Attitudes to cooking, cleaning, laundry etc

theoretica

My mum gave me a few years ago 'A plain cookery book for the working classes' first published in 1852. In it, the Chief Cook to Queen Victoria tells people how to get the most nourishment from the least expense. Including an economical and substantial soup for distribution to the poor. Which leads to another thing that hasn't changed - people telling other people how they should be managing!

Callie22

There's another really interesting book that Persephone have reprinted called 'Round About a Pound a Week', by Maud Pember Reeves. It was originally published in 1913 and is an expansion of a report carried out by the Fabian Society looking into the general living standards of 'ordinary' people in Lambeth. What's interesting is that it was researched and written by women and it's incredibly sympathetic to ordinary women of the time - the main message is not that 'these poor people could do better by doing x, y and z' but that 'you (i.e the comfortable middle-classes) couldn't manage well on this amount of money either'. It's a fascinating read and it's definitely worth looking out for, it still resonates even a hundred years after it was originally published.

PasturesNew

theoretica wrote: »

... people telling other people how they should be managing!

A lot of it is about a lack of self-worth - some people like to "shame" others and tell them how they should be doing things, simply to try to appear more superior, usually because they've no inner confidence in themselves.

I ignore those people.

So long as one's not being completely wrong, everything's OK.

Dog poo on the floor? Outrageous and you deserve to be belittled and shamed. That's unacceptable and gross by anybody's standards.

Not wiped your skirting boards this summer yet? Never mind.

I keep looking at the top of my open door, where I can't see, and thinking "I should reach up and wipe the top of that ..... sometime.

myonlysunshine

I'm 40 years old and of the generation who wanted a perfectly clean house, clean kids and meals cooked from scratch every night..oh and a pretty much full time job😬

This ground to a halt when I was 30 due to becoming very ill overnight due to the immense stress I was putting MYSELF under, nobody else was expecting me to a have perfect life but I felt under pressure stupidly by reading books articles and well meaning advice on how to have it all!!

My mum and my grandmother were both perfectionists are hard to please women and I suspect by trying to please my mother and show her I could do the same would give me the approval I desperately wanted from her..anyhow going off track here....nothing is worth making yourself ill over, there are far too many people offering advice on how to do things the 'right' way but there is no magic formula because there are simply not enough hours in the day for most people!

I wish I could turn the back the clock as I'm still very poorly, but, I've had to adapt to a messier house one less income, but it's not that important because I stil have my family 😊

I now make tiny lists of jobs be it making a phone call, or emptying the bin! Small as they are it's an achievement for me and not too ambitious or challenging, it's been a huge learning curve but even if I make a good recovery il NEVER put myself under that pressure again!

VfM4meplse

^^ I agree, life is just to short and time much better spent in other ways.

GreyQueen

I'm about as far from a domestic goddess as you can possibly get. There are far too many interesting things to be doing to fret about chores.

I just do the basics to keep things reasonably neat, reasonably clean and reasonably orderly.

Other than that, I prefer to be doing other things, and usually am doing them.

Life is short but housework is never-ending.:rotfl:

pickledonionspaceraider

Looking around at others in my peer group I have notice that life is hard these days for women and our attitudes towards ourselves and other women in general are very demanding - whilst attitudes of men, and towards men, have not changed for some

Women are expected to
Have full time career,
all housework practices, cook clean wash iron gardening
main childcare responsibilities
organise the family day to day, lunches, then other events holidays etc
Be a goddess between the sheets, to a man who treats us like their mother at every other time,

Men are expected to
Work full time
Take full control of the tv remote

No wonder depression is at a high these days, we as women place far too much pressure on ourselves and each other

monnagran

My dear Mum's advice to me was...

A house should be clean enough to be hygienic and messy enough to be happy.

x

lillibet_dripping

pickledonionspaceraider wrote: »

Looking around at others in my peer group I have notice that life is hard these days for women and our attitudes towards ourselves and other women in general are very demanding - whilst attitudes of men, and towards men, have not changed for some

Women are expected to
Have full time career,
all housework practices, cook clean wash iron gardening
main childcare responsibilities
organise the family day to day, lunches, then other events holidays etc
Be a goddess between the sheets, to a man who treats us like their mother at every other time,

Men are expected to
Work full time
Take full control of the tv remote

No wonder depression is at a high these days, we as women place far too much pressure on ourselves and each other

.... and that is why I have been divorced and happily single for the past 14 years and have no intention of ever letting a man into my life again!!!

theoretica

monnagran wrote: »

My dear Mum's advice to me was...

A house should be clean enough to be hygienic and messy enough to be happy.

x

Now that's my kind of advice! Why keep the floor clean enough to eat off? I'm not going to eat off it.