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.

Sanitation Engineering

Sanitation engineering isn't something I've given much thought to when it comes to my home. I've just realized, though, that the authors of my housekeeping manual have taken it for granted that I have a waste basket in every room of the house. And I don't. I have a garbage can in the kitchen and another, smaller one in the bathroom. It'd certainly save on the odd piece of trash I need to pick up in the morning if I could have thrown it away from the get-go without taking more than a step or two. I think they're onto something here.

There's certainly an interesting flow of garbage - or refuse, to put it delicately - through the 1940s home. The last step in my early morning routine in the bedroom is to "collect trash in waste basket." As I've added a tidy up in the dining area and the living room to my schedule, the manual instructs me again to "collect trash in waste basket." After breakfast, each room in the house is supposed to get a daily cleaning, and the housewife is repeatedly reminded to "take out... waste basket" and then to "replace" it. The only point in the routine when the terminology becomes any different is in the kitchen, when the waste basket is instead called a "garbage can."

Waste baskets were more decorative items meant primarily for paper refuse. They didn't need to be lined or covered. Some were quite literally baskets, though painted metal waste baskets seem to have been popular. Garbage cans, on the other hand, were lined with paper and the '40s housewife was expected to wash and disinfect them once a week and let them dry in the sun. Paper bags from the grocery store were great for liners, but "moisture-proof liners" designed to fit these cans were also becoming available on the market. Garbage cans had lids - sometimes operated by a pedal at the base of the can.

It sounds as if the authors of the manual are advising the housewife to take the waste basket from each room into the kitchen to empty them into the garbage can. From there, the garbage can will be emptied - into a larger can elsewhere? - once a day, ideally, just before preparing lunch. Once it leaves the kitchen... well, that must be a husband's territory, because we hear no more about it.