In Shop­ping:
Shop only once a week. If small extra items are needed, the hus­band can pick them up on his way home from work.

In Enter­tain­ing:
Plan din­ners so that most of the work is done before the guests arrive. Set the table and have the din­ner either cook­ing or ready to cook before the com­pany comes. Hus­band and wife should plan the menu together and divide the work so that each can spend some time with the guests before din­ner. Sal­ads, casseroles and desserts can be largely pre­pared ahead of time.

For many years now, numer­ous Amer­i­can hus­bands have been observ­ing with mixed emo­tions their wives’ efforts to man­age the home. Many are con­vinced that their wives’ inef­f­i­cency would bank­rupt a push­cart ped­dler in less than two weeks.

The sci­en­tif­i­cally man­age home is a con­cept devel­oped over the last two years by a group of Wash­ing­ton man­age­ment engi­neers who apply to the oper­a­tion of their homes the same sort of pru­dent princ­ples they use in busi­ness. They have estab­lished fam­ily goals — just as busi­ness would set pro­duc­tion goals. They have evolved schemes to sim­plify and share house­work, stud­ied human rela­tions in the home, and put fam­ily finances on a man­age­able basis.

Dear Ones,
As you con­tem­plate the above 1953 Collier’s excerpt, be sure to breathe. In… Out… slowly and calmly. The “flex­i­ble phi­los­o­phy of sci­en­tific home man­age­ment” can be applied as each fam­ily sees fit. It must be noted here, thusly shown in a for­mat which one freely admits, that the rise in after­noon alco­hol con­sump­tion by Amer­i­can house­wives coin­cides lock-​step with this philo­soph­i­cal break-​through. No won­der Mrs. H. M. Mainart of Bethesda Mary­land was enthralled with her newly devised sys­tem to pre­pare grape­fruit. Turns out, we are to believe the “Main­harts turned down a new house when they dis­cov­ered it wasn’t effi­ciently designed.” Dur­ing the hous­ing crunch of the post-​war period? Wow.

Love Always,
Mom