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Store-Rooms and Stores

A clean, tidy, well-arranged store-room is one sign of a good methodical housekeeper. Where stores are put away anyhow, and taken out at any time and in any quantity, we have good grounds for supposing that disorder and extravagance prevail. A store-room ought to be large, airy, cool, and dry. Such a room is not always to be had, but even if a closet has to be put up with, it may be kept clean. Shelves should be arranged round the walls, hooks fastened to the edges of the shelves. The driest and coolest part of the room should be kept for jams, jellies, and pickles. All the jars should be distinctly labelled at the front, so that they will not all need to be taken down every time a particular jar is wanted. Biscuits or cakes should be kept in closely-covered tin boxes; lemons should be hung in nets. Soap should be bought in large quantities, and cut up into convenient-sized pieces, so that it may be dry before it is used. Coffee, when roasted, should be kept in small quantities; if unroasted, it will improve with keeping. Stores should on no account be left in the papers in which they were sent from the grocer's, but should be put into tin canisters or earthenware jars closely covered, and each jar, like the jam, should be labelled. Stores should be given out regularly, either daily or weekly. In order to check their consumption, the housekeeper will do well to keep in the store-room a memorandum-book with a pencil fastened to it, and in this book she should enter the date on which all stores were brought in or taken out. By means of these memoranda she can compare one week's outgo with another, and immediately discover any extravagance. A hammer, a few nails, a little gum, a ball of string, a few sheets of foolscap, and a pair of scissors, should always be kept in the store-room.