Living on a Little

"Then what shall I put down under Rent? Shall I say $40 a month and put down nothing for fuel? That would be right in both city and country you see, the rent here more and the fuel less, and there just the reverse."

"Yes, I think that will be fair."

So that item went down: Rent and Fuel, $480.

"Wages come next. Do we settle the servant question here and now, offhand? I've always understood that was a life-work, and you might even go to another world no wiser on the subject than when you came into this one."

"It is a great subject, certainly; anybody who has had an average experience can testify to that. I scarcely know where to begin to tell you what to do. But let us see. Suppose you decide to keep a servant, at least at first. For general housework in the city you will have to pay $5.00 a week, and you will be lucky if you get any one who will do your washing for that; probably you will have to pay $5.00 and put the laundry work out; at least that is what your maid will ask."

"Well, she won't get it, then," said Dolly decidedly. "She may as well understand first as last that two people who have not much money to spend cannot pay five dollars a week and still put out the washing. It's perfectly absurd to expect it." She shook her head indignantly at the imaginary maid who was supposed to have made the preposterous suggestion.

"Let us give up having her at all," smiled her sister. "Perhaps, instead of taking a competent person, you can get a newly landed Finn or German who will consent to wash and iron, cook and clean, all for $4.00 a week; you really cannot do much better than that. Then you must teach her everything, of course, and do all the dainty cooking yourself, beside. You must also allow a good deal for her food; she will be accustomed to eat a great deal and of a substantial sort."

"I don't like the idea of an untrained maid, at all," said Dolly rebelliously.

"It is nice to have somebody, though, especially at first, because no bride likes to cook in her new clothes, above all at dinner time. Still, many a clever girl does do all her work and still manages to be always rested and fresh and prettily dressed; it's a miracle how she does it, but you must learn the secret if you have to dispense with the maid, my dear, or risk seeing romance vanish!"

"Well, you know how! I'm convinced Dick thinks you a perfect Queen of Beauty and a Madame Recamier of cleverness and a female chef and everything else that is desirable in a wife, all rolled up in one prize package."

"Well, if he does, – and let us hope he may! – remember how long I've been in the business of learning how to manage. You must try and get to the point without wasting the time I have put on my lessons. But to go back to that perennially interesting question, Concerning Servants; put down $200 under Service. It really ought to be a little more than that at $4.00 a week, but as your Finn will certainly never stay a whole year at a time, you will probably do your own work for some weeks at least, and so save her wages."

"I have about decided not to have either a Finn or a German or anybody else. I think I'll do my own work and have a woman in to wash and iron and clean by the day; that will save something, won't it?"

"Yes; but in town, at least, you will have to pay $1.50 a day, besides car-fare and meals; that is pretty expensive for you."

"Well, why can't I have a woman just to clean, say a day, or even half a day at a time, and put out my washing?"

"Laundry work is dreadfully expensive. You must pay, at the very lowest, fifty cents a dozen, and more for all the fine things, such as white petticoats and shirt-waists. I don't believe you can afford it. Why not try this way? Send out all your washing except the finest things and have it returned rough-dry; that is a rather cheap way of doing, if you send a whole wash; then have a woman one day to iron and give you perhaps an hour or more of cleaning, too. There is an economical and a practical plan, to my thinking, but very likely you may not find it the best one for you to follow. For that particular one, you must experiment and study conditions for yourself in the place you live in; what would do for me here might not suit you at all elsewhere. But anyway, we will put down $200 for service, for I doubt if it will be less than that amount, no matter how you manage."

"And the next item I suppose should be Clothes."

"Yes, it ought to be, but here is a difficulty. The first year you are married the sum will fall way below the average, for your two trousseaux will supply your needs. Suppose this time you put down $150, just to have something to go by; it will be at least double that, possibly, after awhile. Now if you will add up what you have there you can tell what you will have for the most important item of all, Incidentals, which we have left for the last."

Dolly added in silence for a moment, and then read:

"Or, say $1,200; that, subtracted from what I hope will be our income, $1,800, leaves $600 for Incidentals."

"And that is very much like a skeleton in the closet. Incidentals, my dear Dolly, are the very worst foe of all young housekeepers. I wish I could impress upon you from the very first to watch that column. It must cover everything we have not put down, and the name of them is Legion. Doctor's bills, dentist's bills, church, books, magazines, car-fares, entertaining, pocket money of every sort, gas bills, – unless you can get those out of your table allowance, as possibly you can, and perhaps you can not, – and vacations, and amusements, and two things that ought to come first of all, and you must never, never forget or treat lightly – life insurance and the savings bank account."

"Really, Mary, you frighten me!"

"You may well think of these things seriously at least, because they need that sort of consideration. Six hundred dollars is very little for all those items, and yet it must cover them. Life insurance is a necessity; don't ever think you can dispense with that, but keep your premiums paid up if you have to live on bread and water to do it. And the savings bank; into that must – must, Dolly – go a small sum every single month. Nothing makes one feel so at peace with all the world as to know that there is a small but growing sum laid by for the rainy day which is absolutely sure to come just when you can least endure it. Think what it means to have something to fall back on in a great emergency! It is so fatally easy to forget about that and all these other things which devour that sum under Incidentals, and then, behold, the end of July finds one with the next December's money all spent! Candy and flowers and theatre tickets and other nice but unnecessary things will behave in just exactly that way; they will simply devour Incidentals."

"Well, I'll try and keep a stern and watchful eye on the column," said Dolly, "and when Fred's salary is raised we will go on living at exactly the same rate as before and spend all the new margin on luxuries; I do love luxuries!"

"They certainly are pleasant, but if you want a mind at ease, keep your attention firmly fixed on your account in the savings bank. That in the long run gives greater satisfaction than candy or violets, though I don't dispute that they have their place, too. But cheer up! Housekeeping always gets simpler the farther you get along, and the day will come when you won't know that you are economizing, it will be so easy and natural and pleasant."

Dolly sighed heavily as she added Incidentals on to her other items and made her column under Income come out neatly, $1,800 received, and $1,800 spent.

"I hope you will hurry up and teach me everything as fast as possible," she said. "It does seem rather impossible to me, after all, and I started off this morning so sure that I could do it offhand! I feel exactly as though I had a lesson to learn made up of a mixture of Sanscrit and German philosophy and trigonometry, and all the rest of the most dreadful things you can think of."

CHAPTER II

Saving for Staples – The Kitchen – Buying – Linen

The very next day the two lady-maids went seriously to work on their problem of living on a little. They arranged for a woman to come one day in the week and wash, do a little cleaning for perhaps an hour while the wash was drying, and then iron the heavy things; the next morning the sisters were to finish up the light and dainty things left over, the napkins, pretty waists, handkerchiefs, and odds and ends; these would take only an hour or two after the regular routine of bed-making, dusting, and brushing up the hardwood floors was out of the way, and this in their small, convenient apartment was no great task.

After everything was in order, they sat down with books and pencils to lay out a sort of campaign for the winter.

"I said we would allow ourselves about seven dollars a week for food," Mrs. Thorne began. "Please notice that I said about. It is really impossible to be absolutely exact with you, because you are not sure just where you are going to live. If you are in the country proper, or possibly even in a suburb, you will find food somewhat less than in the city; milk, eggs, and vegetables are almost always cheaper there than they are here. Then, too, prices differ in different places, sometimes without any apparent reason. So we won't be absolutely bound down to seven dollars a week; sometimes we will spend only six, and once in awhile we may go a little over our allowance, though I plan never to do that.

"Now out of this dollar a day we must buy meat, vegetables, groceries, milk, butter, and eggs, so you see we shall have to be very careful indeed and very saving, especially as we must have a little margin every week to put in some staple. One week we will lay in half a barrel of potatoes, if we find some that are cheap just then; another, we will buy olive oil, or fruit for preserving, or flour, or something for our emergency closet; all these things must be taken into account, you see, if we are not going to get into deep water financially. Just fancy! We might spend our dollar a day right along, and some morning wake up to find ourselves flourless, sugarless, coffeeless, and no money in our purse but the one dollar for the one day! No, the only safe way is to put in staples as we go along, and so never get out of everything at once.

"You see that tin bank on the kitchen mantel: every day when I come back from market I put in that all the pennies and nickels I have left; then some days, when I have spent only about fifty cents down-town, because we had so much in the house in the way of left-overs that I did not need to get much of anything, I put in all of the dollar that I have left, – perhaps forty cents or so. You can see that I always have enough for our needs right there without drawing on our future.

"And then besides staples there is entertaining to save for. Half the fun of keeping house is having one's friends in to a meal now and then. I just love to give dinner-parties."

"But I thought we allowed for that," said Dolly, turning over the leaves of her book. "You certainly said Entertaining came under Incidentals; see, here it is in black and white."

"So I did, but by that I meant really serious entertaining, which comes only once in awhile, such as a big family dinner at Christmas, with a fourteen-pound turkey or some similar extravagance. If we undertook any such affair as that I should unhesitatingly take out its cost from Incidentals, because otherwise we should be on short rations ourselves for far too long a time to be comfortable, in order to make things come out even; but now I am speaking of little dinners and luncheons when we have four people at a time. Those I hope to get out of our regular allowance; that is what I want a good margin for. And we can do it all, too; even with meat and vegetables at the frightful price they have reached to-day, it's quite possible, if you know how to manage. Other people do it, and we can, too. 'What man has done,' you know."

Dolly groaned.

"I'm perfectly sure I had better cable to Fred to-day that I have decided we can never be married at all," she declared, dismally. "The longer I think about the matter the more certain I am that seven dollars a week is nothing, absolutely nothing. Why, the last winter we kept house mother went off for a week, and I did the ordering; and I remember the meat bill alone for father, Cousin Marion, myself, and three maids was twenty-eight dollars. Father did not say anything when it came in, and did not seem surprised, and I would not have thought that there was anything strange about it except for a remark mother made when she came back and looked over the accounts. 'Well,' she said, 'I do hope you won't marry a poor man; if you do, I'm sorry for him in advance!' From which I argued that poor people did not spend twenty-eight dollars a week on meat, – not as a general thing!"

"I suppose you had sweetbreads for luncheon once or twice?" asked Mary, smiling.

Dolly nodded. "Certainly. We had sweetbreads several times, and quail, and broiled chickens, too; and for breakfast we had little French chops, and such things; and for dinner we had capons and guinea-hens and legs of spring lamb. All the delicacies of the season were ours for the telephoning. So you see I don't know the first thing about living on a little."

"I should say not," said her sister, emphatically. "If ever there was an ignoramus, you are one, my dear. But then, I did not know any more than you when I was married, and behold me now! And I'll make you into an expert, too, before this year of servitude is over, or I'm no prophet. And as we had better lose no time over it, we will begin the lessons this very minute. Come out in the kitchen and take a careful view of its contents. I'm proud of my kitchen!"

Dolly did not wonder, when she looked around the room and noticed what her sister pointed out. It was small, but very attractive. The walls were painted cream color and the floor was covered with a blue and white oilcloth. The woodwork was the exact color of the walls. Around the room, six feet from the floor, ran a shelf set out with nests of blue and white bowls and cheap but effective plates and cups and saucers to match, all meant to use in cooking. Under the edge of the shelf, over the table, hooks were driven, and from these hung spoons and egg-beaters and the little things needed in stirring up dishes. The table itself was covered with blue and white enamel cloth. The sink was painted white, and the dish-towels were of crash marked off in blue squares.

The open cupboard door showed shiny tins and blue and white saucepans, and some delightful contrivances in the way of cream-whippers and mayonnaise-droppers and moulds. Everything was not only spotless but charmingly pretty to look at.

"Do you remember a book we had when we were small, called 'We Girls,' I think it was, in which the family decided to let their maid go and do their own work? They had a basement kitchen and an up-stairs dining-room, and the problem was how to manage. They solved it by doing the work up-stairs in the dining-room, behind a screen. The cooking-stove was brilliant and ornamental with polish. The carpeted floor – carpeted, mind you – never had a speck of flour or grease on it. The cooking was done as if by magic, and they called their workroom a 'ladies' kitchen.' That story made an undying impression on me when I was sixteen. I thought if Fate would only grant me the boon of doing my own work in a palatial kitchen like that, I should have no further requests to make. And I've never forgotten the idea behind the story. My kitchen simply must be an attractive room, bright and cheerful, with the 'rocking-chair and the white curtain and red geranium in the window,' which newspaper articles tell us nowadays are essential to make a maid contented; you know the kind of thing I mean! Well, since I mean to be a maid a good deal of my life, my kitchen too must be charmingly pretty. And I have not spared expense to make it so, either, for I regard all my blue bowls and labor-saving utensils as investments; they make my work easier, and that is everything when one has other things in the world to do besides cook."

"But don't you have to keep supplying these things over and over? Your first outlay does not by any means cover the whole thing; you have to replace all the time."

"Oh, no, for when I do my own work things last forever; I don't smash bowls and cups and burn the bottoms out of saucepans, as a maid does. And even when I have a maid, I find these things pay, for she will not break pretty things half as fast as she will ugly cracked and burned ones; those she does not bother handling with care. And then I watch the ten-cent counters and other places, and pick up blue and white ware when I find something very cheap; so it does not cost as much to keep stocked up as you would think. But now I want to show you my stoves. I have three of them – think of that!"

"I don't see a single one," said Dolly, looking around in amazement.

"That is because this is an apartment and not a house, and we cook by gas. But instead of having a range, as most people do, I got the landlord to just give me a three-holed stove standing on little low legs, connected with the gas-pipe with this flexible tube, which I can take off when I am not using it. When I want the stove, I first reach under this cooking-table and pull out this lower table, – an invention of my own; I'm thinking of patenting it. I got a small pine kitchen table, exactly like the larger one, and had six inches cut off the legs and rollers put on; you see it slips in and out easily under the regular table. Then I had the top covered with zinc, so nothing would set it on fire. Under this, on the floor, stands my gas-stove. I pull out the small table, set this stove on it, attach the tube to the gas-jet, and cook. The upper table holds all my extra dishes, you see, and I take them off when I want them on the gas. I have a splendid sheet-iron oven I use to bake things quickly; that I keep out by the refrigerator, because it is bulky, but it is light and easy to handle, so I don't mind lifting it in and out. Then when I have finished cooking I unfasten the gas pipe and let it hang down by the wall; I lift off my stove and put that on the floor, push my zinc table under my ordinary one, and there I am, all done and orderly. In a little kitchen like this I have to manage space. Of course if you have a good-sized apartment or a house you can have a regular gas-range, as other people do; but I am explaining how to manage if you have a tiny kitchen, such as many of us cliff-dwellers have to cook in. But in any case, have a zinc-topped table; you lift off a hot pot from the stove and set it down there and neither burn nor crock anything, and that is a real blessing when you have to do your own cleaning-up."

"Doesn't your gas cost you a great deal each month? I remember hearing somewhere that it was expensive to cook with it."

"It is not expensive for us, because I use it carefully. Of course if you have a maid who turns on four burners at once, and runs them for hours, you will have a frightful bill. But see these saucepans; three of them, and triangular in shape, so that when they are put together they make what looks like one good-sized round one. You can fill all three with vegetables or other things, and cook them at once on one burner. That's one great saving, to begin with."