Guide to Hotel Housekeeping by Mary E. Palmer (the first e reader TXT) 📖

If a housekeeper is not progressive, her employer will tire of her. The onward trick of nature is too much for the average housekeeper, and gladly would she anchor, but to do so means to sink. She must keep up with the times, she must travel the pace of progress.

There is nothing new under the sun, but there is constant metamorphosis. Time brings changes. Competition is strong and housekeepers must be on the alert for any accomplishment that will aid in their calling.

In America, life is a universal race for exalted positions. Then get out of the rut and keep up the long list of illusions, of which a rapid succession of changes and moods and styles and ideas is the secret.

You must keep busy. There is only one sin that you can commit; that sin is idleness. Polish the old things and make them look like new. Do not let your footsteps become so narrow that they will end in a turkey-track. Keep up your practice of thoroughly cleaning rooms, overhauling furniture, and sending out a mattress now and then to have it repaired. Take up a carpet and have it cleaned. Give the radiators a coat of bronze. Have the ceiling lights cleaned. Paste up the wall-paper that is hanging from the wall. Polish the brass on the stairs. Put in an order for some new material of which to make dresser covers.

Decorative Dresser Covers.

The writer has just completed some very pretty dresser covers for the parlor floor rooms, en suite. The work is fascinating, and the linen-room girls and parlor-maids can lend a hand at making them. Any kind of linen material can be adapted that can be laundered with ease and success. Plain white linen is a well-deserved favorite and makes thoroughly useful, as well as fashionable, dresser-covers. A cheaper material can be found in linen toweling—just as pretty and just as durable as the plain white linen.

The dresser cover just covering the dresser and not allowed to hang down is the favorite mode just now. It can be simply hemmed; but a charming and more attractive pattern is with scalloped edges and elaborated ends. These scallops are made with a spool, medium size, No 50 being especially suitable. Put the spool on the edge of the material and with a lead pencil, draw a crescent and then another, clear across the end. Pad the scallops with common white darning-cotton, using the old fashioned chain-stitch. Before putting the work in the embroidery-hoops, sew a strip of muslin, about six inches in width to the edge of the dresser cover. This will aid in getting the work placed in the hoops and will enable you to do smoother and more satisfactory work.

Embroider the scallops with linen embroidery floss, size "D," using the buttonhole stitch. An eyelet at the termination and just above each crescent will add materially to its effectiveness. Rip off the muslin and launder before cutting out the scallops. This will prevent the ugly fringe seen on so many embroidered dresser-covers.

Too many housekeepers of the present day neglect the small things. They want to draw large salaries and let the house take care of itself, while they visit with the guests and gossip and have a good time. The clerks are kind and do not report to the manager the little complaints that come to the office every day; but the housekeeper's conscience should tell her that she is not earning her money.

The housekeeper that is above her profession, is not interested in her work, and that is trying to get into some church society, had better not engage in hotel housekeeping, for her housekeeping duties will require her constant attention at the hotel. There will be some difficulties to settle at all times, which will require her presence. Maids work better when they are conscious of a vigilant overseer. They take more pride in their work when they know that every nook and corner is being inspected by the housekeeper. Especially is this true if the housekeeper is successful in commanding the respect of her subordinates.

The housekeeper that lays the blame of some grave mistake on her assistants is not worthy of the name of housekeeper. Had she been there, attending to her affairs, it would not have happened, for she would have prevented or stopped it.

The housekeeper, by diligence, attendance to her duties, and by economies, figures greatly in the success of a hotel, and makes her own position. The position does not make her. Then it is fairly reasonable to suppose that such a housekeeper should make her own salary; that she should command and receive her price; that she should be paid according to the amount she is really worth, and not the fixed scale that the hotel pays. If a housekeeper can show by her books, by her management, and by her economies, that she is worth more than her predecessor, she is entitled to more pay, and by all means should receive more pay. The average salary paid a housekeeper is not enough to properly clothe a housekeeper. After her laundry bills are paid, what has she left to lay up for the "rainy day," to say nothing of an old age, when parsimony and incompatibility of temper and "set ways" make her, in any place, an unwelcome personage.

The Faithful, Efficient Housekeeper.

The housekeeper that sticks to her post and is always looking after her work is surely worth more to her employer than one that has worn the carpet threadbare in front of her mirror, or one that puts in a great portion of her time at the bargain-counter, or the theater, or with a novel in her hand. Surely, the hard-working housekeeper, the one that makes her occupation a study and is always at her post, is worth more to her employer than the housekeeper that is trying to do society "stunts," to ring in with people of fashion, to "out-dress" them. But the majority of hotels pay much the same salaries to housekeepers, good, bad, and indifferent.

The progressive housekeeper that thus looks after her employer's business every day, always at her post in the linen-room, is uncomplaining, shoulders the blame, and is not always knocking on his private-office door and entering complaints about this or that, is surely worth more than thirty dollars a month to any hotel man. If he does not think so, he should not blame the progressive, faithful, reliable housekeeper, if she promptly accepts a position with better pay.

The housekeeper, or her assistant, should go through every room twice a day. In the morning, the housekeeper should take the house-plan, inspect every room, and check up the rooms that have been occupied. If the bed in a room has been used, and if there is baggage, she should check this also, and should turn the report into the office by nine o'clock. Then, in the afternoon, when the maids are supposed to have finished their work, the housekeeper should take her pencil and pad and thoroughly inspect every room and the maids' work. She may find a ragged sheet or pillow slip; if so, she should make a note of it. Some room may be short of a towel, soap or matches; she should make a note of this also. Around the gas-jets and in the corners, she may find "Irish curtains" (cobwebs); in the commode, she may find a vessel that was forgotten; in a dresser drawer, a man may have left his cast-off hose, and suspenders. Some maid may have swept the center of the room, while under the bed and under the dresser there may be dust of two weeks' standing; in another room, the housekeeper may find a bathtub forgotten—all of which she should write on the pad. This work will occupy two hours of her time in a two-hundred-room house. When the maids come on watch at six o'clock, each one should be given instructions to go back and finish her work. In some hotels, the maids do not go off duty of an afternoon, but continue working until six o'clock. In this case, the housekeeper should issue her instructions at once.

There are many ways to clean a room, but there is just one best way to clean it thoroughly. "Dig out the corners" should be the watchword of every successful housekeeper. She would rather the maid would leave the dirt in a pile in the center of the room than fail to clean out the corners.

If one word could be selected that means the most and needs the most emphasis in the science of housekeeping, that word would be "cleanliness." The first desideratum, therefore, of the chambermaid, is the scrub-pail and a piece of oilcloth—some maids use a newspaper—under it to protect the carpet. The first thing to do is to clean the small pieces of furniture. If the furniture is new, it should be only wiped with the dust-cloth. If it is old and marred, it should be washed with warm water and soap, and oiled with a good furniture-polish. It should then be set in the hall. The dresser drawers should be washed and the marble cleaned with sapolio; the mirrors should be polished, the windows washed, and the shutters dusted. The crockery should be cleaned and put in the hall. The bed should be covered with a dust-cover. The cobwebs should be swept down with a long-handled broom. The lace curtains should be shaken, and either taken down or pinned up. The closet should be swept out. The toilet-bowl should be scrubbed inside and out with the toilet-brush, and a disinfectant powder put in. The stationary wash-bowl should be scrubbed with sapolio, and the faucets polished, not forgetting the chain. The bathtub should also be scrubbed with sapolio, and the floor washed.

The door should now be closed and the sweeping begun. A very good plan is to scatter wet paper over the floor to keep the dust down. The corners should be dug out and the dirt swept to the center of the room and taken up in the dust-pan. If the carpet is old, it should be sponged with warm water and soap, to which a little ammonia has been added. The carpet will look like new after this process. After the dust is well settled, all the wood work in the room should be washed; the bed and dresser should be washed and oiled, and all the furniture should be symmetrically arranged, and the windows closed on account of storms.

One chambermaid can successfully look after eighteen or twenty rooms a day. Not all of the rooms are occupied every night. The maid should take advantage of the dull days to clean her rooms thoroughly; she should clean one room every day.

Competition is great, and success will come to the best and cleanest hotel. The traveler loves to slip into a bed with perfectly laundered sheets that do not look as if the maids had sprinkled, folded, and pressed them between the mattress, as chambermaids ordinarily do in hotels where there is a scant supply of linen.

Sometimes the chambermaid will ask the laundryman for a pair of sheets to make up a sample-room, as the guest wants to receive a customer. The laundryman replies: "Well, just as soon as the machinery starts again, you may have them." There has been a breakdown; the belt is off;