Attitudes to cooking, cleaning, laundry etc

PenniesMake£s

Do you think people make too big a deal about getting these household chores done these days. There are endless blogs, vlogs and books about how to tidy, how to fit it all in, how to plan meals and so on. I spend a lot of time reading about all of this stuff, writing lists, planning and organising to my mum's amusement. My mum had 2 children, worked full time, cooked from scratch, did the ironing, cleaned the house once a week and did the dishes every night without a list in sight. She didn't give a moment's thought to the clutter behind cupboard doors and hiding in drawers. I don't ever remember her sorting through my clothes or toys. It was up to my brother and me to look after our own stuff. I kept my stuff tidy, my brothers room was a smelly pit...our decisions. The rest of the house was clean and tidy and everything got done without my mum stressing about it all. Just wondering whether this is most people's experience or were your mums and grannies as into planning and decluttering as many of us are today?

monnagran

This may be a generational thing.

My grandmother was a Victorian and in her day it was a woman's place to look after the home and everyone in it. She was also a tailoress (heaven forbid you should call her a dressmaker) and considered that she was fortunate to have the means of making a little pin money.

My mother was brought up to believe that this was expected of her also. She was not a natural housekeeper and after her honeymoon, on the first day that my father went back to work she thought that she had to do everything every day. Accordingly she dusted, polished, washed, vacuumed, cleaned windows...........and when father came home for his lunch she was fast asleep on the hearth rug.
She did improve and added to her household duties by taking on looking after the garden and hens during the war. My grandmother was most impressed.

I, born in 1939, was probably the first generation of women who took it for granted that we would have a career and continue to work outside the home after marriage. Unfortunately the men of our generation hadn't quite caught up with this turn of events and, certainly in my case, they expected their wives to run the home, work full time, bring up the children, and help with previously male responsibilities such as gardening, decorating and DIY projects. Thankfully lots of labour-saving devices were on the market by this time which made all this possible.

The generation below mine, today's 40/50 year olds, made full use of every labour saving device they could lay their hands on but had the additional expectation that they would also have the time to enjoy leisure pursuits and 'me' time. Some of them are actually trying to fit all this in as well as having homes in perfectly tip-top condition and instantly inspectionworthy.

This is where well meaning and moneygrabbing planners, organisers, de-clutterers et al have stepped in. The latest generation of homemakers need all the help they can get to to live lives of immaculate homes, perfectly turned out children, fulfilled careers, band box appearance and text book marriages. And happiness.


Poor sods.

I write as the world's greatest procrastinator and list maker.

x

Floss

Don't forget that families today have many more possessions than when we were younger - me & my 3 brothers did not have as many toys as my sons had, we didn't get a new car every 2/3 years and we certainly didn't have as many clothes - so there was no need for the decluttering, mounds of laundry & ironing, tidying-up etc. If a family has fewer clothes, it takes less time to do the laundry & ironing. If a child has a small number of toys, it takes minutes to tidy up at bedtime.

honeythewitch

Floss wrote: »

Don't forget that families today have many more possessions than when we were younger - me & my 3 brothers did not have as many toys as my sons had, we didn't get a new car every 2/3 years and we certainly didn't have as many clothes - so there was no need for the decluttering, mounds of laundry & ironing, tidying-up etc. If a family has fewer clothes, it takes less time to do the laundry & ironing. If a child has a small number of toys, it takes minutes to tidy up at bedtime.

Yes, and houses are so much smaller now.

VfM4meplse

Attitudes to cooking, cleaning, laundry etc

Not doing the former, on principal; God do not put me on this planet to cook dinner.

Laundry: don't enjoy doing it but like having clean clothes, bedding, towels etc.

Cleaning: ditto but once I get going and find an interesting programme on the BBC Radio IPlayer to catch up with I'm happy. I can do stretches of 45mins - 2 hour every other day and get the house sparkling in that time.

Goldiegirl

Everything in life seems to be more complicated than it was 40 years ago

FairyPrincessk

Just coming at the topic from a slightly different angle, the proliferation of guides to these chores might be due to the fact that pretty much anyone can write and publish such a guide online. The guides themselves aren't new--there are loads of books on household management from bygone days, just not as many as there are now. The chores they detail have also changed. They might not talk about decluttering (since as is pointed out above most people had fewer possessions and the concept of 'excess' was only in its infancy in the 1970s), but how many in the contemporary age distemper kitchens and pantries annually? Sample housekeeping schedules mapped out by the day, week, month or season were usually found in these guides.

I also suspect Monnagran is onto something--the idea that we no longer have a dedicated person to look after the home full time but still expect high standards of housekeeping and (if pinterest is to be believed) full gourmet meals, beautiful crafts, professional parties for every occasion and, and... I suspect there are many attempting to find the elusive answer to how they can do it all. The proliferation of prepackaged food and the decline in price and increase in credit for household appliances in the 1970s ran in parallel to the rise in women's employment (although there was certainly the issue of the double burden). There is also the point that many basic domestic tasks are no longer considered a part of education and younger generations (myself included) turn to the internet for information on how to do things that they might have formerly learned via school or from relatives who lived nearby.

Callie22

I have a copy of a book that was republished by the Persephone Press called 'How to run your home without help' by Kay Smallshaw, which was originally published in 1949. It was written as a guide for both the newly married and women who found that after WW2 they were unable to get domestic staff as easily as before. It's a fascinating read and the laundry section in particular makes me incredibly grateful for washing machines!

So there have always been guides but I think part of the proliferation of such things nowadays is partly (mainly?) because there's generally a sales opportunity behind it - buy my book, my cleaning products, my e-book, my 'storage system', my magic purple dusters, etc etc etc and your life can become 'perfect' too. I think in the past people just got on with stuff and didn't film and photograph themselves doing every job. I think image and appearance were still important back then - things like having a clean, donkey-stoned doorstep and white nets, for example - but it was only on a local scale, your street or village rather than being as global as it is today. I also think that this whole 'perfect housewife' thing is a bit of a status symbol, having the time and money to make everything 'perfect' (or even appear so!) is seen nowadays as an aspirational goal. It used to be the big house and shiny car, now it's the big house, shiny car and a frilly apron you can wear to clean it all!

edited to add: I also think it's funny the way that the things that are out of reach for for ordinary families become aspirational. Take children, for example - people used to have big families because they had no choice, big families were seen as a sign of poverty and the reason why families remained poor. Richer families, who had access to birth control were generally smaller. Now we can all (in this country, at any rate) access birth control and now ordinary people find that they are having to limit their families for economic reasons, having lots of children has become something of a status symbol (if you're rich, at any rate), just look at celebrity families like the Olivers, the Ramsays or the Beckhams.

VfM4meplse

Callie22 wrote: »

I have a copy of a book that was republished by the Persephone Press called 'How to run your home without help' by Kay Smallshaw, which was originally published in 1949. It was written as a guide for both the newly married and women who found that after WW2 they were unable to get domestic staff as easily as before.

Its up there with recommending women pretty themselves up with lipstick to receive their husbands after work, or this toon (covered by Annie Lennox in jest, I believe). Thank heavens times have changed.

Islandmaid

FairyPrincessk

That book sounds fascinating Callie! Funny you should mention nets and donkeystoning, I was thinking of those things myself.

I'm relieved that my moral standing in the community is not tied to the state of my curtains, doorstep etc. But I agree that the idea that you can have the (partially made up) ideal 50s lifestyle these days is very aspirational. The idea that there is someone at home churning out freshly baked goods, gourmet food whilst keeping fit and ferrying children around to various lessons instead of just handing the kids some bread and jam and sending them out to play while getting on with far more mundane housework requires either the money to pay someone or the leisure to do it oneself, something that wasn't just unattainable but unimaginable in bygone days.