of black marble that has always been there. The floors and woodwork have been painted black to harmonize with the mantel, the piano too is black, but the rest of the furniture is all Colonial, the sofas and chairs having slip covers of glazed

P P

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p n

X

mLmtsmmm

BsdRjohH Popoi m I-

The main section of the Colonial house after restoration

chintz for summer use in a fascinating design of birds and flowers. The walls are plain cream color paneled, the hangings and lamp shades are of rose color to harmonize with the principal tone in the rugs. A few really good old portraits in dull gold frames are the only wall decoration, but jars of flowers about the room, and glimpses of neighboring gardens through the windows, prevent the effect from being too restrained. The old center chandelier has been removed, and at night lighted by candles and lamps, the room is one of the pleasantest living-rooms I have ever seen. It was like having a dream come true.

I was the youngest of five children, and the only girl. When I was seven years old my mother died and I was taken to spend several weeks with my grandmother. The night I came home from my visit, my father took me by the hand and led me down the hall past the *'arch room" where my mother had slept and where my crib had always stood, on to what had been a storeroom. My brothers were behind us and everything was very mysterious. My father opened the door; the room was brightly lighted, and I didn't have to be told that this was "My Room." My father and brothers had planned it all as a surprise for me, and I was the proudest little girl in the world at that moment. There was a single bed, a little chair, a small chest of drawers with a mirror above it, and in a row along the wall were all of my dolls, one of them asleep in a canopied cradle that my mother had fitted up for me. It must have been a very ugly httle

TRAINING THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 9

room when analyzed from a decorator's point of view, for the wallpaper was dark and figured, the chintz curtains at the window and closet door differed in design from the walls, and the carpet too was figured with a design different from either the walls or the chintz.

I had to play alone when I was at home, and for this reason I suppose I always loved the chapter called *Tatty Pans" in "Little Men," for I had great sympathy for Daisy, not only because the boys wouldn't let her play with them, but because she had a domestic turn of mind similar to my own. Instead of the wonderful game of "Patty Pans" that Daisy had, I did my first cooking on a stove that I made out of bricks in the back yard, and from those days of burnt fingers and smoky concoctions, cooking has always been to me a delightful exercise of the imagination.

From the time I was eight until I was twelve, most of my waking hours when not in school, I spent with little girls who were so fortunate as to have playhouses out of doors.

At last one of my friends was allowed to have a miniature iron range in her playhouse, and I shall never forget the thrill of seeing the steam come out of the spout of the tiny teakettle, and the fun of sitting down with our dolls to wonderful meals prepared on that small stove.

This is the age at which the simple rudiments of cooking should be taught to children. They are enthusiastic and impressionable and so eager to learn to do what they see older persons doing. A little girl of five and six may be taught to coddle an egg, make junket, custard, soup and cocoa ; in fact, many of her own meals she may easily be taught to prepare for herself.

The same thing applies to other branches of housework, and a little time spent in showing a child how to make her dolls' beds properly, how to sweep and dust and wash dishes, will be time well spent, for the lessons will never be forgotten.

In my early teens I passed through the stage that nearly all young persons go through; when there is no one to give them object lessons in interior decorating as applied to their own rooms. The natural inclination at this age is to clutter their rooms with souvenirs of all kinds. In my editorial work, I was constantly receiving letters from girls and boys asking me what to do with their collections of

TRAINING THE SENSE OF BEAUTY H

college pennants. I had to tell them to retain them as collections but to keep them out of sight. From the fact that they wrote to ask me about them, I knew that they had an instinctive feeling that those crude colors hung together in the same room gave anything but a pleasing effect, so I explained that pennants were designed to be used in masses on athletic fields, and used in that way, in the open, they were very effective, and the colors had to be vivid and crude, in order to carry.

At seventeen I started for Vassar, and throughout my four years of college life I confess that the decoration of my rooms was of vastly more concern to me than my scholarship. My apparent love of decorating led to the frequent demand for my services in the staging of hall plays and in preparations for all sorts of festive occasions. I was put on the committee for decorating our senior class parlor, and as I look now at the picture of that room I am surprised to see that there is nothing about it that has not stood the test of time. The one blot is a drop light of cut glass, suspended from a central chandelier by a satin covered tube. Fate had a hand in removing this defect. A distinguished bishop came to spend a half hour in the senior parlor one Sunday after service. Absorbed in a good story that he was telling to a group of the girls, he inadvertently leaned against the table that held the glass lamp. The floor was waxed; the table tipped, and down went the bishop amid a shower of glass. Only his dignity was hurt, and the one eyesore of an otherwise lovely room had been removed.

CHAPTER II The Impossible Type of Rented House and

Things That May Be Done to

Improve It

AFTER leaving college, I spent several years studying art in New York and Paris; at the end of that time I went west to live, in order to be near my family. My brothers were all married and my father was living with one of them, so I decided to have a studio of my own. In an apartment house just across the street from where some of my family lived I discovered a suite of rooms with a private entrance. It had been designed as a doctor's suite, but as no doctor had taken it the proprietor was glad to let me have it at a very low rental.

One room had three windows to the north; just the light I needed for painting; the other was a larger room with a closet, running water, and a gas grate. The walls in this room were covered with a dark green paper with large gold figures. In the studio the paper was brown with red and green figures. No wonder that my friends thought it a nightmare, and tried their best to discourage me, but I knew that the essentials were there and that changing the papers alone would do much toward making the place habitable. This the landlord permitted me to do, allowing me twenty cents

A home evolved from a doctor's offices a roll for the papers. For the larger room I selected a grasscloth paper as nearly the color of the pine woodwork as possible. For the studio, I used an oyster white ingrain paper. For this room I designed most of the furniture, and had it made by an ordinary carpenter at a very small expense. It consisted of a long narrow table with four little benches to match it exactly; there was also a cupboard that I had made to hang across an unsightlywindow of ground glass that was in the center of the south wall leading into the bathroom.

This cupboard and set of shelves combined served as a place to keep my dishes, and it was decorative as well. Directly under it I had my bed couch.

For a sideboard, I selected a common kitchen table, on top of which I used the top of a kitchen cabinet, the whole giving the appearance of a small Welsh dresser.

All of this furniture I painted a bluish green, and I had curtains of denim of the

A cupboard built to cover an unsightly partition ilEL

^sa a a q=n=rn=r=pri

I I so

The bathroom side of the cupboard, op^iP cliorl^ u^ed as a supply closet oaiiic aiiauc,

hung as to cover the woodwork as much as possible. The lower sash of all of the windows was covered with filet lace, which let in the light but at the same time acted as a screen, the windows being on a level with the heads of passers-by.

In my larger room, I changed the hideous, mottled tiles of the mantel to harmonize with the yellow walls by going over them with two rather thick coats of alabastine. This, being a water color preparation, is easily washed off if at any time one wishes to get back to the original color of the tiles.

My landlord also gave me permission to paint the metal of the grate and chandeliers a dull black. They were the cheapest sort of finish : imitation copper with splashes of black. The floors in both rooms I painted a dark gray-green. In my larger room I improvised my first kitchenette by having a shelf on the level with the top of the washstand where there was running water. Around it I had a screen covered with denim the same color as the walls. A few small rugs on the floor, chintz curtains at the five windows, the same chintz used as cushions for the chairs, potted plants on the window sills, a few pictures, an electric lamp, a table and a really beautiful old mahogany desk that I had years before picked up for a song down in Maryland, completed the furnishings of this room.

It was a surprise to my friends when they saw what a complete little home I had made for myself without spending much of anything except thought and time. One of them, an unmarried woman who had spent many dreary hours in the hall bedroom of a boarding-house, seeing that I had succeeded in removing most of the horrors from spinsterhood, proceeded to hunt a similar establishment for herself where she afterwards had independence, comfort, and real happiness without spending as much money as it had cost her to board. Two or three young women can live together in this way very economically and have a wonderful time doing it.

After spending three years in this little apartment, I was married and went to live in a small neighboring town. Houses for rent were scarce, but one day when out by myself I discovered a little white house with green shutters that appealed to me very much. It was on a good corner and faced in such a way that all the rooms were sunny. When I took my husband to see it, he was not in the least enthusiastic about it. He couldn't see anything except the wall papers, which were indeed enough to give one "the horrors." He had not yet had sufficient evidence of my ability to make a home "out of a pine cone" to be able to visualize the place as I did in my mind's eye, but when convinced of my genuine satisfaction with it he succumbed, and we had the things sent out to it from my own small apartment.

Except bedroom things, we put all the f umi-

A house that was easily made livable

ture into one room, the walls of which we had changed from a hideous purplish red to a white paper with an indistinct white lattice design. The woodwork was already painted white, so the green curtains and furniture from my studio looked quite as if designed for this room. For the time being, we kept the desk and the Canton chairs here also, which with the double student lamp, our first wedding present, made for us a very comfortable and attractive combination living- and dining-room.

As we were married very quietly, we were spared the usual conventional wedding presents. Those who really wanted to give us something did so after we were married, letting us, as a rule, select what we needed to conform to what we already had.

Even so we made mistakes, the first of which was in the selection of a rug for our dining-room.

We selected a very pretty Scotch wool rug in a shade of green that went beautifully with the green furniture, but we soon found that on account of the plain center every spot and crumb showed on it. After spending much money in having it cleaned, I decided that a rug with a small indistinct figure was the only kind to have in a dining-room.

In our tiny guest room, the paper of which happened to be white with a design of a single rosebud, we put the couch that had been in the apartment. My new sewing-machine did duty as a dressing table for this room by having a board cut to fit the top of it. To this board I tacked a valance, above the board on the wall I hung a mirror with a white frame, and in front of this dressing table stood a spindle-backed chair also painted white. A rug and some simple curtains completed this room.

From our next purchase I also learned a valuable lesson which I here pass along to the inexperienced housewife. We allowed • ourselves to be persuaded that a felt mattress of good make, with woven wire springs, made an excellent bed. Even this combination is expensive, but after a year or so of use it is most unsatisfactory. The springs sag and the felt gets hard in the center. Certainly, the mattress and springs of the bed upon which one spends a third of one's life are of first importance in furnishing a house. The best is none too good, and the best bed, to my mind, is one with an upholstered box spring, and a mattress made of hard black South American horsehair. This is a good investment, for although the mattress must be renovated from time to time, the same hair is always good. If it is necessary to practice economy, let it be in regard to the bedstead, rather than to the mattress and springs.

Our living-room we left perfectly bare for a while, but at length we had on hand a coUection of really choice things, all of them suitable companions for the old desk which was our starting point in the equipment of this room. One day on our way out to the club to play golf, we stopped at the paper hanger's and looked over his rather limited supply of samples. We found a light gray fabric paper that we both felt would be lovely in our sunny room with the mahogany furniture. The man said he was not busy that afternoon, so we gave him the key to the house and when we returned home that night our living-room had doubled in size. The dark olive green paper with huge figures that looked like crawling crabs was gone, and in its place this plain gray paper effected a most astonishing transformation, and even my husband in spite of his doubts in the beginning had to admit that the house was all that I had dreamed. He helped me then and there to arrange the rugs and furniture, and I lost no time in getting up the chintz curtains, so that that very evening we used this room for the first time and decided that it had been well worth waiting for.