MONDAY

The chief objection to washing on Monday is that it necessitates sorting and putting the soiled linen to soak on Sunday, which not only violates the religious principles of many households, but shortens and spoils the flavor of the maid’s free Sabbath evening.  Then, too, the sorting of the linen often reveals holes and rents which should properly be repaired before laundering increases the damage, and a Tuesday washing makes this possible, with the straightening out and readjustment generally necessary after Sunday.  On the other hand, the longer the linen remains unlaundered the more difficult it is to cleanse, with the risk that good drying days may tarry and the ironing thus linger along till the end of the week, which is inconvenient and bothersome all round.  Therefore it seems quite advisable for Mrs. Grundy to wash on Monday, and an occasional postponement until Tuesday will not then be a matter of any great moment.  The routine work of every day—­the airing, brushing up, and dusting of the rooms, the preparation and serving of meals at their regular hours, the chamber work, dish-washing, in short, all the have-to-be-dones, must not, and need not, be interfered with by the special work which belongs to each day.  There are hours enough for both, and rest time, too, unless the housekeeper or maid be cut after the pattern of Chaucer’s Sergeant of the Law: 

  “Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
  And yet he semed bisier than he was.”

Wash day is always somewhat of an ordeal, and a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together is necessary to carry it successfully through.  A simple breakfast will give the maid an opportunity to sort and put the clothes to soak, if this was not done the night previous, heat water for the washing, and perhaps prepare vegetables for the day’s meals, before breakfast is served; and if her mistress lends a helping hand with the dishes, dusting, or other regular work of the day, she can go to her tubs just that much earlier.  Getting up in the wee sma’ hours and working by early candle light is misdirected ambition.  The maid needs her rest to fit her for her day’s labors, and washing well done requires the light of day.  Set the breakfast hour ahead half an hour and so gain a little extra time.  Foresight and extra planning on Saturday will provide certain left-overs from Sunday’s meals which can be quickly and easily transformed into Monday’s luncheon.  Dinner, too, should be a simple meal, but don’t add to the other trials of the day cold comfort at meal time.  A smoking-hot dinner has a certain heartening influence to which we are all more or less susceptible.  The doors leading from the room in which the washing is done must be kept closed to exclude the steamy odor from the rest of the house, and the maid allowed to proceed with her work without interruption.  By eleven o’clock she will probably have reached a point where she can stop to