Homemaking in the New Old-Fashioned Way

 

I was inspired this morning by reading a post by Jennifer at Elephantz.  She mentioned a memory of her Nan using a Millet broom to sweep the floors and how she herself went off on a search for one.

My mind went beyond the broom and on to looking at how homemaking looks in my home, and what I remember it looking like in my grandmothers' homes.  In fact, I'll reach back just a wee bit further to my great grandmothers' homes because I knew two of them and had them in my life until my teens (Grandmama S.) and well into my 20's (Big Mama).  Granny nor Grandmother were 'thoroughly modern' the way Mama was.  Yet all five women had one thing in common: they each kept a neat and clean home that was always company ready.

Now I have to say that Mama was a better surface homemaker than Granny.  And I'm better under the surface than Mama ever thought about being...but none of us three live up to the standard that Grandmother or the great grandmothers set.  Not one of us.

Well, my home looks neat enough.  But lately I've been looking at it with a more critical eye.  There's always something that isn't quite as it ought to be.  I wondered, what is the difference in the way I keep home and the way they kept home?  I realized that it was because they kept house in the old fashioned way.

It wasn't just about what broom they might have used, nor just what their era of homemaking looked like.  They just kept house differently period and a lot of that had to do with their mindset.  I thought I'd make out a list to see how my homemaking parallelled theirs and how I might do mine a little differently. 

1. Keeping House was their JOB.  When I was a new homemaker, I really did think housekeeping was something that I could do as I felt like it.  It was a huge struggle later when I had children, and more and more need to do things like laundry and tidying and cleaning on a more regular basis that I realized that housekeeping was made harder by my attitude.  I tended to clean in big bursts.  And when I cleaned, I'd waste hours on the minutia of cleaning drawers and grout and baseboards because it had been so neglected that it ALL had to be done.  Of course, I was exhausted after one of those bouts and I'd let it slide all over again.  That was a pattern I kept up for a long time.

Then I got a full-time job outside the home and the house suffered for it even more than my previously neglectful way of homemaking.  Cleaning was relegated to the need (oh gracious company is coming!) or the odd day off. 

When I came home later to be a full-time homemaker, I'd made up my mind that my home was my full-time job.  And boy did I work!  First, I had to catch up from all those years of get by homemaking, though I'd been better in the latter part of working outside the home.  There were still lots of jobs that I'd not had time or energy to even think of tackling.   

I wish I'd realized earlier in life that housekeeping isn't optional.  It is a job and it deserves the sort of attention one would expect to give any other job in life.

2. They had the right tools to work with.  Tools are the 'trick of the trade' aren't they?  No matter what era you might live in, homemaking can be more difficult or easier based on the tools you have.  Some tools, like washers and dryers and electric/gas stoves and hot water heaters, (and running water for that matter) made life a lot easier for every homemaker.  Some tools: brooms, sponges, cleaning cloths, soaps and cleansers may have changed materials or contents that may make work a bit easier but still require one main tool that we all forget.  It's called elbow grease.  Seriously, our labor is the most important tool of all when it comes to homemaking, and you'd better believe our great grandmothers and grandmothers had that in plenty!

3.They had a routine.  Their routines might have looked different than mine, but jobs were assigned a place in the week.    For Big Mama and Grandma, that routine was more of the truly old-fashioned sort: Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Baking on Saturday and all the other tasks fell in between.   It was necessary for them to do things in this way because they both began housekeeping in an era when washing was done with washboard, wringer, wash and rinse pots, an open fire, and clotheslines.  It was truly an all-day task and therefore it was done once a week and only once a week.   Even when they had the wringer type washing machines, it was detailed and involved having to add wash and rinse waters, and then wringing out the clothing in order to hang.  

I'm grateful for the modern-day convenience of an automatic washing machine.  It's a matter of minutes in my day to run a load of wash.  I don't have to set aside a whole day for just the one task.  I do relegate my sheets and towels to one day, though. 

Another time saver I'm grateful for: the dryer (though we only use it about 50% of the time), and the advent of permanent-press clothing (little to no need to iron anything except 100% cotton clothing).

However, I do adhere to a routine.   Sundays after church, I like to sort out the fridge so I can plan leftovers or items that need to be used into the week's meal plans.  On Mondays I re-set my home after a weekend of less housework. I bake on Friday (the same day I do my heavy washing).  This is the day I do some heavier housekeeping.  I will clean bathrooms and vacuum floors and change sheets. 

I want to add further to my routine.  I don't keep my floors clean the way my grandmothers did.  I don't always sweep every day, especially the kitchen and entries and porches and I really ought to.  My grandmothers all had a set day to mop floors.  I don't mop once a week and I really do want to do that.  I'd like to dust weekly, a task I loathe doing but which would improve the overall look of my home, and which frankly would only take a few minutes more to do.   If I incorporated these things into my routine, then I could truly use the Zone work I do for deeper cleaning tasks and less for catching up on things I missed throughout the month!  That would certainly result in a cleaner home.     

I might not vacuum every single day but here of late we're not vacuuming nearly enough.  And I do say 'we' because generally it's John who does the laundry and the vacuuming, by choice, not by my demand.  We definitely need to be doing it a little more often.

4. They utilized help.  While I don't recall anyone in my family having a maid or servants, they did use what they had: husbands and children.  Husbands understood there were lots of heavier tasks they could do to ease the homemaker's way.   Children were truly 'trained up in the way they should go', too. Everyone chipped in and helped.   My brothers and I were trained to help as well.  I wanted my kids to help a bit around the house, but John came into our lives and said, "That division of labor is unfair...Everyone can help you a lot more," and then he saw to it that everyone understood their jobs, and everyone did them.

There came a time in my life when I had no further help aside from John.  Children leave home...and come back I've found, but that's another story!   But I have a vacuum which makes cleaning carpets easy peasy.  And an automatic washing machine, a slow cooker, a mixer, a bread machine, a gas stove, an electric fridge, and a clothes dryer.  I'm grateful for each appliance that saves me time and is such a help.  Laine always called these 'maidservants' and they are!   

Yes, homemaking still takes labor and effort.   So far, there are no machines that will automatically mop or dust or clean bathroom fixtures, but the other items save enough time that I can easily concentrate on those that take effort.

5.  They kept home seasonally.  This one can be divided into two separate but equally true facts.

(a)I said I wanted to keep a neat and tidy house. Even so, I don't always keep up, especially if I have a small child underfoot.  For one thing, children are not naturally tidy.  For another, they themselves require a schedule that often interrupts a homemaking schedule.  If they don't feel good, you can pretty well bet that you're going to get the barest minimum of things done because they are going to want to be snuggled and coddled.  If they want to help, you're going to have more cleaning rather than less to do.  When I was keeping Caleb full-time, I had to be prepared to give myself a LOT of grace and just let some tasks be done 'good enough'.   Trying to do things excellently often meant I created unnecessary stress for myself and others in the household.  

Yes, I took time when I had spare days to 'catch up' as much as I could but in the end, I had to remember that while my grandmothers' were excellent housekeepers, I don't remember seeing them doing deep cleaning.  I know it got done because their homes showed it but when they had me and my brothers it was just the basic tasks I recall them working at.

It's not just small children that change how you will keep home.  The number of people in a home makes a difference as well.  Now that it's just John and I once more, there's less need to tidy each day.  We do less laundry.  Once a task is done it lasts longer than when there are four people in the house.

So that's one type of season.  

(b)  They literally cleaned according to the season.  There's good reason why we older women grew up with the idea of a Spring and Fall cleaning that involved taking the house apart and putting it together again with everything within it clean as a new pin.  

Notice that the fall and spring cleanings bookend summer.  

On a farm, Summer was one of the busiest seasons of the year with gardening and preserving added in to the other routine homemaking tasks.  And in the days pre-Air Conditioning, if windows were open then a home naturally got dustier. 

In winter, there were two things that figured prominently: stoves and fireplaces were in constant use and needed to be cleaned routinely, which was an added task that increased in cold months.  The cold weather also was the season for butchering and getting meats cured or smoked or canned.   And it is, in the South at least, a rainier season than any of the others.  

With windows and doors closed for months at a time, the house began to take on the aromas of smoke, meals, and the air just got stale.  One wanted that clean fresh smell come spring, at least as soon as pollen season let up!

Here's where things have changed dramatically through the years.  I barely garden.  Not enough to call it a thing other than a hobby.  And I do not butcher my meat.  I walk into a grocery and buy most of what I want in any season of the year.    I have Air conditioning and my house is closed up most of the year.  I'm spoiled.  I confess it freely.

As I've gotten older, I have found that a deep seasonal cleaning is too much for one person.  Back in great grandmother's day, it was nothing to have daughters or sisters, or both show up and everyone set to cleaning a house.  You returned the favor of that extra labor by going to their homes to help them.  I don't have that resource available.  Even with all the modern appliances and conveniences, it's a LOT.  We don't tackle the full house from top to bottom, front to back the way our ancestors did.  

The whole purpose of my original plan to work in chosen zone areas for a week each month was to do deep cleaning in each room of my home in such a way that I never needed to dissemble my entire home and do seasonal cleaning twice annually.  When we recently had the master bathroom and the kitchen renovated, I got a small taste of the 'deep cleaning' part, and I realized that I have missed my own purpose. 

Now I'm going to step back and re-examine what I do each week and plan to start keeping my home in a different way, with an eye towards being more like my great grandmothers where the end result is concerned!

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