Keeping House Like My Mother
Do I keep house like my mother? Well, I do and I don't. My mother was
a young adult in the Great Depression of the 1930's and she had been
raised on a farm where a lot of what was eaten was grown and processed
right on the 95 acres. And so my mother kept house sort of like her
mother, but with modern conveniences.
As young wives, both my mother and my grandmother washed on Monday, ironed on Tuesday, baked on Tuesday and Thursday, cleaned on Friday, rested on Sunday. But where my grandmother started with washtubs and a mangle and progressed to a wringer washtub, my mother had a wringer washer, then a spin washer and finally an automatic washer. My grandmother preserved almost all of the meat (which my great-grandfather slaughtered), and grew and preserved the vegetables and fruit that the family ate from a half acre 'kitchen garden'. She killed her own chickens and hunted for eggs when the hens went broody. My mother, living in the city, bought her meat at the butcher, cans of vegetables and cartons of eggs at the corner store and confined the food processing to making jam and preserving fruit. If she miscalculated the amount she needed of some food item, she did without.
From 1928 on, my grandmother was able to store food at a 'locker plant', a building a few miles away that housed refrigerated rooms where space could be rented - in 1958 my mother walked half a block to neighbourhood stores. Later she drove to a big box supermarket when she chose to do so (and took my grandmother with her). Where Grandma had cows, my mother had my great love, a milkman who delivered from a horse drawn van. My grandmother had brooms, lye soap and a hired girl. My mother had a vacuum cleaner and a cleaning lady and liquid soap.
My mother's conveniences allowed her leisure but my grandmother's houskeeping was vital to the farm operation, a big part of making the family's living.
As a young mother in the late 1860's I washed every sunny day of the year, ironed on Tuesday night while watching television, gave up on baking and preserving as time wasters because I worked part time, cleaned when visitors were expected and lived in a suburb where there were no stores within walking distance. I got my husband's car one day a week, loaded in the squirming kids and shopped in a supermarket, praying that I had put everything I needed on the list and that I had bought enough milk. I had an automatic washer because I had refused a diamond engagement ring, asking instead to be given a washer when the first baby arrived. I had a clothesline outside and another in the basement. I had my mother's hand-me-down vacuum cleaner and curtains and, after a few years, her hand-me-down Volkswagen Beetle. Then I had freedom (and the ability to drive uptown for milk and eggs).
When my husband graduated and got a (gasp) well-paying job, I continued to work part time and I hired a cleaning lady. We bought recreational land and built a cabin on it, insulated for year round use. When the kids hit high school I went back to work full time. My housekeeping became very different from my mother's.
We came home Sunday night from the 'farm' (which was really marginal land where an old farm that had gone back to scrub bush) and I threw clothes into the laundry machines. One evening after work I shopped, whenever I had time I ironed, the girls took over a lot of the cooking and I cleaned when I got around to it. Thursday I usually shopped again because we went back out to the cabin on Friday evening and on the weekend I cleaned there, worked in the bush and scrambled meals togther. I think we ate hot dogs for lunch every Saturday for years and years.
The cabin had no electric power and I had a small propane refrigerator and a propane stove there; somehow we ended up celebrating all the festivals that call for festive meals at the cabin, with guests, and the logistics of getting the food there and keeping it cold (or unfrozen in winter) were complex. Once again I used to pray that the grocery list had everything on it I needed.
My girls are grown and gone now and we live full time on 'the farm', in a house we built ourselves (and thank goodness my husband was responsible for the list of building materials). I wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday, get my heavy cleaning done every two weeks by an energetic young neighbour, and shop in the town closest, a half hour drive away, once a week or so. I don't even have a vegetable garden any more, although I did when we lived in the city, because I refuse to do all that work to feed deer and raccoons. I have a big freezer in the basement and another in the kitchen. Where my grandmother had the 'root cellar' and the 'locker plant' and my mother shopped daily, I have the freezers and cupboards full of canned and convenience food. I have a central vacuum system and the latest in high tech cleaning materials, things that my mother did not have. I have lots of free time.
But I still obsess about the grocery list.
This is an original post for Canada Moms Blog. When she is not making a list and checking it twice, Mary also blogs at Them's My Sentiments.
