far as "upstairs"
goes, really only leaves bedmaking to be done, and a bed does not take
five minutes to make. Downstairs a vast amount of needless labour at
present arises out of table wear. "Washing up" consists of a tedious
cleansing and wiping of each table utensil in turn, whereas it should be
possible to immerse all dirty table wear in a suitable solvent for a few
minutes and then run that off for the articles to dry. The application
of solvents to window cleaning, also, would be a possible thing but for
the primitive construction of our windows, which prevents anything but a
painful rub, rub, rub, with the leather. A friend of mine in domestic
service tells me that this rubbing is to get the window dry, and this
seems to be the general impression, but I think it incorrect. The water
is not an adequate solvent, and enough cannot be used under existing
conditions. Consequently, if the window is cleaned and left wet, it
dries in drops, and these drops contain dirt in solution which remain as
spots. But water containing a suitable solvent could quite simply be
made to run down a window for a few minutes from pinholes in a pipe
above into a groove below, and this could be followed by pure rain water
for an equal time, and in this way the whole window cleaning in the
house could, I imagine, be reduced to the business of turning on a tap.

There remains the cooking. To-day cooking, with its incidentals, is a
very serious business; the coaling, the ashes, the horrible moments of
heat, the hot black things to handle, the silly vague recipes, the want
of neat apparatus, and the want of intelligence to demand or use neat
apparatus. One always imagines a cook working with a crimsoned face and
bare blackened arms. But with a neat little range, heated by electricity
and provided with thermometers, with absolutely controllable
temperatures and proper heat screens, cooking might very easily be made
a pleasant amusement for intelligent invalid ladies. Which reminds one,
by-the-by, as an added detail to our previous sketch of the scenery of
the days to come, that there will be no chimneys at all to the house of
the future of this type, except the flue for the kitchen smells.[30]
This will not only abolish the chimney stack, but make the roof a clean
and pleasant addition to the garden spaces of the home.

I do not know how long all these things will take to arrive. The
erection of a series of experimental labour-saving houses by