This very simple, and yet, kind of fancy, spiced tea recipe comes to us from the April 1948 issue of The Workbasket. This magazine focused on craft projects for fun and profit, but also encouraged its readers to form clubs. Each issue had a section of suggested club meeting programs, including recipes for refreshments.

I scaled this recipe down to a suitable size for a single family, instead of a club’s worth of ladies, and I must say I’m pleased with the results. Full disclosure: I am the only one around here who likes it. Cloves are a dealbreaker for the other member of my household. (“This tastes like medicine,” was his official, albeit, wrong, assessment of the final product.) Next time, I may cut it down further to two cups or so. That could put me into, “What do I do with this remaining half orange?” territory, though.

I think it’s really nice. It hits a lot of the same notes as hot cider for me (“That is inaccurate,” said Bob, who doesn’t know from spiced tea, I tell you), without the sugar bomb of drinking massive quantities of fruit juice.

Hot Spice Tea Recipe (Family-Sized)

Here’s the recipe:

• juice of two oranges, one lemon
• 1/2 cup sugar (I’d use even less next time)
• 4 bags of black tea
• 1 tsp. whole cloves
• 1-inch cinnamon stick
• 6 cups water

Add water, cloves and cinnamon to a pot, heat to a simmer. Simmer for 15 minutes and bring to a boil. Turn off heat, add tea bags, steep for 5 minutes. Heat fruit juices and sugar until sugar dissolves. Remove spices and tea bags, add fruit juice, ta-da!

Hot Tea for a Big Group

This is not the year where most of us will need a recipe to serve a crowd. However, someday, you may need tea for all the members of your housewives craft club, or alternately, your local political activism crew, in which case, the original quantities are:

• juice of three oranges, 1 1/2 lemon
• 1 cup sugar (I’d still cut it down a little)
• 2 1/2 TB. black tea
• 3 quarts water
• 1 tsp. whole cloves, 1-inch cinnamon stick

Snuggle in with a Cup of Tea

This general procedure strikes me as quite adaptable. You could leave out the cloves (fine, Bob!), add a hunk of fresh ginger, or any other spice you like. You could experiment with different fruit juices and different teas. As long as it’s hot, spiced, and snuggly, it will do the trick.

The post An Extremely Cozy Cup of Tea appeared first on Retrofitting Vintage.

That’s it. 

A candle, a match, and you’re done. 

Oh, you can get more into it, and some folks really do. They have special terminology, and scent notes, and special snuffers, and wick trimmers, and all that stuff.

Good for them. I absolutely appreciate the joys of nerding out over things that require a bunch of paraphernalia. All my life is a balance between intense thriftiness and a red hot desire for paraphernalia. 

But you don’t need more than a candle and a way to light it, if your main goal is cheer. 

What Kind of Candle?

Any kind!

Fancy candles are not required, but I’m not going to shame you if you want one. I can’t personally manage spending significant money on candles, but that is my hangup, not yours. If you want fancy $80 candles from France, and you will enjoy the heck out of them, more power to you, I say. 

I, on the other hand, have been working my way through the same $3 bag of tea lights from Ikea since 2007. 

That’s not the whole truth. I also have a stash of Paddywax’s Library collection travel candles. They are small, they were very much on sale, and I wanted to know what a Steinbeck candle smelled like, okay? (Answer: More amber, less dust and despair than expected). 

And then there was a brief period where anytime I encountered a candle that was 1.) under $5, 2.) in a pretty glass container, and 3.) claimed to smell like a campfire, I bought it. 

And also, I am a Lady, so that means that I acquire random candles in gift exchanges, along with hand lotion and bath beads. And my mom sent me a care package of beeswax votives this fall. And…

I don’t need anymore candles, is what I’m saying. I’m good. 

But in these dark days, the type of candle is really immaterial. I’m willing to bet you could light one of those candles for sticking on birthday cakes, and feel the same amount of better as you do with something more sophisticated.

What Are You Waiting For?

Many people have candles but never burn them. They fall into that specific kind of hoarding: saving for a special occasion. This is usually a mistake, because a special enough occasion doesn’t come, and then we end up with a bunch of stuff we never use, filling our drawers and cabinets until the stuff is no longer good or we are…dead.

I am firmly in the camp of using your good things instead of letting them collect dust, but honestly, it’s not because I’m particularly elegant. It’s because I’ve missed out on joy via this “saving” behavior.

I should have eaten the good chocolate before it went bad, worn the dress to pieces while it still fit right, burned the candle before it melted in the bottom of the box. No more waiting, get the joy now. (There will be other joys in the future, we have to believe. I suspect that fear that there won’t be plays a big part in the saving stuff, but that’s getting a little much for a post about lighting candles.)

Getting through 2020 is enough of a special occasion, I say. Burn the candle and maybe start wearing all your favorite jewelry, too.

Clearly Not a “Candle Person” Tips For Candle Burning

• You know how you light a candle, and it burns down into a crater, leaving you with a weird shell of wax on the edges? You can prevent this by burning 1 hour per inch of the candle’s diameter, the first time you light it.
• If you’re like me, and have already tunneled your candles because you didn’t know that first thing, you can fix it by making a little collar of aluminum foil around the outside, sticking up over the edge (like a collar around a souffle, she said, relatable) the next time you burn it. It will melt evenly, and sort of reset itself.
  
• Wax stuck in the bottom of your candle holder? Two options: freezing or heating. Freeze the whole thing, and it should pop out pretty well. Or, if your candle holder is wax or metal, carefully pour hot water over it to soften, then it will pop/scrape out quite easily. My favorite tool for this is a butter knife.
  
• Right after sunset is prime candle-lighting time. Instead of thinking, “Dammit, it’s so dark already!” you can think, “Oooh, yes, candle time!”

Vessels

One of the nice things about candles is that while they are already pretty, you can also put them inside other pretty things. 

Thrift stores are a great source both of actual candleholders and random glass containers that will work fine (I like juice glasses), but I’m not doing any thrift shopping at the moment. Recycled glass jars, an old plate, a plain old piece of aluminum foil, these can all do the job.

Of course, there are also very nice options for displaying and containing your candles. My pal Halie makes some beauties. I love the ones that cast shadows. 

Set the Night on Fire

So here’s the first of our cozy challenges: This week, as the days get shorter and shorter, light a candle round about sunset time, and see if it makes you feel any brighter. (Maybe even take a picture and tag me on Instagram or use #AggressiveCoziness to add to the cozy collection?)

The post Candlelight: Take That, Creeping Ennui! appeared first on Retrofitting Vintage.

I live on the Eastern edge of the Central Time Zone, and this time of year, that means one thing:

Darkness. Earlier and earlier.

In a year that has already seen its share of metaphorical darkness, this season feels fraught. We’ve wrapped up our quiet Thanksgivings, and now are looking at the prospect of lonely winter holidays. The sun sets at 4pm now, and it’s all, just…a lot to take. (Though, and I cannot overemphasize this, so much better than a lot of alternatives.)

What Could Make Winter Better?

Winter is a complicated business for midwesterners, I think. On the one hand, we’re proud of our hardiness, snow is pretty, and there’s something impressive about just how cold it can get and how much snow can fall. On the other, no one I know really gets excited about icy roads, shoveling walks, and the aforementioned 4pm sunset. And of course, many of us are physically affected by the loss of light, and seasonal depression is a very real thing. 

I’ve been on a quest the past few years to become a person who likes winter, and it has mostly worked. My prime strategy is to really dig into all the good things about winter. The best thing about winter, I have concluded, is coziness. 

Introducing…Coziness

Despite every lifestyle brand in America trying to commodify the Scandanavian concept of hygge a few years ago, coziness is not something that can be bought. You can buy things that aid in creating coziness, of course, but coziness is really more about intent.

Especially relevant this year, coziness doesn’t require additional people–it’s entirely possible to be very cozy alone. Winter is the coziest season, and that, for me, has become reason enough to like it. 

Candlelight, and soft socks, and hot drinks, and good books are how people have been getting through the dark season since time immemorial. As we approach the Winter Solistice, I’ll be featuring a bunch of my favorite old-fashioned cozy winter activities, along with some recipes and projects. 

The Very Cozy Details

These projects will be:

• Cheap or free
• Social distancing friendly
• Largely independent of modern technology (with a little wiggle room)
• Not directly related to Christmas

I think it will be fun. That’s right. Winter fun, my friends, it’s a thing.

Hard truth: I don’t know if it’s going to work this year. I have been using a lot of my “it’s not cabin fever if you do it on purpose” strategies all year long, and it’s possible that I’ve worn them out. We’ll see. 

So join me on this quest. If it works, we’ll reach the Solstice in fairly okay spirits, with a few more cozy skills, and with greater cozy style, prepared for the rest of the winter, as we creep towards brighter days.

If it doesn’t, at least you still had some hot cocoa, right?

The post Aggressively Cozy: How to Snuggle In and Make the Dark Days Bright appeared first on Retrofitting Vintage.

Somehow, it’s already July, after the longest/shortest three month period ever. With everything that’s happened and happening in the world, I just haven’t had the heart to write about…anything.

Briefest of updates: The March Housewife Experiment was largely successful. I stopped writing about it in the early coronavirus days, but I did keep it up in practice, for the most part.

I liked the routine, and I loved that my apartment was never dirty. Some of the regular cleaning was a bit much. I don’t know that I need to clean the top of the fridge every week, really. I also never fit every recommended task into a single week, but the attempt was satisfying.

As we head deeper into summer, I will likely lose whatever remained of my ambition. This is what happens when it gets really hot out, pandemic or no pandemic. I think reinstating those daily routines might be very helpful for staying functional. I’ll let you know.

Speaking of staying functional…it’s hard, right? I have absolutely fallen into the trap of constantly checking social media. This means I spend all day learning about new instances of people suffering and the triumphs of injustice. At best, I can channel this into action. At worst, I just stare, and scroll, and stare, and scroll, while feeling my blood pressure creep higher and higher. So I’m trying to find the balance between “informed” and “constantly incensed.”

One of the keys to that balance is the daily rituals and tasks of domesticity. Cooking meals, and making things, and getting dressed, and cleaning up…I suspect this is a large part of how humans across history have kept it together when everything falls apart.

In the past months, I avoided writing here because the stuff I cover seems so small in the face of the world in this moment. But it’s really not so inconsequential–it occupies much of our lives. Moreover, the “home stuff” is what keeps many of us going through the hard work of addressing the bigger picture. It’s not necessarily escapism, it might be that (ugh, buzzword) self-care we’re all trying to practice.

What’s keeping you grounded these days?

The post Carrying On appeared first on Retrofitting Vintage.

We’ve talked before about how fresh produce is a beat-the-clock race for a lot of smaller households. Fresh vegetables are important, but they do turn into sludge faster than many of us can get through them. If you want to win at produce, you need some food preservation strategies. One of the easiest of these is freezing vegetables.

Frozen vegetables are very nutritious and usually affordable. Unfortunately, issues in the supply chain during this pandemic have made storebought frozen vegetables a bit of a hot (heh) commodity. The first time I went to Aldi during the early, early days of COVID-19 warnings, the freezer case was completely empty. It was startling. Tumbleweeds could have rolled through, unimpeded.

Since then, my local market has consistently had a few things, but not much variety. I’m trying to cut down even further on my grocery trips, which isn’t a problem except for the aforementioned produce issue. So it’s time for DIY Frozen Vegetables.

Most frozen vegetables benefit from a simple process–blanch, shock, drain, freeze. You can also cook them before freezing, but I prefer the versatility of a plain vegetable product. (Note: Tomatoes, winter squash, onions, and peppers don’t need blanching).

So here’s how you do it.

Freezing Vegetables: An Informal Guide

Unlike canning, freezing vegetables requires very little special safety information or equipment. Observe basic kitchen sanitation and you’ll be covered. (Wash your hands!)

You will need:

• Fresh vegetables
• A large pot
• Freezer bags or other containers (I like quart-sized)
• A strainer basket, colander, slotted spoon, or sense of adventure and ingenuity

1. Wash

Fill your sink with cool water, and swish the vegetables around. Rinse and drain.

2. Blanch

Blanching stops enzymes that degrade the quality of your veggies, even when they’re frozen. It’s very easy.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

Put the vegetables into the boiling water. A strainer basket is very useful here, but you can use tongs, a colander, or a slotted spoon.

Leave the vegetables in the water for 1-2 minutes (see notes) until wilted. Meanwhile, fill your sink with cold water. Throw a couple of ice cubes in to make it very cold.

3. Shock

Take the vegetables out of the hot water and immediately immerse them in the cold water. This will stop them from continuing to cook.

4. Drain

Remove the vegetables from the water, drain thoroughly. After allowing them to drip dry in the strainer for a bit, I transfer them to a towel-lined cookie sheet for extra drying.

5. Package

Label your freezer bag with the date and the vegetable. Fill the freezer bag to the marked line. Press out all air and seal. Put the package in the freezer. Voila, you’ve won in the race against both produce and time.

Notes

1. Honey, I Shrunk the Greens

Greens lose a lot of volume when you blanch them. For example, my two big bags of spinach filled the sink when raw, but cooked down to two quarts.

2. Blanch Time Varies

Greens are quick to blanch, other vegetables take a little more time. Check out the chart at the bottom of this page from the Center for Home Food Preservation for specifics.

3. Frozen Food Does Not Keep Forever

I know, I know, I wanted to completely conquer time, too. But freezing food doesn’t preserve it indefinitely. Most frozen vegetables are good for 8-12 months.

You Can Do It!

With a little time an effort, you can reduce your food waste and stretch your groceries between trips to the store. Stay safe and nourished, friends.

PS– Need ideas for what to do with greens? I’ve got a few.

The post The Thrifty Housewife: Freeze Your Greens! appeared first on Retrofitting Vintage.

And, despite a mild obsession with 20th-century homemaking, I almost never use it.

I didn’t grow up cleaning with bleach, I hate the smell, and it’s always seemed…scary. It’s poisonous and corrosive, both things I generally try to avoid.

But we live in interesting times, my friends, and the coronavirus has caused me to investigate, and ultimately, change my position. I decided to learn how to disinfect my household with bleach.

“But Vinegar is a Natural Disinfectant!”

That’s true! Vinegar kills a lot of stuff. Just not all the stuff. It’s not the best at killing viruses, and in this instance, I am not prepared to mess around.

I love my vinegar and baking soda as much as the next person, but when we’re talking sheer germ-killing power, they really can’t compare with the power of bleach.

Usually, there’s an argument to be made against over-disinfecting, as that is the way to super germs and such, but in this case, disinfecting is warranted and recommended.

What is Bleach?

Household bleach is a sodium hypochlorite solution. It’s made from a mix of salt and water that is transformed by a direct current of electricity to produce chlorine and sodium hydroxide, which then react to make bleach. When it is used, it eventually reverts back to salt and water. (That’s why using bleach properly isn’t harmful to groundwater.)

Does Bleach Kill Coronavirus?

Yes, it does. The CDC says that unexpired, properly diluted household bleach kills the virus on nonporous surfaces. This is good news, because it can live quite awhile on such surfaces otherwise.

During an epidemic (or just during a normal cold and flu season) it’s wise to frequently disinfect the high-touch areas of your home like doorknobs, handles, light switches, faucets, toilets, chairs, counters, and table surfaces.

Bleach Use For Beginners: Precautions

Bleach is dangerous, which is why you should follow some commonsense precautions.

• Don’t mix it with…anything besides cool water. Especially do not mix it with ammonia, which will result in poison gas that can kill you.
• Read and follow all instructions on the container.
• Obviously, don’t consume it.
• Keep it off your skin, and away from your eyes, mouth, and nose.
• Store it away from children, preferably somewhere locked
• Wear gloves when handling
• Open a window, or otherwise ventilate the area
• Label the container you mix your solution in (America’s Housekeeping Book suggests over-labeling anything poisonous in your home, including putting a bell around the bottleneck or a pin in the cork, so you can even tell it’s poisonous in the dark!)
• Dilute, dilute, dilute.
• Keep it off your clothes (except for sanctioned laundry use), it will ruin them.

Getting To It: Cleaning Surfaces

First off, you can’t actually clean with bleach. You can disinfect (and remove stains). That’s the superpower. So first, clean the surface you’re going to disinfect with soap and water. Rinse well, to avoid accidentally mixing chemicals.

Step 1: Dilution

Determine what kind of bleach you’re dealing with. For general purposes, we’re talking unscented, not super-concentrated or otherwise special, unexpired chlorine bleach.

For killing coronavirus on nonporous surfaces, the CDC recommends a ration of 1/3 cup (5 TB) bleach per gallon of water, or 4 teaspoons bleach per quart of water. Other general cleaning recommendations suggest up to half a cup of bleach per gallon of water. I’m going to err on the side of less/what the CDC tells me does the job.

More is not more in this case–follow the dilution instructions and the germs will die.

Step 2: Clean the Surface

Wash the (nonporous) surface with soap and water. Rinse with water thoroughly. Dry.

Step 3: Disinfect with Bleach

Cover the surface with the bleach solution (I use it in a clean spray bottle), allow the it to sit for about five minutes.

Step 4: Rinse with Water

Self-explanatory? Rinse the surface with water.

Step 5: Allow to Air Dry

The air drying is important because it stops you from re-contaminating the thing you just disinfected.

Sanitizing Nonporous Objects

Okay, so what about plastic toys your toddlers are mouthing and drinking glasses that sick people used and the like? Mix two (2) teaspoons with a gallon of cool water, soak the items for two minutes, then remove and air dry, no rinsing necessary.

Go Forward with Confidence

This is a weird time. There’s a lot that we don’t know, and much to be anxious about. I’m finding that cultivating simple knowledge of how to do things to protect myself and my loved ones is grounding, and maybe you will, too.

The post Using Bleach Like a 1950s Housewife appeared first on Retrofitting Vintage.

Overall, my perception is starting to change and I think I’m beginning to see things like my tidy-person spouse does naturally. Case in point, I looked at this sink, and thought, unironically, “The dishes are really starting to pile up, ugh!”

The Greatest Housewife Triumph

I didn’t keep a daily log this week, but Wednesday was the big day. That’s the day in which I swept the living room, and finally, finally, it didn’t look like I was sweeping it for the first time ever.

Seriously, a week of daily sweeping, and every day there was the same-sized pile of dirt. It was starting to make me irrationally angry. Where did it come from? What was this nonsense? Was my broom malfunctioning, and if so, how was that even possible?

Then, on Day 8 of weekday sweeping, the dust pile shrunk. It’s actually maintenance cleaning now. I am overjoyed.

Other Observations

• My apron pocket is full of hairpins because I find them everywhere. Did you hear that sound? It’s my mother laughing. One of the first things she observed when I moved out of her house at age 21 was that she suddenly stopped finding little nests of hairpins on unexpected surfaces. It turns out I hadn’t lost them as I thought, instead they were evenly scattered over the apartment.
• Speaking of hair, it’s half of what you’ll be sweeping up for the first eight days of regular cleaning.
• I can’t find my radiator brush, and it’s supremely frustrating because nothing is as good for cleaning radiators as this single-purpose tool. Where the heck could it be? Side note: I hate cleaning radiators.

Love and Dusting

It’s a weird and anxiety-filled time. COVID-19 concerns are putting a lot of us inside, changing our routines, and scrambling our plans. I’m finding having a schedule and daily tasks to be good for my mental health, and this is not a bad time to have a really clean home, so the housewife experiment continues. Love and wellness to all of you. Wash your hands, stay home as much as possible, etc.

The post Housewife Week 2: Report appeared first on Retrofitting Vintage.

Things are getting sparkling around here. I did the basic daily cleaning (dust/sweep/tidy) every weekday and did the deeper weekly cleaning in the kitchen and living room. AHB suggests I should be able to deep clean every room in two days, but that wasn’t quite do-able. I suspect that once every room has been deep cleaned, future cleaning sessions will be shorter.

The Week in a Glance

Monday

Today went pretty well. I was somewhat sleep-deprived, but I kept up a good pace. I did the basic room cleaning, along with three loads of laundry. Highlights: My landlord (who was painting the hallway) admired both my apron and my industry doing laundry. Lowlights: I was pretty tired, and the midcentury dependence on nicotine started to make a lot of sense to me.

Tuesday

Today did not go quite as well. I got up in time to make Bob’s lunch (reaction: bemused), and visit with him before he went to work. Then I did my basic room cleaning, and then…crashed. Too sleepy to continue, I took a nap on top of my beautifully-made bed, haunted by the disgusted ghosts of 1950s housewives. Luckily, today’s tasks were ironing and marketing, and I only had two shirts to iron and live a block from the grocery store. I was back on track pretty quickly. Highlights: It’s nice to chat with my partner at the beginning of the day. Lowlights: Napping is not very industrious. Also, I now understand how effing great the invention of radio and tv were to the housewives of yore.

Wednesday

My husband worked from home, and it threw off my game, y’all. He was around all day, observing me and having a distracting cute face. I did the basic daily cleaning, and then devoted the day to organizing my bedroom drawers. You wouldn’t think that would take as long as it did. It sure did. Highlights: My underwear drawer looks like a magazine photo in an article about perfect drawers. I also made a delicious zucchini bake. Lowlights: Discovering how dusty the inside of a drawer can be.

Thursday

Let me start by admitting I got up in time to see Bob off, and then…went back to bed. Those disgusted 1950s housewife ghosts continued to haunt me, but it’s okay because when I got back up, I breezed through daily cleaning and went straight into deep cleaning the living room. I dusted, I washed, I took all the tchotchkes off the shelves and dusted/washed them individually. I washed the windows, I cleaned the baseboards, I dusted the plants. Highlights: Were there highlights? I don’t remember, I’m too exhausted. Lowlights: I didn’t make dinner, because I ran out of time.

Friday

Today, I truly cleaned the kitchen. The top of the refrigerator was exactly as horrifying as I anticipated. The bottoms of the produce drawers were also pretty grimy. In all, it was satisfying, but I demanded we go out to dinner because I didn’t want to besmirch the kitchen’s new-found glory. Highlights: I learned a lot of good trivia from the You Must Remember This podcast. Lowlights: I saved the inside of the oven for another day, and now it’s lurking, waiting for me.

Findings and Conclusions

So far, I like this housewife thing more than I anticipated. This weekend, we had company over and I didn’t clean anything to prepare–everything was already done. I enjoyed that feeling very much. My biggest issue is my natural night owl ways, which make staying awake after Bob leaves for work difficult. I’m going to try to go to bed earlier this week, so those disgusted housewife ghosts leave me alone.

The post Housewife Week 1: The Report appeared first on Retrofitting Vintage.

No one can be dogmatic about the daily cleaning of various rooms in the house. So many things influence the amount of work that can be done–the quantity of dust or soot in the air, for example, the philosophy of first things first, the number of rooms that must be cleaned, the size of the family, the age of the children, and the help or lack of it that the homemaker has.

…

…[W]e set before you an ideal. How nearly you can approach this ideal, especially as to daily cleaning, we cannot know.

Me neither, AHB. Me. Neither.

Just as it would be silly to take Martha Stewart as the prototypical homemaker of today, looking to the home management books and magazines as an “authentic” guide to what every homemaker did in the mid 20th century is a mistake. As our pal, the AHB tells us, we’re talking about ideals. The mere fact that all these manuals exist speaks to the fact that “how to housewife” was not universal knowledge.

Still, we can learn a lot about a society from its ideals. Here are the basics of the daily cleaning ideal that America’s Housekeeping Book promotes, minus things like instructions for your kerosene stove or managing before the advent of garbage bags.

The Daily Cleaning List

• Open windows in bedrooms, for the free circulation of air.
• Throw back the bedcovers, including the top sheet.
• Clear away breakfast things after breakfast.
• Wash breakfast dishes, put away food
• Give all rooms regular daily cleaning:
  • Living room, bedrooms, dining room, etc.
    • Open windows
    • Tidy up the small articles in the room
    • Gather things that belong somewhere else on a tray, collect and remove garbage.
    • Dust as necessary, starting at the top of the room (window sills, mantels, tops of bookcases, etc.) progressing downwards, including radiator covers.
    • Brush upholstery as needed
    • Sweep/dust mop/vacuum
    • Final touches: straighten draperies, return empty waste basket, close windows if you want to.
  • Bathrooms:
    • Open windows
    • Tidy up small articles in the room
    • Gather up soiled linens, take out anything that doesn’t belong in the room, roll up bathmat or rug.
    • Wipe mirror.
    • Wipe tile behind sink and tub.
    • Clean bathtub and metal fixtures.
    • Clean toilet bowl with brush, outside of toilet with dedicated cloth (uh, I’m gonna use paper towel in this case).
    • Clean sink, including base and soap holder.
    • Straighten towels and washcloths, replacing twice a week.
    • Sweep floor.
    • Replace mat or rug, close windows if you want to.
  • Kitchen:
    • Open the windows (are you sensing a theme?)
    • Rinse and stack waiting dishes, pots, and pans
    • Check and reorganize foods; put away
    • Collect all refuse, put in garbage can
    • Wipe off top of the refrigerator and all work surfaces
    • Wash dishes
    • Wipe off surface of range, clean spills from drip pans and oven
    • Dry damp work surfaces
    • Dust radiator or register
    • Take out garbage
    • Clean sink, rinse out dishcloth or mop, hang outdoors if possible.
    • Switch spent dish towels for fresh ones.

Hmm. Mmmhmm. Well, then.

I must confess this is significantly more daily cleaning than I usually do.

We’re on Day 2 of this experiment, and I’ve done most of it for the past two mornings. I haven’t cleaned the top of the fridge or the radiators, yet, but I’ve been tidying and dusting and sweeping every morning. It takes less time than I would have guessed, but more than I typically spend as a 21st-century mediocre housewife.

Next I must ask: IS EVERYONE ELSE CLEANING THIS MUCH? Do I think it’s a fascinating look into mid-century folklife, and everyone else is like, “That’s just basic adulting, Megan.” ??? I am not 100% sure, and it’s freaking me out. Please reassure me in the comments.

The post Daily Cleaning: Housewife Ideals appeared first on Retrofitting Vintage.

Woohoo, it’s March! The time we take to remember that women have existed for all of history.

Seriously, we’ve been here THE WHOLE TIME.

Generally, Women’s History Month focuses on the women who were remarkably ahead of their time. The Elizabeth Cady Stantons and Harriet Tubmans of the world. But here at Retrofitting Vintage, we’re leaving the luminaries to actual historians, and focusing on an everyday woman of the mid-20th century.

That’s right, we’re talking about housewives.

And how shall we do so?

Why, with an ill-advised guinea pig journalism approach, of course. That is, in fact, how I roll. That’s right, it’s 1950s Housewife Month.

Look, It’s Already the First Disclaimer!

Let’s take a second to acknowledge that when we’re talking about a time “when women weren’t in the workforce” we’re mostly talking about married white women who weren’t poor. The stereotypical “1950s housewife” is a middle-class white woman.

Throughout history, many women had jobs. Jobs like: servant, store clerk, laundress, factory-worker, seamstress, farmer, school teacher, childcare worker, and more. The thing about these women is that they were largely poor or working-class and/or of color. When we talk about “women joining the workforce” in the 1970s and beyond, we really mean (largely) white women getting a crack at jobs that were previously held by (mostly) white men.

So my “ordinary” mid-century woman, while probably my own historical counterpart, was certainly not “everywoman.” Despite how large the 1950s housewife looms in the popular consciousness, she’s far from a standard of the “Way Women Were.”

The Goals of This Experiment

My goals are not terribly lofty. They are:

• To see if I can maintain the general schedule of a mid-century housewife
• To determine if there’s anything valuable from this lifestyle that I want to keep in my 21st-century life
• To celebrate the majority of the women who came before me, who, like most other people, didn’t discover anything, or revolutionize anything, or do anything particularly heroic, and are still worthy of respect and remembrance
• To clean my damn domicile

How It Will Work

Here’s the basic schedule I’ve developed from a variety of sources, including my favorite, the 1941 edition of America’s Housekeeping Book.

Everyday:

• Prepare and serve breakfast
• Light pick up and cleaning of rooms
• Daily forenoon tasks
• Lunch and dinner preparation
• Clean up kitchen
• Daily afternoon tasks
• Rest, relaxation, correspondence
• Finish dinner
• Clean up after dinner

Well, that doesn’t seem too bad.

Until you dig into what those “daily morning and afternoon tasks” entail.

• Monday: Laundry
• Tuesday: Ironing and Marketing
• Wednesday: Projects like silver polishing or sewing/mending
• Thursday: Thorough room-cleaning, part 1
• Friday: Thorough room-cleaning, part 2
• Saturday: Special weekend food preparation

The Details

This is a fun project for Women’s History Month, not a historical reenactment. Here are the rules:

• I’ve picked 1945 as the somewhat arbitrary date for making decisions because if I were an actual 1950s housewife, at the ripe old age of 35 I’d probably have gotten started (i.e. learned how to manage my household and purchased my long-lived appliances) in the 1940s.
• Materials and tools used can’t have been impossible in 1945. My broom is made of plastic, but it’s still identifiably a broom. If I had a robot vacuum, that would be out. (I don’t have a single robot). There’s nothing I can do about the washing machine.
• Foods cooked should be made of whole ingredients that were available somewhere in the world in 1945, but don’t have to follow mainstream mid-century recipes or tastes, because I cannot live an entire month cooking WASP food, I just can’t.
• My spouse only has to participate as much as he wants to, ie. he does not have to eat a cooked breakfast, pack a lunch I made, or not watch TV during dinner, just because I am doing a goofy blog project.

Look, Another Disclaimer!

I’m not the first person on the Internet to attempt this kind of experiment. Jen But Never Jenn led the way 10 years ago, and Retro Housewife Goes Green has a lot of great stuff on 1950s style housekeeping. Check it all out.

If you’re a full-time homemaker, especially one with kids, you may not be that impressed with my experiment. Good for you, you sound very industrious.

What About Your Job?

I work from home, and I’ll slide my freelance writing jobs in where the mid-century housewife would do things like serve on a club committee, volunteer, or, you know, take care of her children. I think it will work within the schedule but will adjust if it doesn’t.

Arguably, I am a part-time housewife, just not a very good one. My husband works full-time outside of our home, I work part-time inside it. He is a much better housekeeper than I, and does a lot more general tidying and laundering, despite having less time. He doesn’t complain about this, but I know it’s not fair and feel like a bit of a heel. Maybe this experiment will turn me into an actual clean person? Stranger things have happened.

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