A Housewife Writes

to her, there's no place like home

Posted on Posted by Laurie Aaron Hird Categories housewifery

In Love With Her Life, 1915

It is dusk. The children and I have just come in from the corral, where I milked seven cows. I am so in love with life that I find a day very short to hold its allotted joys.

First, I awoke a little earlier than usual this morning and lay thinking over the “had-to-be-dones.” It is baking day; but that is a glad-to-be as well as the other, because I love to experiment outside of the cookbooks. At half-past five I arose and by half-past six had breakfast on the table and my bread set. By eight o’clock we had breakfasted and I had the seven cows milked. How I love my gentle cows! What an inspiration their calm patience is! And I love to get out at that hour. At this altitude the mornings are always chilly but by eight it is pleasant. At half-past eight I had the three larger children dressed and at breakfast, while I ran the milk through the separator. While the children finished, I went again to the barnyard, where I fed my little chicks and turkeys and looked after the rest.

I have two rows of flowers between the barnyard and the house, so I stopped a few minutes to smell the sweet-peas, to admire the gorgeous colors of the poppies, and to pull a few weeds. By ten I had Baby bathed and all his little wants attended to, the breakfast dishes and the milk things washed, my bread in the oven and my dinner started. So I sat down to churn and to read while I churned. I use an old-fashioned dash churn, therefore I have an excuse for sitting down. I am glad of it, for I can read then.

By twelve I have my sweet golden butter printed, have heard my daughter’s lessons and have dinner ready. By half-past one we have had dinner and I have the kitchen in order and we all lie down for a rest. At two I begin making the beds, by three the whole house is straightened, so I have two hours for myself. I read a little story for the kiddies and then send them all to play while I read a little. I write a couple of letters and then go out to hoe and pull weeds a while.

I cook most of my supper while I cook dinner so I can prepare supper in a few minutes. So I feed my biddies, and the children gather the eggs, until we hear the men coming in from the field. By seven o’clock we have had supper, and Baby is put to bed. Daughter helps me put the kitchen to rights.

Then comes the goodest part of the day. We go to milk. Daughter and Son sit in the wagon out of harm’s way and I milk. We all enjoy the beauties of the sunset, the beautiful colors, the crisp little mountain breeze. By nine the kiddies have had their bath and are in bed. Daddy-man is playing the phonograph so they can go to sleep.

At ten o’clock my day will be finished. I shall finish this paper and read a little with Daddy-man and then it will be my bed-time. As I finish I see I have left out many little joys. I have kissed little hands to make hurts well perhaps a dozen times. I matched some colors and cut some blocks for Daughter’s patchwork quilt; I made a finger-stall for the hired man. I have answered the ‘phone a few times and–Now if some university can help me to make my days more elastic so that they can encompass all my joys comfortably, I shall be glad. There’s so much I want to do but–Good-night!

 

Posted on Posted by Amalia Categories perspective

No Dollar Signs on Women’s Work, part 2

A couple of months after “Unknown’s” letter first appeared, a response was written by a woman from Ohio, who signed her letter “Well-known.” She disagreed with the perspective of “Unknown”, the beet farmer’s wife, writing, “I think Unknown and her men do not realize how far a clean, comfortable, pleasant home goes toward getting that beet check.”

Mrs. Well-known went on to say that “it is only through the economy of the homemaker that most taxes are paid, that there is money for beet seed, etc.” She asked Mrs. Unknown, “What would the beet check amount to if there were not three wholesome meals every day? How far would it go if the homemaker did not bake the bread, finish the ironing, care for the children and the chicks, and do the other things ‘too numerous to mention’?”

Nearly every year around Mother’s Day, someone writes an article trying to calculate the worth of a stay-at-home mother. If someone were to hire a woman (or several!) to do all the tasks of a typical mother and factor in the overtime hours she works, her annual salary is estimated from $75,000 all the way up to $143,000! (Suddenly, that beet check isn’t going very far…)

For another modern-day example, my husband knows how to cook but dislikes it. He mentioned earlier this week that if it weren’t for me cooking for him, his meals would consist of cold cereal, frozen pizza, takeout dinners, and even worse, a tube of saltines with a jar of peanut butter. Without me cooking our meals from scratch, grocery costs would easily be triple our current budget and I think it’s reasonable to conclude that his health would be questionable.

Mrs. Well-known included this little story in her letter:

The wife of a prominent lawyer in our city was congratulated one day by a leading physician on her husband’s success, and denied any part in it. “You do not realize, “ the doctor answered, “how far a pleasant, sympathetic environment at home goes toward making a man’s success.”

Just another example of the incalculable value of the housewife, and happy are the husband and wife who know it!

Posted on Posted by Amalia Categories perspective

No Dollar Signs on Women’s Work, part 1

I can’t say I’ve ever heard a woman say she chose housewifery as a career for the usual reasons one goes into a particular field– having the skills required for the job, the earning potential, the incredible opportunities for advancement, or even the prestige and glamour of it all.

In these oh, so enlightened times, when we’re all told to listen to our hearts, be ourselves, and do whatever it is that fulfils us, choosing to be a housewife is most certainly not one of the options that will catapult you to Nobel prize status or into the first paragraph of the family Christmas letter.

But I recently discovered that this isn’t a new perspective when I came across a letter written to a magazine devoted to farm wives.

In 1933, the wife of a beet farmer living in Idaho (who signed her letter Unknown) wrote that she felt her husband didn’t see the value of her work as a housewife. Her letter didn’t complain about his attitude but instead, she agreed with him when she compared her work to his. She wrote that “measured by the things he does, my work is really ‘nothing.’ On him depends the food for the family, yes, I might as well say for the world. “ So what was her work, the work she considered “nothing”?

2 preschool-aged sons
100 baby chicks to raise
bread to bake
ironing to finish
dishes to wash
other things “too numerous to mention”

She raised the chickens as a little side business but noted that it brought in only a fraction of the household income. Her conclusion was to find comfort in “a ray of hope” that if nothing else, women are “the mothers of men, who in turn will raise big crops that will sell for big checks.”

It’s a sad perspective that for Mrs. Unknown, it all came back to the dollar sign. But in many ways, I don’t feel like it’s much different today. Young mothers trying to raise little humans into productive adults, not to mention working to provide a clean house, healthy meals, and all the rest hang their heads because their work doesn’t come with the status of a paycheck.

It’s curious, isn’t it, that society values work more when there is income attached to it? We can mop a floor, toss french fries in a fryer, or organize a craft project for a group of children in our own homes yet we’re still “just housewives.” But we’ve been led to believe that when we do nearly the same work away from home for a paycheck, it matters more.

Many people believe that the women’s movements of the 1900s elevated the status of women in society. It may have opened doors for women working in public careers, but in doing so, it further discredited and devalued housewives and the work they do in the home.

If you measure quality of life by money alone, yes, a housewife’s worth is minimal. But, if money is the measure of quality, well, Heaven help us all!

Maybe we haven’t come a long way after all, baby.

 

(In case you think this has been a downer of a post, stay tuned for part 2 on Monday. It gets better!)

 

This post is included in the Wise Woman Linkup.

Posted on Posted by Laurie Aaron Hird Categories housewifery

Drudgery? Not in Springtime! 1926

Drudgery! It is an old-fashioned word that we rarely hear today, but a century ago, it was used a great deal to describe housework in general, and often Spring Cleaning. In 1926, a woman from Iowa wrote, “True, we have vacuums, dust

mops, electric washing machines, and washable floor coverings…but there always will remain, to the conscientious housewife at least, a certain amount of dread because somewhere, try as hard as she may, there is bound to be more or less of drudgery in house cleaning.” 

I have begun my 2018 Spring Cleaning but instead of getting discouraged with so much ahead of me, I plan to take this woman’s advice:

This spring I have decided to work out my own plan of escape from this drudgery. I am going to take a lesson from Mother Nature herself. I shall don the gayest of percale aprons when I go outside. I am going to “step out”–oh, anytime in the first part of the mornin’, nine o’clock if I feel  like it–under the

trees, into the garden, up the hillside; watch the robins arrange their summer cottages; smell the intoxicating scent of apple blossoms; and go to sleep at night listening to the soft pitty-pat-pat of rains against the window panes or the sigh of the wind in the trees, knowing for a certainty that they will accomplish fully their ever new and lovely process of spring rejuvenation and knowing that I too, even though I do a small portion of my work at a time, making room every day for other sights and interests more pleasurable than housework, I too shall find I can have the house just as sweet and clean, my tasks just as amply done if I take each one as it comes. Not crowding–and without worry or thought as to the days that are just beyond my reach. Sun, wind, rain–it is all in the glorious scheme of a spring day–why shut out the better part? Three cheers for Mother Nature’s easy way of House Cleaning!