January 2, 2012

Sassy Lassie becomes a Housewife?

I had a bit of a revelation today while thinking of the new year. Back in the day, when being a housewife was something other than an obnoxious TV reality show, women's job's (if they were a housewife) was to take care of the home. It was a full time job and more. Furniture was waxed, sheets were cleaned and line dried and possibly ironed. There was a time each week to do mending. Clothes were sewn or knit and cared for, not thrown in a good-will bin. You darned your socks when a hole appeared. Does anyone out there know how to darn a sock? I don't, but our house came with some darning eggs and I may give it a try.

Though I don't want to return to the 1940's, there are parts of it that I like. I would like my furniture to smell like bees wax and my sheets to be refreshed with lavender. I would like to do more canning, baking, cooking, sewing and knitting. My job gives me lots of free time, but I am often exhausted from the late hours. I will have to work on a remedy for that.

My goal this year is to use as little processed food as possible and try making things from scratch that I would normally buy. I spent some of the day yesterday reading Nancy Silverton's book "Breads from the La Brea Bakery". It is a book about making sourdough bread. I plan to start at the beginning making a starter and then work my way through the book. I plan on getting my flour from a local farmer who mills the wheat to order. I also looked online as to making butter. I have done it by accident a few times, so how hard can it be? I will start with the jar method and see how it goes.

This may all become too much for me. I may only do it for a week or two, but it is a plan I would like to enact. How do you feel about housework? Do you keep a schedule? Do you put aside time each week to clean and do chores? Just wondering how today's modern women keeps up with the house. I would suppose a lot less TV, Facebook and computer time will be how it gets done. Hmmmm. I may have to rethink this. Just kidding.

8 comments:

  1. Fortunately, I'm able to work 4 days / off 3 days. So, yes I set aside time each week to clean (although, I try to maintain so that it's not overwhelming) and make a big meal (something that 1/2 of it can be frozen to eat later in the week).

    I like your thoughts on canning and bread making, who knows maybe I'll set my sights on those goals for 2013

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  2. Love this post. I work from home too and since running this business have become very into more old fashioned ways! Always cook everything from scratch, make lots of jam, taught myself to knit, and bake ALL the time. Am lucky to have a lot of time at home and although in a rented flat at the moment, can't wait to have my own house to decorate and look after! As much as I love travelling to different places and seeing the world whenever possible, I'm a pretty old fashioned home bird at heart :) x

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  3. I'm very lucky to actually be a housewife and mother. It's my full time job. And I take it just as seriously as I did my career when I worked in corporate life. Strangely I still get raised eyebrows when I tell people (without apology) what I do. But I take pride in clean windows, home cooked food and the fact that my husband can lay his hands on a crisp shirt any day of the week.

    I sew clothes and soft furnishings, I cook food from scratch and bake cakes and biscuits and bread, I garden (after a fashion) and knit. And I LOVE it.

    Some days it doesn't all go to plan and we have soup and a sandwich for supper, and we don't have the spare cash we'd have if we both worked, but we do have a life together and I get to watch my children grow.

    I'm very lucky indeed.

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  4. We are a family of three with a 1000 square foot apartment, no yard or garden and an 8-year-old girl. The most important thing is that everyone has the job of not making messes. 2nd thing is that everyone cleans up the messes that they make. When the "stuff" starts to build up, an announcement is made and everyone collects their own belongings and finds a place for what they want to keep. It is important that everyone knows what their job is so that when that job needs to be done, we aren't looking at each other and thinking that if we put it off long enough, someone else will do it. I do laundry and most meals and shopping and kitchen cleaning and kitty box upkeep. My husband does floors and bathrooms and one or two meals a week and changes the sheets (that I've washed). He has also been dusting, but we are planning on teaching our daughter to do it in the very near future.

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  5. Thanks for all the great comments. It is so interesting to see how others accomplish things in their lives. When my children were young, I was a single mom and had to work, but all I ever really wanted to do was be a housewife. I had a fairly flexible job so I was able to kind of do it and I loved every minute of it.

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  6. This post goes right along with my thinking at the moment. I am planning on systematically cleaning out my "stuff" over this year. I started with a reorganization and clean out of my sewing room. I have a hard time throwing away anything that might be of use later, but I'm doing it.
    As far as bread goes, you should check out Bread in 5 minutes a day (http://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes-Revolutionizes/dp/0312362919/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325630359&sr=1-1). I was unemployed for about a year and I made all our bread and baked goods. It was great, but at the moment I don't have the time to do it all. I make about 1/3 of the bread and about 1/2 of other baked goods.
    Good luck with your simpler life. I'm with you all the way.

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  7. Happy New Year to you, too, Lisa! Perhaps we'll get together in person this year!!!???

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  8. I would love to have time to darn socks, always cook from scratch, scent my sheets and hang them out to dry. Working full-time means I barely have time to do the grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and keep the house clean, let alone find much time for myself. It can save money, but not enough to justify being a stay-at-home-wife. There is a lot of pressure right now for women to do more of these things--because it's healthier and better for the environment. But I think the element of time women have needs to be addressed as well, and I'm glad your post mentioned that!

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I appreciate each and every one of your comments. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with me.

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