A Woman's Work

Today

Had a busy day yesterday. The family's all arriving today for Amelia's christening tomorrow so the house had to be put in order.

While we breakfasted I put a load of sheets in the washing machine. We had to shop for food so before we left I put on another load of washing, set up the dishwasher and bunged the necessary ingredients into the bread-maker for a loaf of bread.

Later, Paul made two lots of ice-cream using his new toy; I prepared Indian food. While we relaxed over supper and Scrabble, the dishwasher got on with the washing up.

"What I like about modern living," I said to Paul as we started on the second bottle of Cloudy Bay, "is that so much housework gets done while you're doing something else."

In My Day

It's easy to understand how hard it was to keep clean and organised when these helps weren't there. The folksong "Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron" describes how just getting the washing done took all week.

At home when I was little there was not much automation. Mamma didn't get a washing machine until 1959 and dishwashers were unheard of.

If you were an academic, intelligent woman like Mamma you simply didn't want to spend your entire time chasing specks of dust. In fact Mamma could be a bit scathing about women who tied up their hair, bunged on a overall (like a charlady) and got on with it the minute hubby left the house. (I secretly thought that the overall seemed rather a good way of not getting your clothes dirty.)

We didn't live in a noticeably dirty way but chores were very demanding. Washing up was mostly children's work and I spent hours of my life, it seemed, with my sleeves rolled up and my hands in soapy water (there's even a picture of me doing this in the family album). Washing was done by hand (Mamma actually had a wooden washing board) and clothes were eked out - school shirts had to last two or even three days - to spread the load. Furniture wasn't wipe clean - it all had to be polished using lavender polish from a tin. Silverware (plated) had to be de-tranished from time-to-time, another filthy job.

We had no central heating so, in winter, fires had to be laid, made and maintained daily.

Things like making bread or ice-cream were out of the question as simply too time-consuming; as I said Mamma, while perfectly skilled at these things, didn't fancy herself as a domestic goddess. Food required more preparation - no ready wased salads or pre-scrubbed carrots in those days - and could be a dirty job. It's no wonder that we all learnt these things at our mothers' knees in those days; we were essential as slave labour, so the sooner we knew how to do things the better.

So we have it easy these day. I just wish the kitchen floor would wash itself!