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Housekeeping   /hˈaʊskˌipɪŋ/   Listen
Housekeeping

noun
1.
The work of cleaning and running a house.  Synonym: housework.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Housekeeping" Quotes from Famous Books



... they are,' said he. 'It's all very well for you. They are awfully fond of you. You and my mother can talk about Archie and his nurse and housekeeping and fashions, and it's very jolly for you, but where's the fun for a ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... while the attractive Yvette de Marcie turned her into the street without her wages. It was while delivering bread one morning to an atelier in the rue des Dames, that she chanced to meet a young painter who was looking for a good femme de menage to relieve his artistic mind from the worries of housekeeping. Little Alice fairly cried when the good painter told her she might come at twenty francs a month, which was more money than this very grateful and brave little Brittany girl had ever ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith

... in a small one-room house in the midst of a cotton field on the plantation of Mr. A. M. Owens, ten miles southeast of Winnsboro, S. C. He lives alone and does his own cooking and housekeeping. He is a bright mulatto, has an erect carriage and posture, appears younger than his age, is intelligent and enjoys recounting the tales of his lifetime. His own race doesn't give him much countenance. His friends ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... If ever her brother or his wife had the least qualms of conscience about her removal from the Lodge to Avonside, they would have been dispelled by the sight of the dear little fat woman trotting about, the picture of content, full of housekeeping plans, and schemes for her poultry-yard, her pigeon- house, and her green-house. As for her garden, it was a source of perpetual pride, wonder, and delight. The three years which she had spent at the Lodge—which, in her secret heart, she owned were rather dull ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... little personality to him. In fact, their love-affair, so far as they understood it, apart from its elemental impulses which they did not understand, was as much of a play to them as the apple-tree housekeeping ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... seen it with my own eyes," muttered Blacky the Crow. "Have to believe them. If I can't believe them, it's of no use to try to believe anything in this world. As sure as I sit here, that old nest has two eggs in it. Whoever laid them must be crazy to start housekeeping at this time of year. I must find out whose eggs they are ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess

... Augustine at the last, but as a work of art it stood alone, like Rheims or Amiens Cathedral, as though it had no antecedents. Then, although, like Rheims, its style was never meant to suit modern housekeeping and is ill-seen by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, it reveals itself in its great mass and intelligence as a work of extraordinary genius; a system as admirably proportioned as any cathedral and as complete; a success not universal either in ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... began her housekeeping; a not very arduous undertaking, as competent servants had been brought from Ion for her establishment as well as for ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley

... in Tales of Laughter, is a realistic story which has a scientific spirit and interest. Its basis of truth belongs to the realm of nature study. Its narration of how two Beetles set up housekeeping by visiting an ant-hill and helping themselves to the home and furnishings of the Ants, would be very well suited either to precede or to follow the actual study of an ant-hill by the children. The story gives a good glimpse of the home of the Ants, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... enough that one is satisfied; to preserve peace and tranquillity, all must be so likewise. I was like Aunt Gredel, who found everything right now that we were married. She came very often to see us, with her basket full of fresh eggs, fruits, vegetables, and cakes for our housekeeping, ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... mind to marry again. It's almost two years since you lost my daughter, and your oldest boy is seven years old. You're getting on toward thirty, my boy, and when a man passes that age, you know, in our province, he's considered too old to begin housekeeping again. You have three fine children, and thus far they haven't been a trouble to us. My wife and daughter-in-law have looked after them as well as they could, and loved them as they ought. There's Petit-Pierre, he's what you might call educated; he can drive oxen very handily ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... one blow. He saw his friends suffering imprisonment and death, himself forsaken and beggared. He found no sympathy at home. His daughters, who had not loved their father in his days of wealth and ease, loved him still less in poverty. They sold his books, cheated him with the housekeeping money, and in every way added to his unhappiness. At length, as a way out of the misery and confusion of his home, Milton ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... to be more methodical, dear, if we stay on in this house. We shall never know how we stand if bills keep coming in when we think they are settled. We had better hold a cabinet council and decide how much we can afford to spend in housekeeping and other departments, and cut our coat according to our cloth. It will be difficult after the way things went on at Knock, but it's our only chance. I tried to put down my private expenses this afternoon, and was horrified to find how heavy ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the contrary, to the realities of which history alone possesses the secret. The idea of wealth cannot absorb everything when there is question of judging and enlightening men. To do this, it is necessary to know the various phases of social housekeeping, what nations have thought of economic interests which have never ceased to interest them greatly, what they have attempted and what ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... again. His hand groped for her waist, he drew her again towards him and put the arms he had unlaced round his neck and stooped his wet cheek to hers. The past was a void, the forty years of joint housekeeping, since the morning each had seen a strange face on the pillow, faded to a point. For fifteen years they had been drifting towards each other, drifting nearer, nearer in dual loneliness; driven together by common suffering and growing alienation from the children they had begotten ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Song-Sparrow seeks the ground; the Blue-Bird finds a box or a hole somewhere; the Red-Wing haunts the marshy thickets, safer in spring than at any other season; and even the sociable Robin prefers a pine-tree to an apple-tree, if resolved to begin housekeeping prematurely. The movements of birds are chiefly timed by the advance of vegetation; and the thing most thoroughly surprising about them is not the general fact of the change of latitude, but their accuracy in hitting the precise locality. That the same Cat-Bird should find its way back, every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... paying a visit of a few days, as she often does since her daughter-in-law, Aunt Zoe, has undertaken the most of the housekeeping at Ion." ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley

... loses her husband's love because of her too easy-going habits. Unless controlled, these lead to slovenliness in personal appearance and housekeeping. ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... relic of my old forced economy, how fortunate it was that my pound of butter had just lasted until the morning when I was to break up housekeeping. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... clear the points of difference without a too painful explicitness. The more external disagreement was in the matter of "the home," and the housekeeping duties and pleasures we, by instinct and long education, supposed to be inherently appropriate ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... what dishes would be needed to keep her set complete. She not only made changes to improve the appearance of her house, but planned and made the changes in her workshop which would save steps and make her work as easy as possible. When her mind got to work, housekeeping became a game, the object being to eliminate all unnecessary labor. Her benches and tables and sinks were raised to the proper height and she became ashamed of the back- breaking energy she had wasted bending over them. A high stool, made by removing ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... household small has grown, Yet must be cared for, you will own. We have no maid: I do the knitting, sewing, sweeping, The cooking, early work and late, in fact; And mother, in her notions of housekeeping, Is so exact! Not that she needs so much to keep expenses down: We, more than others, might take comfort, rather: A nice estate was left us by my father, A house, a little garden near the town. But now my days ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... where nothing in the way of cookery seemed impossible; where you could believe in anything to eat, they chose to tell you of. Mrs Varden returned from the contemplation of these wonders to the bar again, with a head quite dizzy and bewildered. Her housekeeping capacity was not large enough to comprehend them. She was obliged to go to sleep. Waking was pain, in the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... see, at first it wasn't a tombstone but a marble-top dresser. Ma had always wanted one so badly; for she always thought that housekeeping would be so much easier if she had just one pretty thing to keep house toward. If I had not been so selfish, she could have had the dresser before she died. I had fifteen dollars,—enough to buy it,—but when I came ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... brother, who had been there, recollected fully hearing much of him, though it struck him that he bore the character of a wild and thoughtless youth. His ultimate recovery was slow, for the injuries he had received were very severe. As, in our economical system of housekeeping, we had few personal attendants, my mother and sisters were more constantly at the side of the sick stranger's couch than would otherwise, probably, have been the case; at the same time that it would have been contrary to our notions of hospitality to leave him much to the care of menials. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... were very dull. It was hard to get back into the way of working. I was glad when Jessica came home to set up our little establishment and to join in the autumn gayeties. Brainard brought his wife to the city soon after, and went to housekeeping in an odd sort of ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... Their housekeeping was of the simplest kind, but both of them were prime cooks and they set such an abundant table that even the boys with their ravenous appetites were completely satisfied. They even found a certain pleasure in the lack of some of the "trimmings," ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... am afraid—that is, I hope—he may find our housekeeping such as he can enjoy," she said, with an involuntary expression of surprise; for she had scarcely had a doubt that her husband would have preferred evading the visit of his fine friend, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... the last of Arthur Gride's bachelorship, found him in tiptop spirits and great glee. The bottle-green suit had been brushed, ready for the morrow. Peg Sliderskew had rendered the accounts of her past housekeeping; the eighteen-pence had been rigidly accounted for (she was never trusted with a larger sum at once, and the accounts were not usually balanced more than twice a day); every preparation had been made for the coming festival; and Arthur might ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... On the whole she did well, for the fowls had a free run on the common at the back of the house, and could thus pick up much for themselves. With the help of the poultry, and a good vegetable garden, Beatrice was able to make her small housekeeping allowance supply the needs of the family, but there were no luxuries at the Parsonage. The girls possessed few or none of the pretty trifles dear to their sex, their pocket money was scanty almost to vanishing point, and they had early learnt the stern lesson of "doing without ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... the sugar, thus clarified with blood, the glittering frosted-work of colonial splendor rose. A few great planters debauched the housekeeping of the whole island. Beneath were debts, distrust, shiftlessness, the rapacity of imported officials, the discontent of resident planters with the customs of the mother-country, the indifference of absentees, the cruel rage for making the most and the best sugar in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... secret would be divulged. Was this Grandmamma of whom M. Joyeuse stood in such fear such a terrible creature, pray? Mon Dieu, no! A little stern, that was all, with a sweet smile which promised instant pardon to every culprit. But M. Joyeuse was naturally cowardly and timid; twenty years of housekeeping with a masterful woman, "a person of gentle birth," had enslaved him forever, like those convicts who are subjected to surveillance for a certain period after their sentences have expired. And he was ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... dead about two years," began Evangelist again, speaking in a retrospective tone. "I had two little children, the elder not eight years old, and my sister was my housekeeper. She did not like housekeeping nor taking care of children. Some women don't. She came to me one day with a very serious face. 'Brother,' said she, 'you need a wife, you must have a wife. I do not know how to take care of your children and you are almost never at home.' She ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... more paper cash from her basket and flung them in the fire. Then, without further ado, she took up her basket, and with the same leisurely, rather heavy tread, walked away. The gods were duly propitiated, and like an old peasant woman in France, who has satisfactorily done her day's housekeeping, she went ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... residence with them in Allegheny City. A brother of my Uncle Hogan had built a small weaver's shop at the back end of a lot in Rebecca Street. This had a second story in which there were two rooms, and it was in these (free of rent, for my Aunt Aitken owned them) that my parents began housekeeping. My uncle soon gave up weaving and my father took his place and began making tablecloths, which he had not only to weave, but afterwards, acting as his own merchant, to travel and sell, as no dealers could be found to take them in quantity. He was ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... would like that. The place was not exactly pleasant; and the house accommodations did very well for me, but would not have been comfortable for you. So I have set up housekeeping in another locality. Do you know where ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... joke, and he isn't too handsome, although some people admire red hair; but, anyhow, I'm fond of him and he's fond of me, and some day—I don't know when—when we can scrape enough together, we are going to set up housekeeping." ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade

... was established in one of the furnished lodgings which stretch the whole length of the Lung' Arno on either hand, and abound in all the new streets approaching the Cascine, and had set up the simple and facile housekeeping of the sojourner in Florence for a few months; others had been living in the villa or the palace they ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... do all in my power to prevent such an extremity, which wou'd be essentially detrimental to all parties, but wou'd be more sensibly felt by our dear friend than by us. Provided that our expences in housekeeping do not encrease beyond measure (of which I must own I see some danger), I am willing to go on upon our present footing; but as I cannot expect to live many years, every moment to me is precious, & I hope I may be allow'd sometimes to be my own master, & pass my time according to my ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... made in Heaven, but most engagements are made in the back parlor with the gas so low that a fellow doesn't really get a square look at what he's taking. While a man doesn't see much of a girl's family when he's courting, he's apt to see a good deal of it when he's housekeeping; and while he doesn't marry his wife's father, there's nothing in the marriage vow to prevent the old man from borrowing money of him, and you can bet if he's old Job Dashkam he'll do it. A man can't pick his own mother, but he can pick his son's mother, and when he chooses a father-in-law who ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... but one story; he told it three times, and twice left out the point. Lord Mount-Primrose took sifted sugar with pate de foie gras and ate it with a spoon. Lord Garrick, talking a mixture of Scotch and English, urged his wife to give up housekeeping and take a flat in Gower Street, which, as he pointed out, was central. She could have her meals sent in to her and so avoid all trouble. The Lady Alexandra's behaviour appeared to Mrs. Loveredge not altogether ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... fretful, as the American housekeeper. The reasons for this state of things are legion; and, if in the beginning we take ground from which the whole field may be clearly surveyed, we may be able to secure a better understanding of what housekeeping means, and to guard against some of the ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... you oughtn't to be clerk," said the barber. "It's no place for a girl, anyway. Housekeeping is all right, but this clerking is ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... this money at once, as it may be some time, before I can dispose of the trinkets. She therefore brought it, little knowing that there was not a penny in hand, and that I had been able to advance only 4l. l5s. 5d. for housekeeping in the Boys'-Orphan-House, instead of the usual 10l.; little knowing also, that within a few days many pounds more will be needed. May my soul be greatly encouraged by this fresh token ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller

... the piratical figure of Cap'n Amazon shuffling around the store or puttering about certain duties of housekeeping that he insisted upon doing himself, with ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... the first time in the city's history, an efficient streetcleaning department. Theodore Roosevelt was appointed Police Commissioner. These men and their associates gave to New York a period of thrifty municipal housekeeping. ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... return." The kindest-hearted woman in the world, having thrown this drop of bitterness into her niece's cup, left her to drink it to the dregs. Meanwhile Orther Lom was dreaming that he could not do better than marry the Marjorie of his youth and begin housekeeping, in spite of ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... the spring of '86. Ever since her mother's death, two years before, the family had done "light housekeeping" in three rooms in St. Louis. This 212 West Laurence Avenue, Chicago, was to be her first home—this slab of a ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in appearance than many real men—and no wonder, for their heads took off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens

... said Emilie, "and I will see that they do not suffer from want of attendance. You cannot help them, do consent to leave all thought, all management, to those who can think and manage. May aunt Agnes come and nurse you, and attend to the housekeeping?" ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart

... do your duty in that state of life to which you are called," he went on: "occupy yourself with music and books and the details of housekeeping. No, don't have my study turned out," he added in haste, remembering how his advice about household details had been followed when last he gave it. "Don't be a discontented child. Go and cut out the nice little chemises." This seemed to him almost a touch of kindly ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... Therefore, housekeeping and entertaining should be simplified as much as possible, and the most unexpected of emergencies should be anticipated and provided for, as far as may be. Unless the country hostess is herself competent to cook and to tend the fires, she will never be safe ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... literal accuracy that one may read the future of a person by study of his handwriting, it is true that if a young man wishes to choose a wife in whose daily life he is sure always to find the unfinished task, the untidy mind and the syncopated housekeeping, he may do it quite simply by ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... that Ella ever had a weight on her mind in the way of housekeeping cares, but at the moment she was so absorbed in her hat-trimming that she paid no attention to ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells

... derived from fixed salaries." The sweat of the brow of New York all ran into the pockets of the farmers. Hone laid in a winter stock of butter at twenty-nine cents a pound. "In the course of thirty-four years housekeeping I have never buttered my bread at so extravagant a rate." In March, 1836, he recorded: "The market was higher this morning than I have ever known it. Beef, twenty-five cents; mutton and veal, fifteen to eighteen; small turkeys, one dollar and a ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... West, that night The days which followed were gloomy ones to them all, anxious and busy ones to Hope in particular, for upon her devolved the care of the housekeeping and much of the responsibility over Allyn and Phebe who was as fractious as never before and resented Hope's gentle rule. Two more letters came from the hospital; but they reported no change. Until Mrs. McAlister could reach her brother, they could ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... his good fortune nobly. He received thirty sous per day, and for a month he returned to his lodgings gay as a chaffinch, and affable toward his master. When the wind of adversity began to blow upon the housekeeping of the Rue des Fossoyeurs—that is to say, when the forty pistoles of King Louis XIII were consumed or nearly so—he commenced complaints which Athos thought nauseous, Porthos indecent, and Aramis ridiculous. Athos counseled ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... foreign adventures; and all the pleasing innocent amusements of my farm and my garden, my cattle and my family, which before entirely possessed me, were nothing to me, had no relish, and were like music to one that has no ear, or food to one that has no taste: in a word, I resolved to leave off housekeeping, let my farm, and return to London; and in a few months ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... organization, but gave effective help by suggestions that led to the establishment of the first Home for the Friendless, of which there are now seven in charge of the society. In 1854, Industrial schools were added. Cooking, housekeeping, kindergarten, and fresh-air work developed rapidly. There are now twelve industrial schools, where six thousand children are taught. The report of the first semi-annual meeting, held in Utica, N. Y., is in quaint contrast to the reports of the ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... before a certain time he was not sensible of its deficiency; he had no definite wishes or hopes for an increase to their circle, a re-modelling of their housekeeping. My mother was distantly related to him; she came on a visit to my grand-uncle with an elderly lady, who was also a connexion; she was a lively young girl then. My father often told her afterwards to what an incalculable degree her presence ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... purchase unnecessary delicacies, such as fish, only when they were cheap; to be well informed as to the price current of groceries and provisions, so as to buy when prices are low in anticipation of a rise,—all this housekeeping skill is in Paris essential to domestic economy. As Mathurine got good wages and many presents, she liked the house well enough to be glad to drive good bargains. And by this time Lisbeth had made her quite a match for herself, sufficiently experienced and trustworthy to be sent ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... set the tray on the table, "I thought, perhaps, if you looked at the teapot again,—it's a good while since you saw it,—you might like the pattern better; it makes beautiful tea, and there's a stand and everything; you might use it for every day, or else lay it by for Lucy when she goes to housekeeping. I should be so loath for 'em to buy it at the Golden Lion," said the poor woman, her heart swelling, and the tears coming,—"my teapot as I bought when I was married, and to think of its being scratched, and set before ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... long to get comfortably to housekeeping in a ready-made home; so it was soon understood in the neighborhood that the strangers were settled in their new residence, and might be supposed to be ready to ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... once stood at the side of the room, and there had been an oil stove in the place, and a shelf with some books, a chair, a trunk, and a few other odds and ends of primitive housekeeping. But now there was nothing. Every object had been cleaned out of the place and only the ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... and the drive up to the door was neatly raked. Inside Miss Goold's wants were ministered to by an eminently respectable man-servant, his wife who cooked, and a maid. The married couple were fixtures, and had been with Miss Goold since she started housekeeping. The maids varied. They never quarrelled with their mistress, but they found it impossible to live with their fellow-servants. Mr. and Mrs. Ginty were North of Ireland Protestants of the severest type. Ginty himself was a strong Orangeman, and his wife professed and enforced a strict ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... are taught to care for their rooms, and each one does her own laundry work. A certain amount of time, whether in the dining-room, halls, kitchen or laundry, is required. In this plan there are two objects; to aid the pupils in paying their school expenses and to teach them the arts of housekeeping. Each boy is required to give especial care to his room. A certain amount of work is also required of them. It consists of yard work, carrying mail, sweeping school buildings, attending to the ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various

... ain't had a comfortable spree since that young feller was here. He sort of upset Jock's stomach with his gab. The women, too, was considerable taken with him—he's the sort that makes fool women take notice. It ain't pleasant to think of that sissy-boy actually setting up housekeeping here, and reflecting upon old established ways, with any tommy-rot about clearing trails and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... uncertain relations to life as can be maintained by mothers-in-law, grandmothers, club secretaries, and presidents of town improvement societies. Remove all restrictions on woman's activity, and these strong matrons would vitalize our schools, give us decent municipal housekeeping, supervise the conditions under which girls and women work in shops and factories, and do much to clean up our politics. Debarred from direct power as they are, they are still making us ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... flung back over her shoulder as she drew the curtain over the closet that screened the housekeeping skeletons from the wonderful studio. "We won't have to resort to marriage, anyway. We've ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... McCrae replied. "They're in it one day and gone the next, a sort of catch-basin for all the rubbish of the city. I can recall when decent people lived there, and now it's all light housekeeping ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... housekeeping, you learn the extent of your treasures; Till he begins to reform, no one can number ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... of the Earl of Leicester, and sister of Algernon Sydney. She was born in 1620, and at the age of nineteen married Henry Lord Spencer, who was killed in the battle of Newbury in 1642. After her husband's death, she retired to Brington in Northamptonshire, until, wearied with the heavy load of housekeeping, she came to live with her father and mother at Penshurst. In the Earl of Leicester's journal, under date Thursday, July 8th, 1652, we find:—"My daughter Spencer was married to Sir Robert Smith at Penshurst, my wife being ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... American tournament for that afternoon, which we were both awfully keen about; then mother and father were coming home in the evening, after having been away a fortnight, and, though on the whole I had got on quite nicely with the housekeeping, it would be a relief to be able to consult mother again. Things have a knack of not going so smoothly when mothers are away, as I daresay ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... it is only vanity, narrowness and self-seeking, that spoil a good thing. Women would never be too good housekeepers for their own peace and that of others, if they considered housekeeping only as a means to an end. If their object were really the peace and joy of all concerned, they could bear to have their cups and saucers broken more easily than their tempers, and to have curtains ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... at Court until a comparatively late age. They were all taught to use their hands as well as their heads, and at Osborne, in the Swiss cottage, the boys worked at carpentering and gardening, while the girls were employed in learning cooking and housekeeping. Christmas was always celebrated in splendid fashion by the family, and the royal children were always encouraged to give as presents something which they had made with their own hands. Lessons in ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... and seeing the limited scale of the old man's housekeeping, he thought his chance for a supper was very slight. The old man had promised him something very delicate, and he seemed likely to keep his word. Maidwa looked on silently, and did not change his face any ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... hope so!" came the smiling reply. And we set to work. It all recalled the days of my childhood when I used to play at housekeeping and would measure out on the scales of my dolls' house so much rice, so much flour, so much macaroni, etc. I could hardly believe ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... now eleven o'clock in the morning. Alice enters her drawing-room. You see her: a tall, spare woman with kind eyes, who carries her arms stiffly. She has just finished her housekeeping, she puts down her basket of keys, and with all the beautiful movement of the young mother she takes up the crawling mass of white frock, kisses her son and settles his blue sash. And when she has talked to him for a few minutes ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... little save promises in return. It became evident that an imperial vicar would be obeyed even less than an emperor. Every week of delay was dangerous to Edward, who had exhausted his resources in the pompous pageantry of his Rhenish journey, and in magnificent housekeeping in Brabant. It was then Edward's interest, as it had previously been Philip's, to bring matters to a crisis. That he failed to do this must be ascribed to the lukewarmness of his allies, the poverty of his exchequer, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... three-legged chairs to see if they recalled any memories, a copper warming pan, a damaged foot stove that she thought she remembered, and a number of housekeeping utensils ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... plan," continued Helen. "But the other, and more important part is this. I am to undertake the housekeeping. Father says he would like Polly to help me a little, but the burden and responsibility of the whole thing rests on me. And also, girls, father says that there must be some one in absolute authority. There must be some one who can settle disputes, and keep things in order, and so he says that ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... fathers were." A wanderer indeed, and a transient guest on earth; but what of that, if he be God's guest? All that is sorrowful is drawn off from the thought when we realise our connection with God. We are in God's house; the host, not the guest, is responsible for the housekeeping. We need not feel life lonely if He be with us, nor its shortness sad. It is not a shadow, a dream, a breath, if it be rooted in Him. And thus the sick man has conquered his gloomy thoughts, even though he sees little before him but the end; and he is not ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... folding-doors.) Her sister Jane has been over to see her, and they've had a host of projects to talk over; part of 'em I get hold of and part of 'em I don't. Jane isn't married, but she's got some capital notions about housekeeping. Great on having things nice and handy inside, especially for doing the work, but she don't care much for the outside looks. So she hopes you will get out of the brick-yard as soon as possible. Of course, I shall read what you have to say whether they ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... home of our own, and I am trying to take kindly to housekeeping. Ernest is away a great deal more than I expected he would be. I am fearfully lonely. Aunty comes to see me as often as she can, and I go there almost every day, but that doesn't amount to much. As soon as I can venture ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... in my housekeeping," said my wife. "I think I am an economist. I mean to be one. All our expenses are on a modest scale, and yet I can see much that really is not strictly necessary; but if I compare myself with some of my neighbors, I feel as if I were hardly respectable. There is no subject on which all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... We have freely shed our blood for our own freedom; and we should not forget that, though charity begins at home, it need not end there. We should not interpret too strictly the maxims which admonish us to mind our own housekeeping, and to avoid entanglements with the quarrels or troubles of our neighbors. We should not say to the tide of our liberties, Thus far shalt thou go, and no further. America is not a geographical expression, and arbitrary geographical boundaries should ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... seemed not to occur to her. She had shown, as a girl, little fondness for society, nor had she seemed to regret it during the year they had spent in the country. He reflected, however, that he was sharing the common lot of husbands, who proverbially mistake the early ardors of housekeeping for a sign of settled domesticity. Alexa, at any rate, was refuting his theory as inconsiderately as a seedling defeats the gardener's expectations. An undefinable change had come over her. In one sense it was a happy one, since she ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton

... brick dwelling, set midway of an expressionless row and wearing on its front a look of desiccated gentility, stood in one of those forgotten streets where needy gentlewomen do "light housekeeping" in an obscure hinterland of respectability. Hill Street, which had once known fashion, and that only yesterday, as old ladies count, had sunk at last into a humble state of decay. Here and there the edges of porches had crumbled; grass was beginning to sprout ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... has given me some few sheets of the Nengone language, and also lent me her husband's MS. grammar. One letter, written ;, but pronounced a sort of rg in the throat, yet not like an ordinary guttural, she declares took two years to learn. You may fancy I have enough to do, and then all my housekeeping affairs take up a deal of time, for I not only have to order things, but to weigh them out, help to cut out and weigh the meat, &c., and am quite learned in the mysteries of the store-room, which to be sure is a curious place on board ship. I hope you ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... one by aligning herself with this latter minority. She declared, after her first call, that Miss Caroline was "a dear"; and after the second call, that she was "a poor dear," and she forthwith became of service to the newcomer in a thousand ways known only to the masonry of housekeeping. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... ends. As quickly as they found out, through education, what their local communities needed they were filled with a generous desire to supply those needs. In reality they simply learned from books and study how to apply their housekeeping lore to municipal government and the public school system. Nine-tenths of the work they have undertaken relates to children, the school, and the home. Some of it seemed radical in the beginning, but none of it has failed, in the long run, to win ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... Marquis. More than half of the money had been spent in buying off lawsuits; the lad's extravagance had squandered the rest. Of the Marquis' income of ten thousand livres, five thousand were necessary for the housekeeping; two thousand more represented Mlle. Armande's allowance (parsimonious though she was) and the Marquis' expenses. The handsome young heir-presumptive, therefore, had not a hundred louis to spend. And what sort of figure can a man make on two thousand livres? Victurnien's tailor's bills alone absorbed ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... lively and cheerful, spent under these circumstances very tedious days. Her little housekeeping was soon provided for. The good woman's mind, inwardly never unoccupied, wished to find an interest in something; and that which was nearest at hand was religion, which she embraced the more fondly as ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... house inartistic or disordered, I might be tempted to do so, but everything is so harmonious, so comfortable, so home-like, that I must serve a long apprenticeship before you should force the responsibility upon me. You know I have been a teacher; I must be gradually taught housekeeping, and in the meantime am to be your daughter ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... as an egg-shell. Did you notice how the marble floors shine! They are scrubbed and polished, and kept clean by the industrious women whom you see so gorgeously dressed now. These good ladies belong to the Akabir, or aristocracy of Tripoli, but they work most faithfully in their housekeeping duties. But alas, they can neither read nor write! And there is hardly a woman in this whole city of 16,000 people that can read or write! I once attended a company of invited guests at one of the wealthy houses in Tripoli, and there were thirty Tripolitan ladies ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... in housekeeping. Bountiful meals every day supplied his friends and factory. No man went from his door hungry or dissatisfied. When the colonists came up in their boats with goods, or walked the beach from the Cape to our settlement, Miguel ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... shakes, for a fact!" exclaimed the former, as he relieved Max of a part of his load; "I declare if you haven't fetched enough junk to fit us up in housekeeping for a year. And I guess the little old lady won't be sorry, either, because p'raps you've been and saved some of her property that would have gone floating down ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... said Anton, cheerily. "I am wonderfully hungry. And now let us consider how we shall manage our housekeeping. What we absolutely want we must get from the town; I will make a list at once. We will put out one ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... Mary is a dear girl, why should she not think of marrying?" replied her husband; "she is nineteen. Quite time, I think, she should learn housekeeping—something every young girl should know. We should hear of fewer divorces and a less number of failures of men in business, had their wives been trained before marriage to be good, thrifty, economical housekeepers ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... shape of a sugar-loaf, since that time the Ryhanlu have left off wearing it, but I remember to have seen a headdress of this kind during my stay with the Turkmans near Tarsus. The Turkman women are very laborious; besides the care of housekeeping, they work the tent coverings of goats hair, and the woollen carpets, which are inferior only to those of Persian manufacture. Their looms are of primitive simplicity; they do not make use of the shuttle, but pass the woof with their hands. They seem to have made ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... deeds of the ancient heroes of South Wales, I suppose, and the hospitality of the great men of the neighbourhood who receive you as an honoured guest at their tables. I'll bet a guinea that however clever a fellow you may be you never sang anything in praise of your landlord's housekeeping equal to what Dafydd Nanmor sang in praise of that of Ryce of Twyn ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... Husband Housekeeper, supplementing the information already published in The Daily Mail, reveals the system of housekeeping by enforcing which he saves pounds and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various

... wanted him because he reads his Bible, and old Margret because she had known his grandmother from childhood. That's why he was taken, and if he hadn't been taken, I'd be in a madhouse by now or lying in my grave. However, here is the housekeeping money and your pin money. You may give me ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... me that one so old and feeble should have no home, and so I persuaded him to settle down for one winter, at least, and hired him a little house in a pleasant street and started him in his housekeeping experiment. But alas! evil came of it, and I never did a deed I more profoundly regretted, for it led to the calamity I am about to tell you of, and brought upon the poor man the greatest grief that might befall ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... apt to be too great for the value of the material, and the work will now and then come in pieces for lack of being thoroughly finished; teachers who infuse brightness and quickness into their scholars, but whose instructions are more showy than solid. In their housekeeping they understand "putting the best foot foremost," and making a great deal of ornament where there may be but little of anything else; but they lack the practical skill that makes a housekeeper successful in the essentials that constitute comfort. ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... other specimens after the haphazard fashion of boys. The young naturalist sometimes met with unexpected difficulties. Once, for instance, he found a litter of young white mice, which he put in the ice-chest for safety. His mother came upon them, and, in the interest Of good housekeeping, she threw them away. When Theodore discovered it he flew into a tantrum and protested that what hurt him most was "the loss to Science! the loss to Science!" On another occasion Science suffered a loss of unknown extent owing to his obligation ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... you to join my list of regular customers.' And she kind of laughs like a Swiss bellringer's chime—the way she laughs; and she pretended she didn't understand. So I broadens out and says, 'I sold Rhody Kollander her first patent rocker the day she came to town to begin housekeeping with. I sold your pa and ma a patent gate before they had a fence. I sold Joe Calvin's woman her first apple corer, and I started Ahab Wright up in housekeeping by selling him a Peerless cooker. I've sold household necessities to every one of the Mrs. Sandses' and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... child was I—my one idea being ceaselessly to run about the fields and the woods and the garden. No one ever gave me a thought, for my father was always occupied with business affairs, and my mother with her housekeeping. Nor did any one ever give me any lessons—a circumstance for which I was not sorry. At earliest dawn I would hie me to a pond or a copse, or to a hay or a harvest field, where the sun could warm me, and I could ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... rather rich sauce. The Danish housewife prides herself on the latter, as her cooking abilities are often judged by the quality of her sauces. It is quite usual for the Danish ladies to spend some months in learning cooking and housekeeping in a large establishment to ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson

... bread and getting butter out of a glass jar. Dave had busied himself with opening two tins of meat. They had fresh meat, but the latter was to be used on the morrow when their housekeeping arrangements had been better made. For the present the meat and some other perishable articles of food rested on the ground outdoors, under an overturned box on which three large stones ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... children spent much time out-of- doors, gathering nuts and flowers in their season, and gaining that love of nature which stayed with them all their lives. As they grew older, they were sent to the district school, and were taught household tasks, Alice taking readily enough to housekeeping, while Phoebe became, even as a child, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... accommodation, would fill him with twofold astonishment, as interpreting equally the social valuation of the English merchant, and also the social valuation of the English servant; for, in the truest sense, England is the paradise of household servants. Liberal housekeeping, in fact, as extending itself to the meanest servants, and the disdain of petty parsimonies, are peculiar to England. And in this respect the families of English merchants, as a class, far outrun the scale of expenditure prevalent, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... formality or effort. How could it be otherwise? From the troop by the door or the roadside, eating their dinner from basket or pail or playing games, some predestined affinity drew away a boy and maid to the birchen bower, where with one mind they set up mimic housekeeping and forbade the entrance of strange children. There one cloak covered them both. Or they rambled hand in hand through the woods, or waded in the shallow water of Beaver brook down to the stone arch bridge ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... occasionally. The average attendance of fourteen girls has, however, been regular. Great pains has been taken to teach truthfulness, honesty and love for one another. Instruction is also given in needlework of various kinds, and other things, the knowledge of which is necessary for good housekeeping. The improvement made by some of the girls in this direction may at once be noticed by a change in the manner of doing nicely the little things which go to make up their lives. The school owes its existence to the care of Her Highness, who ...
— Clara A. Swain, M.D. • Mrs. Robert Hoskins

... had once spoken of, and to show her how to keep accounts, as I had once promised I would. I brought the volume with me on my next visit (I got it prettily bound, first, to make it look less dry and more inviting), and showed her an old housekeeping book of my aunt's, and gave her a set of tablets, and a pretty little pencil-case, and a box of leads, ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... dwelt in his own castle of Nebbegaard. Poor he was then, and poor, I suppose, he is still in all but love and the favour of God; but in those days the love was but an old servant's (to wit, my own), and the favour of God not evident, but the poverty, on the other hand, bitterly apparent in all our housekeeping. We lived alone, with a handful of servants—sometimes as few as three—in the castle which stands between the sandhills and the woods, as you sail into Veile Fiord. All these woods, as far away as to Rosenvold, ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... encouraged thrift, except that branch of it which got into his food. He did not call that thrift, he called it bad housekeeping. But for the thrift which, like moth, penetrated into Mrs. Wilkins's clothes and spoilt them, he had much praise. "You never know," he said, "when there will be a rainy day, and you may be very glad to find you have a nest-egg. Indeed ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... that!" Mother wasn't going and Flora was glad mother wasn't going. She would have a much better time with father. Father had decided everything. He had decided that mother couldn't leave him in the rectory with all the housekeeping to look after, and the change would do him good, and Aunt Belle would be able to help with the shopping. They were going to see some theatres and all kinds of things and were going to have a most splendid time and then, soon afterwards—India! "Oh I ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... now exert myself to perform all my duties well; but, ah! how pleasant it will be when the little Louise is sufficiently grown up, that I may lay part of the housekeeping burdens on her shoulders. I fancy to myself that she will have peculiar pleasure in all ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer



Words linked to "Housekeeping" :   work, housekeep



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