Six Lessons in Charm for Your Home

Ladies, are you tired of your husbands staying out all night like a tom cat when they should be spending the evening settled down with the family? Think a lovely, well-appointed home, beautiful children, and an adoring wife who caters to his every whim is enough to please a man? Think again. Be sure you've done everything possible to keep Hubby comfortable as King of his castle. After all, where would you and the children be without him? On the streets, that's where.

From Better Homes and Gardens, April 1941:

"It's not the big decorating crimes but the insidious little blunders that play hob with folks' comfort and a home's good looks... If your house is beginning to bore you--if it seems to have lost some of its youth and sparkle, some of its dash and 'wumph,' why not treat it to a short course in 'How to Be Charming and Popular?' . . . The six 'lessons' here, illustrated with the cooperation of Barker Brothers, Los Angeles, suggest a few of the places in which homes sometimes can stand improvement--with Howard Beebe and I demonstrating (most dramatically, don't you think?) some of the more insidious crimes of decoration that frequently are innocently committed even in the best of homes!"

(Click on any of the images to get a closer look at the text.)

"Decoratively, too, it's a mistake for spotty little rugs to pinch-hit for a nice broad expanse of carpeting in the front hall."


"How to start the day wrong--and I should know, for I'm the gal who's trying it."

"'How to win a husband and keep him home in the evenings by catering to him' is the title of this heart-warming scene..."

"A table behind a sofa isn't incorrect, but it doesn't take the place of smaller tables when a cigaret (sic) is giving the hot-finger."

"Here are grounds for divorce! Can't blame Hubby if he seldom settles down for an evening with the family if he's expected to do it in a set-up like this."

"Wall space can be a problem child and come to a bad end like this. There are solutions."