The Modern Interior

gospel is going to mean a lot to modern housekeeping, in spite of the
doubts I have. Do you know I am going to work out those principles here
in our home! I won’t have you men doing all the great and noble things!
I’m going to find out how these experts conduct investigations, and all
about it, and then apply it to my factory, my business, my home.”’ 8
Frederick focused on the idea of ‘step-saving’ in the kitchen and drew diagrams
showing good and bad kitchen arrangements. In her well organized
spaces (see left), the number of steps needed to perform the tasks of pre -
paring, cooking, and cleaning up after a meal were reduced to a minimum.
She relegated the kitchen to the back of the house, creating a small but
efficient ‘laboratory’ in which the housewife, clad in a white overall, and
seated on a high stool from which she could reach everything she needed
for the preparation of food, was destined to spend most of her time.
In separating the kitchen from the rest of the house Frederick was taking
her cue from the non-domestic arena, as ‘hotels and men’s clubs had
separated the kitchen from the living quarters long ago’. 9
Frederick’s advocacy of grouping kitchen equipment and tools in
line with the craftsman’s workshop and tool bench revealed her dependence
on undivided labour and the skilled craft process in the domestic
setting. Her idea that the home should become a site of efficient production
was novel, however, and, to that end, Frederick sought to rationalize,
and make more efficient the activities that went on in it. Her ambitions
‘Sitting down to wash dishes’, from Christine Frederick’s Efficient Housekeeping, 1915.
133