Memories of a vintage housekeeper

   

         

My mother was a good homemaker. Some of my earliest memories were of her hanging out washing on her long line held up by props.  She used to boil up the copper and honestly, she had the whitest washing ever.  She used Rinso to wash the clothes and Lux Flakes for delicates.

When I was really young, we didn't have hot water on tap, so Mum would boil up the kettle, fill the sink- a single sink- and she used a metal cage thing with slivers of Velvet soap in it to soap up the water. Steel wool was the go for saucepans and the plates were washed with a foam rubber sponge.

Whilst she was washing the dishes, she would have the kettle on again to rinse them. Then we children would dry them for her. We had metered gas by way of a machine with a coin slot in it in the laundry. When the gas got low, Mum would put sixpence or a shilling in it...

We all bathed daily and our hot water was heated by way of a chip heater over the bath. I can still remember fighting over who was the child who was to be seated under it. It was scary to a kid's mind. In fact, I sometimes still dream of it- making sure the water tap was on before lighting the pilot light.

Pride of place in our living room was the clothes horse aka clothes airer. Mum was very careful to air all our clothes and she spent quite a lot of time arranging clothes on it daily.

Mum had it tough too because we four children were bed wetters. She worked very hard to keep up with it all. 

With all her neighbours finishing their chores by 9am, poor Mum was still washing the sheets. In fact, when they called on her for a cuppa, she would be flustered because she was inundated with work.

Mondays Mum "did through".  She vacuumed, dusted, cleaned the bath and toilet and ironed. She also polished the linoleum in the kitchen with her Hoover polisher. It was quite a chore, with applying polish, buffing it with the machine then redoing it with the lambswool pads.  Her Monday routine was as regular as the sun coming up in the morning. 

Everyday, she would also make the beds, do her washing, think about what was for tea that night, clean her kitchen and sweep the carpets with a carpet sweeper. Routines were written in stone.

Mum didn't have a car, in fact Dad didn't even have one. She would catch the bus into town and shop for groceries which were delivered to our house. No plastic bags: the bags were brown paper...

I remembered how hard she worked the day I held her gnarled hand as she passed. She certainly loved her home and family... 

I am so glad that God honours the hardworking woman. In writing her eulogy, I included that well-known and loved verse from Proverbs 31 and when it was read, everyone of us nodded our heads in agreement and acknowledgement. She was blessed.

Memories of a well kept house we were never ashamed to call home will always be dear, along with the memories of a tired but diligent homemaker and her wonderful serving of our family, and then her  second husband's. 

Yes, they're happy memories of a vintage housekeeper

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.  Proverbs 31:28

Thoughts of Home

I was just being obedient to what my parents saw in me. I was more interested in the things the women in my family, my mom, grandmother and aunt were all about: homemaking and cooking and housekeeping. I wanted to be a housewife and mom.
Gladys Knight

There are practical little things in housekeeping which no man really understands.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Housekeeping ain't no joke Louisa M Alcott

A home in which the housewife sheds tears will be bereft of all prosperity. This is the ancient conception of the role of women in the home. Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn't interest you, don't do it - I would have made a terrible mother. Katharine Hepburn

I love my house
And the work it gives to me,
The dear tasks of bringing
Ordered dignity to room and hall
Where the shadow and the whisper
Of my loved ones dwell.
I love the banishing of dust,
The corners square and clean,
The windows clear
As the promise of my future days.
I love the small task
Of mending tears and rips,
Seeing again the joy,
Hearing the swift shout and rush
Of happy, running feet.
I love the clothes clean and sweet again,
Smelling of the sun and wind,
Folded in quiet order to await
More joyous play.
I love my dishes stacked neatly row on row,
Order matching gleaming from the
Chaos of the morning meal-
Sitting solemnly, waiting for the
Renewed communal pleasure
They soon will bring again.
I love my house
And all the work it gives to me
That my soul might grow
With discipline and tempered grace.

Source: June 1958 RS Magazine

"The curse of the LORD [is] in the house of the wicked: but he blesseth the habitation of the just" Proverbs 3:33

There to be a light

The caption on this Good Housekeeping Magazine of 1902 says it all: “His House She Enters: There To Be A Light”

It is not difficult to see that a good home life is grounded in a good marriage. Marriage is as much the foundation of the Christian home as Christ is the foundation of our faith. Hear what Dr J.R. Miller has to say on the importance of a good marriage in building a Christian home..

“Back of the home lies marriage. The wedding day throws its shadow far down the future; it may be, ought to be, a shadow of healing and benediction. In a tale of medieval English life a maiden goes before the bridal party on their way to church, strewing flowers in their path. This was meant to signify that their wedded life should be one of joy and prosperity. Almost universally wedding ceremonies and festivities have some feature of similar significance, implying that the occasion is one of gladness.

In some countries flowers are worn as bridal wreaths. In some they are woven into garlands for the waist, the tying of the ends being a part of the ritual. In others they are carried in the hand or worn in the hair or on the bosom. Music comes in also, always joyous music, implying that the ceremony is one of peculiar gladness. In some places, too, wedding bells are rung, their peals being merry and gladsome.

All these and similar bridal customs indicate that the world regards the wedding as the crowning day of life, and marriage as an event of the highest felicity, an occasion for the most enthusiastic congratulations. Yet not always are these happy prophecies fulfilled. Sometimes the flowers wither and the music grows discordant and the wedding peals die away into a memory only of gladness. It ought not to be so. It is not so when the marriage has been true, and when the wedded life is ruled by love. Then the bridal wreath remains fresh and fragrant till it is laid upon the coffin by the loving hands of the one who survives to close the eyes of the other; and the wedding music and the peals of the bells continue to echo in tones of gladness and peace until hushed in the sobbings of sorrow when the singers sing in dirges and the bells toll out the number of the finished years.

Marriage is intended to bring joy. The married life is meant to be the happiest, fullest, purest, richest life. It is God’s own ideal of completeness. It was when he saw that it was not good for man to be alone that woman was made and brought to him to supply what was lacking. The divine intention, therefore, is that marriage shall yield happiness, and that it shall add to the fullness of the life of both husband and wife; that neither shall lose, but that both shall gain. If in any case it fails to be a blessing and to yield joy, and a richer, fuller life, the fault cannot be with the institution itself, but with those who under its shadow fail to fulfill its conditions.

The benediction that falls upon the homes of a country is like the gentle rain that descends among the hills. A thousand springs are fuller afterward, and along the banks of a thousand streamlets flowing through the valleys the grass is greener and the flowers pour out richer fragrance.

Homes are the springs among the hills, whose many streamlets, uniting, form, like great rivers, society, the community, the nation, the Church. If the springs run low the rivers waste; if they pour out bounteous currents the rivers are full. If the springs are pure the rivers are clear like crystal; if they are foul the rivers are defiled. A curse upon the homes sends a poisoning blight everywhere; a blessing sends healing and new life into every channel.

Homes are the divinely ordained fountains of life. It is not by accident that men live in families rather than solitarily. The human race began in a family, and Eden was a home. The divine blessing has ever rested upon nations and communities just in the measure in which they have adhered to these original institutions and have kept marriage and the home pure and holy; and blight and curse have come just in the measure in which they have departed from these divine models, dishonoring marriage and tearing down the sacred walls of home. by Dr J.R. Miller

Blessings and comfort, Glenys

“I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully” 1 Timothy 5:14

Memories of Mum's housekeeping

My mother was a good homemaker. Some of my earliest memories were of her hanging out washing on her long line held up by props.  She used to boil up the copper and honestly, she had the whitest washing ever.  She used Rinso to wash the clothes and Lux Flakes for delicates.

When I was really young, we didn't have hot water on tap, so Mum would boil up the kettle, fill the sink- a single sink- and she used a metal cage thing with slivers of Velvet soap in it to soap up the water. Steel wool was the go for saucepans and the plates were washed with a foam rubber sponge.

Whilst she was washing the dishes, she would have the kettle on again to rinse them. Then we children would dry them for her. We had metered gas by way of a machine with a coin slot in it in the laundry. When the gas got low, Mum would put sixpence or a shilling in it...

We all bathed daily and our hot water was heated by way of a chip heater over the bath. I can still remember fighting over who was the child who was to be seated under it. It was scary to a kid's mind. In fact, I sometimes still dream of it- making sure the water tap was on before lighting the pilot light.

Pride of place in our living room was the clothes horse aka clothes airer. Mum was very careful to air all our clothes and she spent quite a lot of time arranging clothes on it daily.

Mum had it tough too because we four children were bed wetters. She worked very hard to keep up with it all. 

With all her neighbours finishing their chores by 9am, poor Mum was still washing the sheets. In fact, when they called on her for a cuppa, she would be flustered because she was inundated with work.

Mondays Mum "did through".  She vacuumed, dusted, cleaned the bath and toilet and ironed. She also polished the linoleum in the kitchen with her Hoover polisher. It was quite a chore, with applying polish, buffing it with the machine then redoing it with the lambswool pads.  Her Monday routine was as regular as the sun coming up in the morning. 

Everyday, she would also make the beds, do her washing, think about what was for tea that night, clean her kitchen and sweep the carpets with a carpet sweeper. Routines were written in stone.

Mum didn't have a car, in fact Dad didn't even have one. She would catch the bus into town and shop for groceries which were delivered to our house. No plastic bags: the bags were brown paper...

I remembered how hard she worked the day I held her gnarled hand as she passed. She certainly loved her home and family... 

I am so glad that God honours the hardworking woman. In writing her eulogy, I included that well-known and loved verse from Proverbs 31 and when it was read, everyone of us nodded our heads in agreement and acknowledgement. She was blessed.

Memories of a well kept house we were never ashamed to call home will always be dear, along with the memories of a tired but diligent homemaker and her wonderful serving of our family, and then her  second husband's.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.  Proverbs 31:28

True vintage housewife

Growing up, I have observed both my grandmother and my mother's housekeeping practices. Practices which have not changed much in routines, but definitely in convenience.

There are better appliances to shorten laundry duties and I can remember my Nana washing her clothes by hand after boiling them up in an old copper. She would then place them in a centrifugal spinner and grind it by hand. My earliest memories of her are of an old woman propping up her washing on an outside line with a wooden pole, attaching the clothes with wooden dolly pegs.

She cooked in an outside kitchen on an old stove called a Metters. No electric toaster, my fondest memories of her food were jaffles: toasted sandwiches heated with a jaffle iron. Her fridge was an ice chest.

My mother on giving birth to my twin and myself, boiled up our nappies in an old kerosene tin, hand washing them and hanging them out to dry, sharing Nana's old clothesline and dolly pegs. There were no disposable nappies in her day, in fact here in Australia, they didn't become available until the early 1970's. 

When we moved out of Nana's, my memories of her housekeeping were replaced by those of my Mum's as she took care of her own home. Mum had a definite routine.

Monday mornings were her do through day. That rarely took second place to anything else, in fact the whole week was organised round it. Polishing furniture, mirrors and linoleum floors with an electric polisher (twice, once to spread the polish, then again with lambswool pads to buff it) and bath cleaning were uppermost in her routine.

Everyday was wash day. Mum boiled up her copper and transferred the water and clothes into her wringer washing machine. She then rinsed them out in her concrete laundry sink, wringing them out again, then she hung them out on the Hills hoist clothesline. She didn't have a dryer.

Also everyday was maintenance day. Mum never ever left dishes unwashed or beds unmade. The bathroom and toilet were attended to daily as well. Mum ironed clothes as soon as they came off the line. Carpets were swept with a carpet sweeper, vacuuming done on Mondays.

We children always dried the dishes and Mum first had to boil the kettle as she had no hot water service in the early days. She used Velvet soap to wash her dishes whilst the kettle boiled a second time to rinse them. Then we would be called to dry them. We made our own beds with Mum changing them on Monday.

Mum cooked everything from scratch as there were no easy instant packets back then. She made lambs tongue for our sandwiches, pressing them under the heavy kitchen table leg, in a bowl with a saucer as a lid overnight. In the morning they were set in lovely gelatin. We  were happy to eat tripe cooked in onions and milk and even enjoyed the occasional treat of lambs brains on toast.

Although we were classified as poor, Mum refused to feed us dripping but brought butter for our sandwiches. Like her own mother, she kept a good table.

Most of the housewives in my childhood had their children off to school and their houses clean by 9am and only then would they socialise. There was a different attitude to home making than today, with women having a generally contented feeling in looking after their home well.

I am grateful for all our labour saving devices today, but I lament the chats over the fence that we still enjoyed when I was a young mother and homemaker. If one runs out of sugar, no one is home now if you want to borrow some!

There was a supportive camaraderie that is hard to find these days as a stay at home wife. It's times like that that I envy the vintage housewife.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

They helped every one his neighbour; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage. Isaiah 41:6