Let a young housekeeper, then, adopt these maxims as her guide in regulating the style of her dress, furniture, table, and the size of her house.
Do not begin housekeeping in the style in which you should end it, but begin on a plain and small scale, and increase your expenditures as your experience and means are increased.
Be determined to live _within_ your income, and in such a style that you can secure time to improve your own mind, and impart some of your own advantages to others.
Try to secure _symmetry_ in your dress, furniture, style of living, and charities. That is, do not be profuse in one direction, and close and pinching in another.
Cultivate a taste for _intellectual_ pleasures, _home_ pleasures, and the pleasures of _benevolence_.
Have some _regular plan_ for the employment of your time, and in this plan have chief reference to making home pleasant to your husband and children. It will save them from a thousand snares, and you from many sorrows.
WORDS OF COMFORT FOR A DISCOURAGED HOUSEKEEPER.
There is no doubt of the fact, that American housekeepers have far greater trials and difficulties to meet than those of any other nation. And it is probable that many of those who may read over the methods of thrift and economy adopted by some of the best housekeepers in our land, and detailed in this work, will with a sigh exclaim, that it is _impossible_ for them even to attempt any such plans.
Others may be stimulated by the advice and examples presented, and may start off with much hope and courage, to carry out a plan of great excellence and appropriateness, and after trying a while, will become discouraged by the thousand obstacles in their way, and give up in despair.
A still greater number will like their own way best, and think it is folly to attempt to change.
For those who wish they _could_ become systematic, neat, and thorough housekeepers, and would like to follow out successfully the suggestions found in this work, and for those who have tried, or will try, and find themselves baffled and discouraged, these words of comfort are offered.
Perhaps you find yourself encompassed by such sort of trials as these. Your house is inconvenient, or destitute of those facilities for doing work well which you need, and you cannot command the means to supply these deficiencies. Your domestics are so imperfectly qualified that they never can do anything _just right_, unless you stand by and attend to everything yourself, and you cannot be present in parlor, nursery, and kitchen all at once. Perhaps you are frequently left without any cook, or without a chambermaid, and sometimes without any hands but your own to do the work, and there is constant jostling and change from this cause. And perhaps you cannot get supplies, either from garden or market, such as you need, and all your calculations fail in that direction.