Turning a Bedroom into a Guest Room

This week is all about plugging along… After two weeks of illness, I’ve got to push and prod myself every step of the way to get these chores done. That said, I’m starting to feel a bit of the ol’ rhythm when it comes to my morning and evening routines. My ironing got done yesterday - all except for a blouse I forgot about that had been drying in the bathroom - and I did a little marketing this evening. My aunt is in town for a conference, and my sister and I will be making dinner for her tomorrow night. At my sister’s house, thank goodness! I may have made some progress in housekeeping since November, but my home is still far from ready to do any entertaining. At any rate, that means I’ll need to push my weekly bedroom cleaning forward to Friday evening and my new mission to Saturday morning.

It’s been a while now since I cleaned my bedroom, and I’m actually looking forward to putting it back to rights. Since I don’t have all that much in the way of news this evening, I thought I’d share this wonderful description of how the ideal guest room should be furnished from Lily Haxworth Wallace’s New American Etiquette (1941). I think we all deserve to feel as good as we’d try to make a guest feel in our homes. How do your bedrooms measure up to the ideal guest room?

Bedrooms should be liberally equipped with lights. The central bulb should operate from a switch that can easily be reached on entering the room. There should be a bed light, two, if the room has twin beds. A lamp should be above the sofa or chaise longue for reading. The bed and sofa lights should operate on individual switches.

The room should have shutters and shades so that every bit of the early morning sun can be kept out of the room if one likes to sleep late in complete darkness.

The bed or beds should be comfortable and should be well equipped with sheets, blankets (plenty of them), and a quilt. There should be two pillows, one hard and the other soft. There should be a bed light over each bed to satisfy those who like to read themselves to sleep.

Any bells for calling servants should be placed so that they can be sounded without getting out of bed.

There should always be a bedside table on top of which there should be an accurate alarm clock. The table should also hold a small tray with a glass and spoon, a thermos bottle of cold water, and a hot-water bottle or electric pad. A flashlight or candle should be beside the bed for service in the event of a breakdown in the house lighting supply.

The closet should not be the storage space for miscellaneous articles. It should have sufficient shelves and hangers for all the clothes it will hold. There should be hat stands for the women and trouser hangers for the men. Shoe trees should be amply supplied. If riding is a practice, there should be a bootjack.

There should be at least one lounging chair in the room and a sofa with comfortable cushions. They should be so placed that the light from the window is right for reading. A lamp should be near by for night reading.

A dressing table should be so placed that it receives satisfactory light from the window during the day and should have lights properly arranged for use after dark.

In the days of midsummer an electric fan is a welcome addition to the equipment of a hot room.

Mirrors should be in as many places as possible. There should be at least one of full length and the others should be placed so that they are at the proper height and receive good light.

A writing desk should be equipped with note paper, envelopes, ink, pens, pencils, stamps, blotters, and a calendar. Beside it there should be a waste basket.

Tray-ficiency

Clear breakfast dishes from table to tray or tea wagon.

Home economics in the 1940s was all about efficiency. The best kitchens were the kitchens where a woman took the least number of paces during the day as she stepped from sink to refrigerator to table to sink and back again - and again - and again - and again. The best kitchens were engineered so that women were standing at comfortable levels to work and so that light levels were easy on the eyes. And they had to be. Women were spending a good part of their days preparing meals and cleaning up after them... These days, our best kitchens are all about design and style. The trendiest colors and finishes, the latest in gadgets. People building or refurbishing a home today probably place far more importance on the look of their kitchens than the function. So it's quite an awakening to open up a housekeeping manual published in 1945 and see so much reduced to mathematical equation.

Including the clearing of the breakfast table. Every step counts. And the authors of the manual insist that you don't make more than one trip from dining room to kitchen. Just load everything up on your tray or tea wagon and run it all into the kitchen at once. Think of the minutes you've saved! (Ideally, you'd have a "pass-through" or window directly into the kitchen so that hot food could be served immediately and dirty dishes could be slid right on through to the drainboard.)

This is not the only time we'll see the housewife's handy dandy tray pop up. The authors recommend using a tray in tidying up the living room. Bowls of clear warm water are carried on a tray into each room when it's time for its weekly cleaning. Items which need polishing or repair are carried back to the kitchen on a tray.

Trays were hot when it came to entertaining, too. Decorative faux wood or metal trays were sold in dinner or luncheon sets so even a hostess without a dining room could entertain. I have a set of Hasko luncheon trays made in the early '40s that I've been using to clear my breakfast table. They're covered in a light brown woodgrain paper with a geese design at the center. Speaking of which, I haven't yet recovered from the hideous breakfast I choked down this morning. Don't worry, I've got plenty for leftovers. I think I'll save that trauma for another post...