Probably the first consideration in selection is likely to be whether the home is to be permanent or merely temporary.  When the occupation is likely to be permanent, the greatest comfort and well-being will usually result from establishing early a permanent home; and this involves a long look ahead to justify the selection of a site.  Not only must health and convenience be considered, but future questions relative to the expanding requirements of the homemakers and to the education and proper upbringing of a family as well.  Then, too, young people must usually begin modestly from a financial standpoint, and they are therefore cut off from certain locations which they may perhaps desire and which they might hope to attain in later years.  In the country, where the livelihood is often gained directly from the land, a new element enters into selection and must to some extent take precedence over others.  Soil considerations aside, however, we have health, beauty, social environment, educational advantages, and expense to consider; and we should establish certain standards in these directions for our young people to measure by.

Considerations of health must include not only climatic conditions, but questions of drainage, water supply, time and comfort of transportation to work, and the sanitary condition of the neighborhood.

Prospective homemakers must learn, too, the value of reposeful surroundings and of some degree of natural beauty.  They must recognize the value also of desirable social environment—­that is, of such moral and intellectual surroundings as will be uplifting for the homemakers and safe for the future family.  They will, it is hoped, learn that a merely fashionable neighborhood is not necessarily a desirable environment.  The church, the school, the library, and proper recreation centers are also to be considered in one’s social outlook.  They are all distinctly worth paying for, as also is a good road.

With the site selected, the great problem of building next confronts the homemaker.  Here again the principles of selection should be sufficiently known to young people, boys and girls alike, to save them from the mistakes so commonly made and frequently so regretted.

The people who can afford to employ an architect to design their homes are in a decided minority, and the only way to insure good houses for the less well-to-do majority is to see that the less well-to-do do not grow up without instruction as to what good houses are.  The great tendency of the day in building is fortunately toward increased simplicity and toward a quality which we may call “livableness.”  This tendency we shall do well to fix in our teaching.

In general, the good house is plain, substantial, convenient, and suited to its surroundings.  Efficient housekeeping is largely conditioned by such very practical details as closets and pantries, the relative positions of sink and stove, the height of work tables and shelves, the distance from range to dining table, the ease or difficulty of cleaning woodwork, laundry facilities, and the like.  Housekeeping is made up of accumulated details of work, and adequate preparation for comfort in working can be made only when the house is in process of construction.