A Housewife Who Loves History

Who cares about housewife history?

“That’s the past! Time marches on! Progress, y’know? I’m no tradwife!”

I’m not what people call a tradwife, either. I wouldn’t be eligible for membership if I wanted to be one. There isn’t a single prairie dress in my closet, I use (gasp) ziploc bags, and I don’t cook by candlelight.

Yet, my homemaking has been inspired by history since before anyone thought up the tradwife cosplay trend. That was WAY back in the 2010s, when only the truly crunchy even knew what sourdough was.

The attraction of the old ways

A vast majority of women throughout history have been housewives. And like women today, they loved their friends and valued having a community. We can use social media, texts, and other methods to keep up with our friends, ask advice, and not feel so isolated.

Back in the day, homemakers wrote letters, magazine articles, letters to editors, and entire books. Thanks to that pre-digital world, women left whole trails of their life behind them that we can reconstruct 100+ years later. While time dramatically changes things and our ways of communicating, human nature hasn’t changed at all.

Many of us are looking to simplify our lives. Sad beige minimalism might make our lives look serene, but what we want is more than just an aesthetic. We still crave a kind of simplicity that society and modern culture aren’t providing us.

History won’t make our lives perfect—obvs! But the old writings lack many of the stressors of modern media. In the written pages there are no pictures of perfect homes, no mothers of 3 preteens selling a program on the secrets of raising perfect godly adults, no homemakers with a dozen children who make everything from scratch in a plastic-free, off-grid homestead.

Outdated for today?

I’ll be the first to say that it’s common to run into old advice or some housewife history that doesn’t translate well 100 years later. I don’t need strategies on refreshing the feathers in my mattress and I may need to cultivate a lot of skills, but starching my collars isn’t one of them. Often, the modern books that write about “old-timey” ways focus only on stuff that’s so meaningless to us that it’s practically comedy.

But a deep dive into the muddle will uncover a lot of snippets that might surprise you. And that’s what I like to find and share. Some of the writing is practical, but much of it is philosophical.

Here is a sampling, just so you can see what I mean:

“Few things in life are more pathetic than a household in which no organization exists, no systematic direction of activities, no appreciation of Heaven’s first law—order.” -1911

“Certain standards of living have made us believe that many things are necessities. We can hardly bring ourselves to the point of taking them off the schedule. But for the sake of balance, poise, and efficiency, that leisure brings, life should be made simple.” -1931

Stay tuned. I have a lot more to share.