KEEP HOUSE CLEAN VS. HOUSE CLEANING

“The modern housewife keeps her house clean rather than house cleans[,] giving each room a rather thorough cleaning as often as may be necessary. For this cleaning the following program is suggested:

1.     Dust bric-a-brac and clean metals. Place them all together and cover them up

2.     Dust wood furniture and vacuum-clean overstuffed furniture. Remove the smaller pieces to another room if possible. Cover those which remain. In bedroom take off bedding and thoroughly clean spring and mattress, make up again and cover

3.     Clean rugs with a vacuum cleaner and roll them up

4.     Remove portieres and draperies and clean them on a flat surface with a vacuum cleaner

5.     Dust ceiling and walls

6.     Dust wood trim, doors, and surbase

7.     Clean windows and mirrors

8.     Dust pictures

9.     Dust lighting fixtures, wash globes

10.  Clean and polish floor

11. Replace everything”

-- from the Rumford Book on Home Management, c. 1920

I don’t know. Any way you look at keeping the house clean, it sounds like house cleaning to me. The biggest challenges in the above program would be removal and re-hanging of the drapes and rolling up the carpets, which most surely means lifting or moving some furniture. Just how often is “as often as may be necessary?” I would perform those heavy chores no oftener than quarterly, while the rest I would divide between monthly and weekly. And just how am I going to fit this into my weekly schedule, published in the previous post.

But, when I think of housecleaning, I tend to think of cleaning the whole house, or even a whole room, at one time, instead of dividing the work into doable tasks. Perhaps I should alter my imaginary cleaning regimen so that I deep clean one room each week (see Thursday), and if I did that, eventually my house would be maintained in a state of cleanliness. That’s probably the point.

My mother told me that when she was growing up – and that would be the ‘20s – she was to clean the living room weekly on Saturday. She said she moved the furniture out from the wall and vacuumed under it routinely. (This may have been Grandma’s expectation, but Mother didn’t say so.) One day a workman came to the house for some purpose and the living room furniture was moved. The workman complimented my grandmother, saying that he had never seen such a clean home. Grandma beamed at the compliment but didn’t mention that Mother had done the work. Mother saw this as a slight and vowed to herself that she would always give credit where credit was due. Mother was most generous in this regard.

[The picture is of my maternal grandparents’ home in Orofino, Idaho, dated August 28, 1921. Grandmother Nina Portfors (35) stands in the background. The children are Francis (13) and Dorothy (11). Whatever the scenario, it seems to be a typical day. Grandma appears to be wearing an apron and dust cap. About five years prior to this picture, my grandfather opened a Ford garage – the right place at the right time – which means this was a good era for the family. This house continued to be the Portfors family home until it was sold about 1965. Note the hill to right of center. Today you can see the Gilbert Grade there, leading to the homestead of my paternal grandparents.] KW

VINTAGE COOK WARE

Back in the day, when I was a newlywed, a few pieces of Corning bake ware came my way. At that time, Corning was fond of putting its famous “cornflower” design on its otherwise plain white cookware, and I was never a fan of that silly little flower. I guess Mike’s ex-wife wasn’t a fan either because I found several pieces in his cupboard when I took over the kitchen. And we gained several others as wedding gifts.

My upbringing taught that I should use what I have, respecting the giver’s gift, and not complain or replace. Mother’s kitchen was a hodge-podge of this and that, and I suspect this was true of many kitchens of the mid-century era. Mother valued each piece for its specific purpose and how she came to own it. She added new bake ware seldom and when she did, she didn’t get rid of the old. She also didn’t think in terms of matching pieces. It’s hard for me to realize that I might actually have a kitchen of wonderful things that I love instead of mismatched pieces.

To this day I still use some “cornflower” casserole dishes. I also regularly use avocado green bowls from the same era. You know what they say – the longer you keep it, the harder it is to get rid of it. Sometimes when I examine my mostly valueless stuff, I hear Mike or Frank of American Pickers asking, “Is that something you could part with, Kathy?” To add to my dilemma, I know if I take my “cornflower” pieces to the rummage sale, they will be purchased immediately, along with old Tupperware.

A month or so ago, Chris posted a picture of her pretty loaves of bread in Corning bread pans. Those sturdy pans caught my eye because mine are – well, not so nice. I confess that the last ones I bought came from the dollar store. Chris and I spoke briefly about the cornflower design. I think she said she had gotten rid of much of her “cornflower” but kept these nice bread pans. To me, the design is not so distasteful on pans that aren’t apt to be set on the table.

Until I went to make some pre-holiday “Chex Mix” at the farmhouse, I had forgotten all about this very nice Corning roasting pan, similar in design to Chris’ bread pans. This pan, one of the rare late additions my mother made to her kitchen collection, is the perfect size for so many uses, from Chex mix to roasting a turkey. Mother gave it to me because I agreed to roast the Thanksgiving turkey when she moved from the family home.

Looking at today’s Corning Ware, I guess Corning got the message – probably years ago -- because the casseroles and pans are still available but now without the design and called “French White.” I like it. Perhaps I’ll find my way to matching cook ware yet. KW

VINTAGE HOME MANAGEMENT

We may live without poetry, music and art,

We may live without conscience and live without heart,

We may live without friends, we may live without books,

But civilized man cannot live without cooks.

  From The Enterprising Housekeeper, 1906

A SUPER WOMAN OF YESTERYEAR

The John Dobson Family circa 1871

My favorite retro era is the 1930s through the 1940s. It seems to me that's when the concept of home management was at its peak – when it was studied as a system that could be taught for the benefit of the individual and therefore society. As the '40s became the '50s and '60s, we began to question that "a woman's place is in the home" and women began to express their right to find fulfillment outside the home, to have careers apart from or in addition to home and family – and rightly so. The wrong was that home management as a career was de-valued to the point that we stopped teaching, developing, and encouraging it. Some of us feel the loss of that. Some of us have discovered we can still find it – through the written word (books and letters) and through each other. The subject of domestic encouragement is really rather timeless in nature. Modern conveniences may relieve us of much drudgery, but the value of the home to society remains.

Here's an anecdote about my paternal great-grandmother, Lucy Winans Dobson, from my Grandmother Ina Dobson's unpublished memoir. Lucy was Ina's mother-in-law, of course. To my knowledge they never met. Lucy lived near Deloit, Iowa, with her husband, John.

"John Dobson was a good and kind man," Ina writes, "and was often called upon by the native Americans to settle little matters between them and the settlers. One chief and his wife called at the house to do honor to Grandpa John. At the time there were twins in the old cradle, Julian and Junius. Before this there had been twin girls in the old cradle, Julia and Mary. This seemed a great thing to the chief -- that this woman had born not one but two sets of twins, and he thought Grandma Lucy a wonderful woman. He offered to trade his spouse and I don't know what else for Grandma! We do not know by what diplomacy Grandpa John got out of this situation.

Julia Ann & Mary Jane; Julian & Junius

"Grandmother Lucy was a handsome woman, a great manager and worker. She raised lots of chickens and geese and had eggs and butter to sell, as well as some garden stuff. She made clothes for the family, and even the boys wore home-made clothes till they were in their teens. Grandfather raised sheep and used to take the wool to Peoria, Illinois, to trade for 'full cloth.' This was a heavy grade of wool cloth used for suits for men and boys, from which Grandma made clothes for the boys."

By the way, the two sets of twins were just four of the ten children that Lucy bore between 1856 and 1876. The girl twins were born in 1857 while the boys, Julian (my grandfather) and Junius were born in 1864.

Family generation gaps are certainly interesting, aren't they? My great-grandfather John Dobson was born in 1834, my grandfather Julian Dobson in 1864, my dad in 1904, and I in 1949. My half-sister Harriet's first great-grandchild was born in April of this year, just weeks before Harriet turned 80, while my half-brother Chuck at 74 has great-grandchildren who are half grown. Some people, like me, never knew their great-grandparents. They were gone by at least 20 years when I was born. 

[Recently through this blog I became acquainted with Leah, a shirt-tail relative, who provided the family portrait of the John Dobson Family from her genealogy research. I had never seen the family portrait but had the photo of the twins taken in 1871. Together, Leah and I worked through some errors in dating and identification of the photo. The baby is not Lawrence, who was born and died in 1868, but Cora, born in 1870. See the cute little topknot tied with ribbon?] KW