All possess an equal amount of capital as regards time. There are only twenty-four hours of sixty minutes each in any one's day; yet there are those who accomplish far more than others in a day, because they squander less time, or make more advantageous use of it.

In order to learn how to economize one's time, it is necessary first to take an inventory of the use usually made of it. Keeping as careful an account of the expenditure of time as one does of money will readily serve to show the points at which retrenchment may be made.

"Sorting over" the work to be done and planning ahead for its achievement is a great help toward economy of time. To take a few minutes the evening previous or early in the morning to think over the day's work, and formulate some practical plan for its accomplishment, will prevent much of the careless loitering on the one hand, and the aimless bustle and flurry on the other, by which time is so often wasted.

In some households time is wasted in superfluous work; in others, it is worse than thrown away in idle gossip; and sometimes an entire day is devoted to little, unimportant things which ought to have been sandwiched in between the larger duties of life. Both time and strength are dissipated through want of method. Twice the amount of energy is expended by the unsystematic worker than would be needed for the same work by one who has mastered the art of so managing that the different duties of the day overlap and fit into each other.

Without system, one may work almost to the point of exhaustion, and yet accomplish almost nothing, and then wonder, like the man jumping in and out of a bucket all day, "why a body don't get on far when he's kept agoing all day." Keeping things in order saves a great deal of time. A place for everything and everything in its place should be the rule in every home. Let shelves, drawers, cupboards, and closets each have its own appointed contents, which, when used, shall be returned with careful order. It takes no more time nor trouble to put things away at first in their right place than to lay them aside in some wrong place; while it does take time which soon accumulates into wasted hours and days to hunt for mislaid articles, and "straighten up" disordered receptacles.

The too common practise of taking what appears the easiest course at the moment, letting things go just as they happen, till there is a general clearing-up time, is in the end a waste of both time and strength. Such spasmodic renovations avail but little. Orderly, systematic work is the great time-saver in housekeeping, as in every other vocation in life.

A written program, of which the following is suggestive, of the order in which the regular daily work is to be done, kept where it will serve as a constant reminder, will greatly aid in the establishment of habits of method in one's work: