Vintage Housekeeping Schedules

New Member. Joined : 17 Mar 2008 Posts : 11 Name : Bethany

I'm a 1940s fanatic and recently came across a housekeeping schedule in a manual published in 1947 by Good Housekeeping. I want to try keeping it as a kind of experiment, but there is just so much work packed into each and every weekday! I'm not a Vintage HouseKeeper, rather a Vintage Bachelor Girl --- so I've always tended to lump all my housecleaning into Saturdays and Sundays --- the polar opposite of this 1947 schedule. Here's a Monday, for example. Monday's a big marketing/kitchen kinda day:

Clean up bedroom:
Hang up night clothes and put away slippers. Make bed. Straighten up bureau, chest of drawers and vanity top. Dust if necessary.

Clean kitchen up after breakfast:
Remove dishes from table and scrape. Put away perishables. Clear away waste. Clean sink. Wash, dry, and put away dishes.

Clean up bathroom:
Replace soiled towels in bathroom with clean ones. Wash bathroom basin and faucets with cleanser and sponge. Clean shower stall and spread out curtain to dry.

Check staple supplies.

Plan meals for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Market and put food away.

Wash, trim, and refrigerate vegetables.

Clean kitchen up after lunch:
Remove dishes from table and scrape. Put away perishables. Clear away waste. Clean sink. Wash, dry, and put away dishes.

Clean kitchen:
Clean range. Wash and air vegetable bins. Clean and wash one or two
cupboards, cabinets, or drawers (rotating weekly). Wash garbage can with soap and hot water. Clean soil and fingerprints from woodwork, cabinets, and walls behind sink and range. Wash floor. Dust lighting fixtures. Wash if necessary.

Clean kitchen up after supper:
Remove dishes from table and scrape. Put away perishables. Clear away waste. Clean sink. Wash, dry, and put away dishes. Sweep kitchen floor. Empty garbage if necessary.

Clean up living room:
Collect and discard rubbish. Dust furniture and lamps. Plump up pillows. Stack magazines and neaten room. Use carpet sweeper or vacuum cleaner.

Does anyone out there have any alternative housekeeping schedules from vintage books or magazines that they'd be willing to share? I wonder if there are any period schedules out there designed for the
gal-working-outside-the-home, like a women holding down a war job or doing full-time volunteer work outside the home. How might she be able to keep house to vintage standards?

Thank you!

Bethany in Tucson, AZ
http://homefront.yuku.com --- A Home Online for Fans of Homefront and All Things '40s!

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:32 pm

Erm, sounds like an average day to me.......!!!

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:12 pm

Your right Sasha. It doesn't look all that different from today's housekeeping schedules! The difference would be we have a plethora of labour saving devices.

You know what's missing off that schedule? The laundry. Thats ominous in itself!

And hi Bethany! Welcome to Brocante.
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New Member. Joined : 17 Mar 2008 Posts : 11 Name : Bethany

Not to fear! The 1947 schedule includes plenty of laundry on Tuesdays on Thursdays... Here's the plan for Tuesday and Wednesday:

TUESDAY

Clean up bedroom:
Hang up night clothes and put away slippers. Make bed. Straighten up bureau, chest of drawers and vanity top. Dust if necessary.

Clean kitchen up after breakfast:
Remove dishes from table and scrape. Put away perishables. Clear away waste. Clean sink. Wash, dry, and put away dishes.

Clean up bathroom:
Replace soiled towels in bathroom with clean ones. Wash bathroom basin and faucets with cleanser and sponge. Clean bathtub and spread out curtain to dry.

Launder clothing and linens that need ironing:
Sort wash. Soak, hand wash, and air dry as necessary.

Clean kitchen up after lunch:
Remove dishes from table and scrape. Put away perishables. Clear away waste. Clean sink. Wash, dry, and put away dishes.

Iron clothing and linens laundered in morning:

Dampen as necessary.

Mend rips, holes, or tears in clothing and linens laundered in morning.

Put away clean clothing and linens.

Clean kitchen up after supper:
Remove dishes from table and scrape. Put away perishables. Clear away waste. Clean sink. Wash, dry, and put away dishes. Sweep kitchen floor. Empty garbage if necessary.

Clean up living room and hallway:
Collect and discard rubbish. Dust furniture and lamps. Plump up pillows. Stack magazines and neaten room. Use carpet sweeper or vacuum cleaner.

WEDNESDAY

Clean up bedroom:
Hang up night clothes and put away slippers. Make bed. Straighten up bureau, chest of drawers and vanity top. Dust if necessary.

Clean kitchen up after breakfast:
Remove dishes from table and scrape. Put away perishables. Clear away waste. Clean sink. Wash, dry, and put away dishes.

Clean up bathroom:
Replace soiled towels in bathroom with clean ones. Wash bathroom basin and faucets with cleanser and sponge. Clean bathtub and spread out curtain to dry.

Clean bedrooms:
Dust and polish bureau, chest of drawers and vanity. Remove linen for laundering if necessary. Dust mirror, pictures, lighting fixtures and lamps. Wash if necessary. Dust radiator covers and radiators. Clean soil from window sills and areas around door knobs if necessary. Vacuum carpet. Clean closet. Empty waste basket.

Clean kitchen up after lunch:
Remove dishes from table and scrape. Put away perishables. Clear away waste. Clean sink. Wash, dry, and put away dishes.

Polish silver or other metals.

Clean bathroom:
Clean medicine cabinet, removing unnecessary items. Use special cleanser in toilet bowl. Sweep and wash floor. Wash mirrors. Replace towels, rugs and bath mats with clean ones.

Clean kitchen up after supper:
Remove dishes from table and scrape. Put away perishables. Clear away waste. Clean sink. Wash, dry, and put away dishes. Sweep kitchen floor. Empty garbage if necessary.

Clean up living room and hallway:
Collect and discard rubbish. Dust furniture and lamps. Plump up pillows. Stack magazines and neaten room. Use carpet sweeper or vacuum cleaner.

Bethany
http://homefront.yuku.com
--- A Home Online for Fans of Homefront and All Things '40s!

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 3:21 am

Is it just me or....
I don't mind doing it but reading it makes it seem like a whole lot more. I'm tired.

Welcome Bethany

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:31 am

OMG!!

Yep...I reckon reading it does make it all the more tiring!!!
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Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:33 am

Hi Bethany, a girl after my own heart! I collect vintage housekeeping manuals and I'm unusual in that I lose interest in the brightly-coloured kitschy pretty 1950s just when most people pick up interest!

The bad news is that, from the WW2 journals and Mass Observation diaries of working women that I've read, they really DID do this amount of housework, they simply worked it around their jobs...!
There are plenty fo references to the problems of finding somewhere clean to hang washing to dry indoors after bombing raids have filled the place with dirt and dust after half the ceiling came in. And many people cleaned the floors, dusted and so on every single day!

The big difference that people forget though is... most single working women in the cities in WW2/ the Austerity years had only one room and very few possessions.

If you read lists of possessions of those killed by bombs, it is sobering in our buy-buy-buy cultures (here in Britain just like in the US!). Imagine a secretary in her 30s, single, living in a bed-sitting room with a gas-burner to cook on. Her clothes are likely to be something like: 2 skirts, 1 coat, 1 jacket, 2-3 cardigans, 1-2 jumpers, 1-2 blouses, 1-2 pairs of shoes, 3-4 pairs of knit stockings at most, and 3-4 pair of knickers, 1 brassiere or foundation garment.

Now realistically you wouldn't wear half of that each week, so your weekly washing would be the stockings, the knickers, the blouses and that would not take the hours that we spend on our modern vast wardrobes!

As for cleaning, a single woman in her one room would probably do some every night and keep it clean that way. But it would usually be kept clean, no matter how poor, how hard-worked, how bomb-damaged.
My Gran remembered seeing a neighbour scrubbing her doorstep clean despite the fact that not one of the windows had any glass in and the garden was strewn with bomb-rubble from a near-hit the night before (Southampton).

It was different for single women who worked, mainly because they rarely had houses, only a bed-sit. Many lived in lodgings or in 'women's clubs' which simplified things further as their meals were supplied.

Hope that helps!

I do have some wartime magazines, 'Housewife' and suchlike, but mostly they didn't publish housekeeping schedules because it wasn't really feasible to suggest routines that would fit across the country (Edinburgh had three bombs outside the city in the whole war; Glasgow's Clydeside had only seven houses out of twelve thousand that did NOT have bomb damage).
Most of the advice published during the war was to do with clothing and cooking, the big problems.

laura

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:35 am

One thing I should do is to see what my GH manual says - I'm guessing you're quoting the USA copy? I have the Australian copy from the very same 1947! It would be interesting to see any differences...

laura
(not in Australia; in Edinburgh Scotland, but I picke dit up in a second-hand shop...)

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:59 am

I love vintage and retro and mourn the loss of some of the values and ethics of those eras, but frankly I'm not sure I'd want to wake up tomorrow and find I have to actually live in them!

Where do you find these manuals? I do well to find the odd copy of Harper's Bazaar and Housewife on eBay and the prices are extortionate!
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Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 10:48 am

Firstly - Hi Bethany! Welcome! It looks like you've found your spiritual 'home' here!

This is a fascinating one to debate!

I agree that it does look exhausting seeing it written in black and white, but I really do think we all do all these things every day, and probably more, without even thinking. For instance, you naturally wipe over the surfaces and clear away plates after meals, empty bins as they're full etc - without a second thought. I agree with Laura too, that jobs would have been little but often and things kept on top of, with less of everything to clean and cope with and smaller homes maybe to maintain. I single handedly have to clean, tidy and maintain a 4 bedroom house, with 3 people, 2 cats, a summer house and a fair size garden - oh, and the D.I.Y too! A two up/two down would be half as much work - literally! Maybe a woman in my position then would have been considered fairly well off, and would have had a cleaner? These days, this is an average family home. It always fascinates me how, when I watch old films, like Doris Day films or something, the Doris Day character may have no children, and no job, but she still has a cook/housekeeper/cleaner type person around! Even silly things like the increased number of electrical equipment and appliances these days attract more dust (why does my TV ALWAYS have a dust circle in the middle of the screen, even though I wipe it EVERY DAY??!!).

And where is there provision for school runs, helping at school, helping with homework after school, ferrying children to various clubs and activities.....?? These in themselves take up quite a lot of time out of an average day. I guess, again, if during the war children may not have been around (if they were evacuated, and Mum was working) and clubs and possibly activities simply didn't happen?! And yes - laundry loads now are never ending, what with school uniforms daily, work clothes daily, change of casual gear, sports kits and club/activity wear (ie: karate suits). I'd love to just have to rinse through my '4/5 pairs of knickers' a week!! We simply would not expect our children to wear the same set of uniform every day for the whole school year, or until it fell apart - which was probably the case then. Between my husband and daughter ther are 10/12 shirts a week to wash and iron alone!

In those days too, shopping for provisions would have been fairly basic (my Mum had a copy of her Mother's hand written weekly food shopping list, and it never wavered week in, week out, and was only for what they needed, no more, no less) and easily bought for from small local shops that were probably within walking distance, on a daily basis as needed.

Fast forward 50 odd years, when small local grocers no longer exist (a travesty) and so your option is maybe a drive away to a large supermarket, where you make the journey worth making by doing a 'big shop'. This can take two hours out of your day alone, what with parking, shoppping, queueing at the till, loading up and then unloading and unpacking at home. Phew! We do have internet shopping now I know, but it is no new phenomenon - in fact, my Grandmother's life was made easier by the fact that nearly every local supplier delivered in the old days - milk, bread, fish, meat, newspapers/magazines and the good old Co-Op would have a bike delivery boy for groceries!

And, don't forget, those days of 9-5 jobs are no longer a reality. Longer working hours and high paced, more demanding jobs - for both men and women - make planning neatly round cooking a meal for dinner for everyone being at the table for 5.30 every day simply doesn't often happen - let alone the housework/maintenance. I am often planning and cooking for two different meal times according to when people are home from school/work/in and out at clubs etc.

In a nutshell, I would love to follow the 1940's housewife's schedule! Oh to start my day with 'hanging up nightclothes and putting away slippers' (as apposed to waking daughter who doesn't want to be woken, trying to shower, gee-up daughter to do same, dress, look presentable, make packed lunch, feed cats, de-poo litter tray, make and clear up breakfast and drive to school all before 8.30am!!!) Bliss!

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 2:34 pm

My vintage housekeeping manuals are from jumble sales and charity shops over the years but based originally on what I inherited from both grandmothers - the oldest is my great-grandmother's cookery book handwritten starting in 1904!

As for children... my Gran was almost a single parent in the war because although my Grandaddy wasn't in the Services his reserved-occupation was exceptionally long hours. She used to take my Dad to his prep school on foot, with my then-a-baby uncle in a child-seat on her bicycle which she wheeled. After Dad was safely in school, she and my uncle pedalled off to do the shopping (done daily), then home and the whole of the rest of the day spent housekeeping til they went off to fetch Dad from school.

One other thing - women simply didn't stop during daytime. Most women considered it 'wrong' to read in daylight for example - it showed that you were a poor manager if your house wasn't clean and tidy and clothes mended and washed and meals freshly-cooked and as appetising as mashed-parsnip with banana-flavouring pretending to be marzipan is ever going to be! ;-)
So if you think of the day as being a 9-5 full-time job. Well, if you had a 4-bedroom B&B and employed someone trained and experienced as a cleaner, she could easily clean the bedrooms and bathrooms and stairs and living rooms and so on in an 8-hour day. Only these days you'd employ two people for four hours, maybe.
But they did their sitting in the evenings and always with mending or needlework - the devil finds work for idle hands, as my Gran always told me!
I think we have lost the habit of keeping on going non-stop - and probably that's a good thing!!!!
But not only did they work a full 8-hour day, they were VERY well-taught, in a way we simply aren't these days. Everything was done in a routine, so you never had to wait for something to finish. Washing was done (in Britain anyway) on a Monday because you had more strength after the Sunday rest and in between the stages of laundry the housewife would be cooking, baking, mending, child-minding...

Another thing, as mentioned above, yes, pretty well anyone who could afford it had paid domestics. It wasn't something that only the wealthy had - even if it was only someone coming in twice a week to do the heavy cleaning, the floor-scrubbing and so on. Most middle-class housewives would have had a live-in, not necessarily a maid but often a 'companion' whose job included some light housework. Remember there was a generation from the 1914-18 war of unmarried women, trained for nothing but marriage whose fiances or husbands were killed. Those 'spare women' were often thrown into total poverty, malnourished and freezing in one unheated room living on weak tea and one slice of bread a day, and a job as a 'companion' was a godsend - often they were well-educated, well-read, well-travelled women who simply were surplus to the job-market's requirements - about a million of them probably. So living with relatives or an advertised post... it gave help with housework and babysitting and so on, and it gave a home to the 'surplus women'.

My Gran never had a live-in servant of any kind, but had a woman come in twice-weekly to 'do' as the saying went. My other Grandmother was more likely to have been the servant but was proud of being bright enough to have got into a shop when everyone else went into service in the midst of the Depression in a colliery district. My Nana would never have scrubbed for any but her own, and she saw the war out with her toddler daughter (my Mum) back in County Durham helping her mum and sisters keep the home fires burning for the extended family together.

laura

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 2:59 pm

"I think we have lost the habit of keeping on going non-stop - and probably that's a good thing!!!!"

You must be kidding. I think back to my days as a working mother and you want non-stop, that was it. I did 8-10 hours at the office and came home to start my second job. I often didn't get to stop til I went to bed.

There's a reason your supposed to have children when your young. Its the only time you have the energy reserves to do non-stop!

Economically things were very different in the era we're talking about. The cost of living was nothing like what its become today. We had much less choice as consumers. In fact I don't think the word "consumer" even existed then. There was always someone poorer than you who needed the income and was available for all sorts. The benefit system of the day, what there was of it, was limited and often harsh.

Women's lives began to improve when they had access to the same opportunities for education and employment as men did. Before that you were limited by both class, marketable skills and most of all, Society's attitudes. In some cases marriage was all the choice you had. And some women endured bad marriages for no reason other than financial dependance. The life of a woman with dependant children and an inadequate or unreliable income, could be dire.

The advent of cheap, available birth control can't be overlooked either. Until the early part of the 20th century, perhaps even a decade or two ahead of that, the graveyards were littered with the burial sites of first, second and in some cases, third wives who had died during pregnancy or from complications post natally.

We live longer, healthier lives for the simple fact that we no longer are open to the same health hazards we once were. Regardless of income.

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New Member. Joined : 17 Mar 2008 Posts : 11 Name : Bethany

First, thank you all for the warm welcome!

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:53 pm

I think you'll find most housewives and mother's still do non-stop these days Laura! A paid cleaner may be easily able to clean a whole 4 bedroom property in one day, but that would be ALL she would have to concentrate on - not washing, ironing, shopping, meal planning and cooking, DIY, gardening, taking care of other family members and errands, chauffeuring kids etc etc! And forget 9-5 - my working day starts from when I wake at 7am and often doesn't finish until I go to bed at 10pm (often still emptying tumble dryer, or loading dishwasher, tidying up before retiring to bed etc) cos I'm knackered! Those hours, as Ali points out, were increased when I also worked and had to get me and my daughter to my job for an 8am start (ducked out to take her into school for 9am) then was still up doing either household jobs (the same stuff still needs doing) or paperwork for my qualification and job, often until 2am!!

So to clarify, I work all day in the house and for my family, I don't 'read in daylight' (barely get a few sentences at bedtime before falling asleep!) or have any hobbies/clubs to go to etc in the day, I do everything myself, including DIY, gardening etc, my husband works even longer hours and is often away, leaving me as single parent as well - and I don't have any paid help - I got the raw end of the deal somewhere!!!

Subject: Re: Vintage Housekeeping Schedules Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:34 pm

I don't work non-stop, but that's mainly because of the huge lazy bone in my hind quarters. LOL

Seriously though, some days when I was working outside the home, it was all I could do to get supper on the table and have any energy left to do anything else.

If I truly kept up the house like I "should" I would be going non-stop as well.