Where economy of space must be practiced, storehouse and pantry may be
combined, and nursery and sewing-room; and one of the family bedrooms
may be devoted to the use of the occasional guest. The hall may be
thrown into the parlor. The parlor may be properly converted into a
library and music room, although when the father is of retiring literary
tastes, he should have a "den" of his own, where he may read and smoke
in peace.

The parlor is too often wasted space in a house. As the "best room,"
and very often the largest room, it is reserved for reception of guests,
weddings, and funerals, and at other times shut up in gloomy grandeur
from the family, except, perhaps, as the place of banishment for a
naughty child. Except when used as a library and music room, it should
be one of the smallest in the house, and may, indeed, be entirely
dispensed with. The family living-room is not an improper place in
which to receive a guest, especially one whom it is desired should
"feel at home."

Of the rooms for the family, the nursery is the best to dispense with,
the very young children being kept under the mother's oversight in her
sewing-room, or the attic, or a loft in an out-building being fitted up
for the elder ones as a play-room. In the case of the loft, it is well
to equip it as a simple gymnasium.

It is mistaken economy to use the living-room as a dining-room, since
this interferes with the orderly work of the house, no less than with
the comfort of the family. It may with propriety, however, be made also
the sewing-room, and, in general, the mother's managerial office. Here
she should keep her desk and her household account-books, and meet the