45 + 2 = 47

My scale and I are friends again. 2 more lbs. are gone and I weighed in this morning at 147 for a total weight loss of 47 lbs. since April. Can I make my mini goal of 145 by November 7? I'm sure going to try! I've been beating off the cravings for comfort food like crazy this week. Every time I worried about the lump in my breast and the tests coming up on Monday, my thoughts turned right to food. And the richest, fattiest, sweetest, most carb-laden foods you can imagine. None of those things is going to fix the problem that's worrying me, though. I know the same problem will be there still when I've cleaned my plate and digested all those calories --- and where will that get me! There's nothing I hate more than wasting hours of exercise on a snack that doesn't do me any good.

I've made it through six days now without caffeine. Almost. I slipped up last night during happy hour with some friends. I've gotten used to sipping a diet cola while they drink their beers and panicked at the last minute when I remembered that the diet cola would have caffeine in it. What's left to order besides a glass of water? I doubt most bars or restaurants stock any caffeine-free sodas. Maybe I should've tried ordering a sparkling water. This place we frequent is kind of a dive, so I'm not even sure if they'd have even that! I'll have to come up with a new solution for next time.

My special focus for the last few days has been getting my morning housekeeping routine back up to par and that's going well, too. I have to be a little extra disciplined with myself, but it feels good to be back in charge. Of something, anyway!

So there's my progress report on the last few days. Now on to something more exciting... One of my new tasks when I'm giving the living room its weekly cleaning is the care of any upholstered furniture:

Brush upholstery if necessary. Straighten covers. Plump up pillows.

The only brushes I've been using in my housekeeping are the brush attachment on my vacuum - for weekly cleaning of AC/heat registers - and the little brush I use to clean out the tray under my toaster. I do have one upholstered piece in my living room, though, that needs some care. It's a big club chair (with matching ottoman) upholstered in a wine-colored velveteen. This sounds like a topic I'd better do some brushing up on. What does America's Housekeeping Book (1940) have to teach me?

It is an expensive mistake to allow upholstered furniture to become badly soiled. Light surface soil which does accumulate slowly, despite regular cleaning, can be removed from certain fabrics by home methods, but deep soil calls for professional care. Greasy soil and perspiration, if allowed to remain on the fabric, will affect the dye, and there is no remedy except reupholstering or slip-covering to hide the damage.

The necessity for shampooing can be staved off for long intervals by regular care. It is sometimes necessary to brush the exposed surfaces every day with a whisk broom or upholstery brush. At least once a week the correct attachment of the vacuum cleaner should be run slowly over all exposed surfaces. Use the brush attachment for napped upholstery and the suction tool for smooth fabrics. Once a month, or oftener if necessary, a thorough cleaning is in order:

1. Remove all cushions. Clean them on all sides, using the correct attachment of the vacuum cleaner unless they are down-filled (the suction is apt to pull the down through the fabric).

2. Run the vacuum attachment slowly over the entire surface of the chair or davenport, not neglecting the backs, or fabric underneath.

3. Use the slender suction nozzle to get down into all crevices.

4. Replace the cushions.

This sounds like a doable plan. Once a week, I'll hit the "exposed surfaces" of that chair and ottoman with my brush attachment. When the living room moves into my rotation for a more intensive cleaning once a month, I'll give the chair a more thorough cleaning with both vacuum attachments. I can look at things like shampooing the upholstery once I start adding some seasonal chores to my housekeeping.

It occurs to me how bummed the 1940s housewife without a vacuum cleaner must have been as she read this portion of The Manual. There's such a focus in this section on vacuuming technique. The authors just seem to take it for granted that everyone knew exactly how to use a whisk broom or upholstery brush in caring for furniture. If those were the only tools a housewife had at her disposal, she must've felt like she was being left behind as the world on every side of her rushed pell mell into an electric future. Even today, sixty years later, just reading this piece makes me want to go out and invest in a more powerful vacuum cleaner. My little bagless stick vac might be okay for a little light carpet cleaning, but it's certainly not sturdy enough to do any serious damage to dust.

"crushed paper, dry kindling, and logs"

Happily, there's one item among this list of chores for the living room that I don't have to worry about. The hearth may still have been the heart of the typical 1940s living room, but there isn't any in my circa 1989 apartment.

Even for the vintage housewife, a daily cleaning of the fireplace would only have been a job during the season that it was being used. She must have cheered out loud each spring when it was warm enough that a fire in the evenings could be dispensed with. I've been reading the diaries kept by a woman in northern New York in this era. She lived in a farmhouse without either central heat or electricity and the coal stove in her "parlor" was regularly used from about late October/early November until sometime in May. (Imagine the work it took to maintain one of those cast iron coal stoves!)

We have the best of both worlds today. If you have a fireplace in your living room, it's probably something you only use - and have to clean up after - when a fire seems cozy on a chilly evening at home. Here's the "morning after" ritual recommended by The Manual:

Each morning the hearth should be swept and ashes emptied into the ash pit or disposed of safely. A new fire should be laid on the grate, with crushed paper, dry kindling, and logs...

Once or twice a year, special cleaning is necessary to remove smoke stains...

The wood box should be brushed out each time it is to be refilled. If insect life is discovered in it, prompt action should be taken.

And a stern word of caution for houseguests tempted to use the fireplace as a trash can:

Need we say that the fireplace should never be used as a wastebasket or a place to dump the contents of ash trays? When this happens the fireplace is most unsightly when no fire is burning, and a match touched to the litter and debris may create a fire hazard.

Week Forty-seven: The Mission

My sister is headed home to New England tomorrow with Kitten and Poppet. They're off to spend two weeks visiting family and friends - and enjoying some of that crisp autumn weather I'd love a taste of myself! (My babies will be so far away!!!) I've resolved to keep myself busy while they're gone with a whole new mission. It's time to take it back to basics and finally add that living room to my weekly housekeeping routine. The only real housework I've been doing in my living room since starting The Experiment has been to give that room a little daily tidying. It was ten months ago that I began giving the following treatment to my living room every evening before bed:

Put living room in order.

• Open windows top and bottom for free circulation of air.
  
• Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room, such as books, magazines, music, games, victrola records, cards, etc.
  
• Gather up on tray to be taken out: used ash trays, articles belonging in other rooms, plants or flowers to be tended. Collect trash in waste basket.
  
• Carry out tray.

Remember those chores? They're super easy when you live in a small apartment and you're only home two days a week! It only takes me about five minutes each night and makes the living room a much nicer place to wake up to in the morning... Well, it's time to expand that routine a bit. Once each weekend - probably on Sunday afternoons - I'm going to give the living room some weekly attention.

Now, the authors of America's Housekeeping Book (1945) suggest that the housewife give each room in the house a daily cleaning shortly after breakfast. Once a week, she should return to each room and clean it more thoroughly. (The day of the week doesn't matter very much, but they do recommend once in passing that living rooms be cleaned on Fridays.) Since I work outside the home full time, I can't clean each room every day. Instead, I aim to give each room a weekly cleaning (with the chores recommended to the '40s housewife on a daily basis) and then - once a month - do the chores recommended to the '40s housewife on a weekly basis, rotating between the four rooms in my apartment so that each room gets the white glove treatment once a month. Without further ado, here's my new barebones once-a-week housekeeping routine for the living room:

1. Bring in cleaning equipment: hearthbroom (if not kept at fireplace), carpet sweeper or vacuum cleaner (according to need), dust mop, cleaning basket.

2. In season, clean out fireplace, lay fire, sweep hearth.

3. Dust high objects if necessary: mantels, high shelves, window frames and sills, tops of bookcases, secretary, highboys, etc.

4. Dust radiator covers if necessary.

5. Brush upholstery if necessary. Straighten covers. Plump up pillows.

6. Dust furniture and low objects if necessary. Treat stains or blemishes as they occur.

7. Dust exposed wood flooring with dust mop if necessary. Use carpet sweeper or vacuum cleaner on rugs or carpets.

8. Final touches: Straighten draperies, shades, curtains, etc. Take out cleaning equipment and waste basket. Return clean ash trays, accessories, flowers and waste basket. Close windows if desired.

29 + 4 = 33

The halfway mark (155 lbs.) is finally in sight! Just close enough that - barring disaster - I can glimpse it at a few weeks' distance. I weighed in at 161 this morning, with a loss of 4 lbs. this past week. I was pretty nervous during those first few days when I'd worked my abs too hard and couldn't do most of my limbering and stretching exercises, but I was super stringent about my eating to try and compensate - and it paid off handsomely. (My abdomen is feeling back to normal again, thank goodness.) Here's to cracking into the 150s when I step on that scale next Saturday morning!

One of the areas in my kitchen that isn't really addressed in The Manual's daily or weekly housekeeping routines is the breakfast table.

Here at Casa Jitterbug, mine is also a lunch and dinner table. I don't have a separate dining room, so my only table sits at one end of my kitchen. It's a round wooden table that seats four --- though the leaves that make it round can be dropped when not in use, making it more of a rectangle. Most of the time I leave a vintage tablecloth on top. It adds such a punch of color to my kitchen! I'd like to purchase a few more of these cloths so that I can rotate them seasonally and give the kitchen a different look from time to time. Since there's usually only one person seated at my table, I have it positioned against one wall with a 1950 Zenith radio opposite my chair. A small blue footed stand holds whatever fruit I've got in the house which doesn't need refrigeration. These days, I leave my vitamins and blood pressure medication sitting right there at the middle of the table. It isn't ideal. I'd love to keep them in the cupboard or something, but it keeps me from forgetting to take 'em if they're right there in front of me when I sit down to eat my breakfast.

It's a lovely spot. A cozy, cheery place for a meal I've worked hard to prepare. But my current kitchen cleaning routines don't include any kind of maintenance for this part of the kitchen. I've been sweeping the floor underneath the table on a weekly basis and washing it on a monthly basis, but what about the table and chairs? What about the tablecloth? How about the items I leave on my table? Every breakfast nook needs a little attention... I took a look at The Manual's routines for care of the dining room, but they were so focused on care of upholstery, furnishings, carpets, and "buffet appointments" that they didn't seem to apply very well to this particular situation.

So let's break it down. My kitchen table, first and foremost, is not just a dining table. It's a work surface. Tuesday evenings find me folding the cloth back so that I can set up my tabletop ironing board and work my way through a basket of clothes. (That table's the perfect height for ironing!) On Fridays or Saturdays, I fold the cloth back while I'm cleaning the kitchen so that I can store small items there while I'm cleaning the range and counter tops. If I have any baking to do that involves kneading or rolling or cutting, my tablecloth is whisked away to a safe place while I use the table as my breadboard.

Well, I guess this answers one of my questions. One of my weekly duties in the kitchen has long been to "Wipe... all work surfaces in need of cleaning." If my kitchen table is just as important a work surface as my counters and range top, it too needs a weekly washing. Here are some instructions on the care of wooden furniture which might be of help:

Make a light lather, using mild soap and lukewarm water. Wring a soft cloth out of this lather and go over a small area. Rinse with a cloth wrung out of clear water. Dry with a soft cloth.

The Manual goes on with instructions on polishing wooden furniture, but I'm not going to use any polish which might damage the tablecloth. The table has a good sturdy finish, so a weekly washing should suffice. I think that'll do for now. I'm headed into the kitchen in a few minutes to begin my work in there for the week. Next week, I'll add another step in the care of my breakfast nook to my housekeeping routine.

Soap Opera

What on earth did people do when there were shortages of soap during the war?

If there's one thing that's become absolutely clear to me with these nightly baths, it's that I'm going thru a lot more soap than I was in the shower. One bar lasts me about ten baths before it breaks into pieces and has to be recycled to the soap dish beside my sink. Now imagine if I had a family of six (considered average in the '40s). My household would probably be going thru a bar of soap every other day. Unless I had a passel of little boys, that is! I know there are tricks to making a bar stretch. Like turning the little bits and pieces into a jellied soap. But even a few tricks like that won't keep your family squeaky clean. The only thing I can figure is that folks just got used to being a little less clean than they'd like to be...

Another thing I've noticed about my baths is the bathtub gets grimier and in need of a cleaning much more quickly than it used to. It no longer surprises me that the authors of America's Housekeeping Book (1945) recommended that the tub be thoroughly cleaned each and every day. Here in a single-person household, mine could probably use a good scrubbing twice a week.

Though the vintage articles on bathing I quoted from last week were split on whether a woman should soak in the hot water before - or after - doing her washing and exfoliating, I've fallen firmly into the before camp. The water is at its hottest and most likely to take the knots out of your shoulders. And it's not all cloudy with soap scum and, well, probably dead skin cells. If I waited to lie back and relax until after I got myself all cleaned up, I'd be soaking in my own grime! Definitely, definitely a before kinda girl.

All told, my nightly baths take me about 40 minutes. That's counting from the time I begin drawing the water until I'm drying off after my brief post-bath shower (for shaving and for washing my hair). It's more time consuming than a single shower in the morning, but I love the feeling of being super clean when I climb under the covers. Even better, it's a ritual that's actually getting me to bed earlier at night. It used to be I could easily stay up until 10:30 or 11:00 puttering about, surfing the net. These days, I'm into the tub by 8:30 or 9:00 and ready to turn out the lights and go to sleep by 9:30 or 10:00. I'm all mellowed out, I guess, by the time I get out of the tub. Don't feel like watching TV or even reading. I just want to call it a day. And you can't beat a little extra beauty sleep!

One of my vintage beauty missions this week is to be very mindful of giving myself a vigorous dry with the towel after my bath. It's also made me more mindful of my towels! So I'm going to go thru them in the next few days --- thinning out the linen closet, so to speak. If it's threadbare in spots - if it's not something I'd put out for a guest - then it's time to hit the rag bag. (The ratty towels will make great cleaning rags once they're cut up.) If I spy any loose threads, I'll trim 'em off with my sewing scissors. This will clear up some room for a few new towels in vintage colors.

Week Twenty-eight: The Mission

It's time to face the music. Or, rather, the bathroom.

There are two areas in my home that I absolutely dread(ed) cleaning: the kitchen and the bathroom. I have to add that little (ed) in there because my kitchen and I are slowly mending fences. The bathroom and I are still on the outs. In fact, I can't honestly remember when I did anything more in there than to clean the toilet. So, while my scale appears to be headed in the right direction again, I'm going to squeeze in a new housekeeping mission.

The Manual lays out both a set of daily chores and a set of weekly chores for the bathroom. Knowing the trouble I had with the kitchen, I'm going to approach this new room the same way. I'll plan on covering all of the daily chores once a week (probably on Saturdays --- moving the kitchen back to Friday nights now that it's a bit more manageable) and splitting the list of weekly bathroom chores between alternating weeks.

Weekly Chores (These were recommended for housewives on a daily basis in 1945!)

1. Open windows top and bottom for free circulation of air.

2. Pick up and replace small articles belonging in bathroom.

3. Gather up to take out soiled linen (to hamper, if dry), and articles belonging in other rooms. Collect trash in waste basket. Roll up bath mat or rug.

4. Wipe mirror.

5. Wipe tile behind washbowl and tub.

6. Clean bathtub and metal fixtures (be sure to wipe shower fixtures and clean soap holder).

7. Clean toilet bowl with brush. Wipe outside of bowl and closet with cloth used for that purpose only.

8. Clean washbowl (be sure to wipe base as well as top; also clean soap holder).

9. Straighten towels and wash cloths. Put out clean linen when needed (fresh linen for all on Wednesdays and Saturdays).

10. Sweep floor. Gather up dust in pan. Floor should be washed.

11. Replace bath mat or rug. Close windows in cold or damp weather.

Week A

1. Rug should be cleaned and bathmat changed.

2. Duck shower curtain should be hung out in the sun if weather permits. (Clean curtain should be put up when needed.)

3. Walls should be wiped down with clean cloth or wall brush, washed when necessary.

4. Light fixtures, bulbs and globes should be dusted every week, washed when necessary.

5. Medicine cabinet should be dusted and straightened, washed when necessary.

Week B

1. Mirror should be dusted, washed when necessary.

2. Windows should be dusted inside, washed on both sides when necessary.

3. Curtains should be laundered when necessary.

4. Use special cleanser on toilet bowl.

5. Clothes hamper should be emptied, dried and aired each week, scrubbed and sunned occasionally when weather permits.

Streamlining Housework

If you haven't noticed me grumbling about cleaning my kitchen lately, it's because I haven't been. (Grumbling, that is!) When I decided a few weeks ago to split up the big jobs into alternate weeks, it made all the difference in the world. Cleaning the kitchen still means a good solid two hours of work once a week, but the work just seems a lot more manageable than it did before.

And there isn't anything I really enjoy about this particular chore. When the job is done, though, my kitchen looks so nice. I catch myself doing a double take or two just to see how lovely it looks with a shiny sink, clean countertops, and a stovetop that positively gleams! If I can find something interesting on the radio, it always makes the work go faster, and I take a few breaks to drink some water and to put on some hand lotion. The good stuff. If I going to baby my hands at some point during the week, this is definitely the time to do so. Working with all that soap and water can be super drying to the skin.

Speaking of cleansers, soap and water aren't the only things at work in my kitchen these days. I use baking soda when cleaning the interior of the refrigerator/freezer and Comet to scour the sink. Cellulose sponges and dishtowels are my tools of choice, with an occasional Brillo Pad on a stubborn drip pan and - once in a great while - a paper towel. It's funny. On the rare occasions that I'd do any kind of cleaning in my kitchen in the past, I would never have set foot in there without a roll of paper towels and a canister of disinfectant wipes. I guess I was just afraid of having to put any kind of elbow grease to work. I thought chemicals could do the work for me. These days, I can go a month before having to change the roll of paper towels in my kitchen. And that's one of the small rolls! Paper towels get used now only for spot cleaning.

As I get accustomed to the mechanics of cleaning the kitchen, I catch myself finding little ways to make the work go faster. Here's my latest discovery: If I remove the drip pans before scrubbing the stovetop down (Is that what those metal trays under the burners are called?), then pop the lid and clean out underneath the stovetop, then wash the drip pans in the sink --- the stovetop and the area underneath it will be practically air-dried by the time I'm ready to reassemble the whole affair. That means my dishtowel will get less wet on that particular job and I can use it longer before having to replace it with another. I love finding little techniques like this to streamline the work!

Sadly, I don't think there's a soul among the women I talk with on a regular basis who could understand my excitement over something like this. Shoes? They could understand. A decorating idea for a dinner party? They'd get it. We just don't talk about housework in this day and age. It's that hidden thing that must be done, but isn't very fashionable to discuss. How are girls supposed to learn how to maintain a home if it's no longer cool even to mention the process? If our mothers hardly have enough time to keep house themselves - never mind teaching their daughters how to do it - and it isn't fashionable to discuss it with your girlfriends, how are we supposed to learn or better our craft? Housework's become the great unmentionable among women, and yet it's getting done is indispensible.

One of the other things that gives this little housekeeper a thrill these days are the ads for Parkay Margarine and Kraft Dinner that have been preserved along with episodes of The Great Gildersleeve from 1941 and 1942. The ads reference a rhythm to housework that must have been completely familiar to listeners of the era... Kraft Dinner - which we now call plain ol' macaroni and cheese - was billed as a fabulous option for dinner on Monday nights. A night when Mother must have been worn to the bone by the wash... As the announcer describes all the perks of using a product like Parkay Margarine, he mentions the baking that would have been done in a Christian household on Saturdays. (The program was aired lived on Sunday evenings):

I wonder how many of you housewives baked a cake or some cookies yesterday for your Sunday dinner today. A lot of you did, I’m sure, because there’s nothing like that real home-baked flavor. Well, here’s a hint for the next time you bake. For luscious, extra flavor in cookies, cakes, and pastries, use delicious Parkay margarine for the shortening...

My own 1945 menu for dinner this evening features a wartime meatless dish:

Peanut Roast
Pennsylvania Cabbage Salad with Sour Cream Dressing

The dessert, Apricot Whip, is made with raw egg whites, so - rather than play around with salmonella - I may substitute a Dried Apricot Cake. Is there any Parkay in the house?

Lighting Up

Have you cleaned your lighting fixtures lately?

One of the tasks at hand every week when I clean my bedroom - every other week when cleaning my kitchen - is dusting the lighting fixtures and washing them when necessary. In the bedroom, this is limited to just the single incandescent lighting fixture on my wall. I have two lighting fixtures in the kitchen --- a rectangular flourescent fixture near the sink and an incandescent globe in the ceiling fan. None of the fixtures is very hard to clean (though I could definitely use a sturdy step stool), but I haven't checked my manual yet to review the instructions on this task. Let's take a look...

A coating of dust on light bulbs and globes reduces the amount of light to a considerable degree. It is economical therefore, to keep bulbs and globes clean so that you get the amount of light you are paying for.

Before the fixtures themselves are cleaned, turn off the current and remove shades, bulbs, etc. Then use the dusting tool of the vacuum cleaner or a duster to clean the fixture.

Wipe the bulbs with a damp cloth, being careful not to get the metal section wet. Dry thoroughly. If the bulbs are extremely dirty, hold each one by the metal end and dip the glass in warm soapsuds. Rinse in clear water in the same fashion. Dry carefully with a clean soft cloth. Always be certain that the bulbs are perfectly dry before replacing them.

If the bulbs still look very dark after they have been cleaned, they should be replaced with new ones.

Did the authors of the manual intend that this advice should apply to cleaning flourescent bulbs as well? I leafed through the chapter on lighting in the home and the word "flourescent" is never referenced. They do mention "recessed tubular lighting" being especially handy above the kitchen sink. Flourescents were just becoming available to American consumers, but the manual seems to ignore them - only advising its readers on how to deal with bulbs with a single metal end.

If I could add one bit of advice to the manual, it would be this: be sure the light bulb is thoroughly cooled before you even attempt to remove it from the fixture! I haven't yet cleaned any of my light bulbs, but I touched one by accident while dusting the fixture. Ouch. The light fixture in my bedroom gets dusted with a rag and washed with soap and water once a week. The bulb in this case is not enclosed, so it could probably use a washing itself once a month. I've been dusting the globe in my kitchen ceiling fan, but keep forgetting about the flourescent fixture. The bulbs inside both these fixtures should be virtually free of dust as they're both enclosed. One of these weeks, I would like to clean the blades of the ceiling fan when I'm dusting the globe. They're very dirty. I'm not sure how often that'll have to be done, but I'm sure the maintenance won't be too tough after I clean them the first time.

Look What I Found!

One of my tasks when cleaning the kitchen each week is to "clean out and wash 1 cupboard or several drawers in rotation weekly." So I set to work yesterday morning cleaning out the drawer beneath my silverware drawer. This is my catch-all drawer for small kitchen tools. I'm pulling all the tools out and laying them on the kitchen table so that I could get in there with a soapy sponge and clean the insides of the drawer. This isn't that big a drawer - or that deep - and it's not as if I own a ton of kitchen tools. In fact, there's a lot I've been making do without. What should I discover, but that I've owned several items all this time that I'd forgotten about:

1) Cheese slicer
2) Teaspoon
3) Coffee scoop

Here's the kicker --- last week's "discovery" was even stranger.

Somewhere during the last two years that I've been living in this apartment, I'd completely forgotten that I have a fourth kitchen drawer. Yep, that's right. I've been using drawers one, two, and three, but haven't even opened drawer four since moving in. I know I've been in there at least once, because there were a few restaurant ads inside that date to December 2006. Along with two Brita water filters. (I can't even remembering owning a Brita while I lived here!) How a gal could have become so dis-acquainted with her own kitchen, I'm sure I don't know...

A New Kind of Perfect

I got a call last night from an old friend and we had a great chat. Caught up, had some laughs. It was nice. I'd just started in on my bedroom when he called - stripped the bed, taken the covers outside on the landing to air, turned the mattress - but, by the time we said goodnight, it was late and I was yawning. I made up the bed with clean sheets, finished my evening chores, and called it a day. So I was happy to get back to work this evening and finish the job. This will actually give me a chance tomorrow to see if I can clean all my of kitchen - or even just a little bit more of it than normal - in the one morning. I'd better set my alarm, though. That Saturday morning beauty sleep is not a busy housewife's best friend.

Neither is perfectionism.

It seems like it should be, right? You'd think that somebody who was a perfectionist would keep a spick and span house. But it's always been an obstacle for me. On the rare occasions that I cleaned house over the years, I would be frustrated not to have the time and energy to get every nook and cranny shining. What I'm discovering these days is that even though I can't possibly get a room perfectly clean on any given day, if I keep after it regularly, I get to every nook and cranny once in awhile. And the room begins to look a little cleaner as a whole with every month that passes. It's a different kind of perfection. One I haven't been acquainted with before...

Well, it's late and there are a few dishes in the sink that need cleaning before I go to bed. I've got lots to do tomorrow morning!

Kitchen Chemistry Redux

I'm baking a batch of Yeast Cinnamon Rolls this evening for tomorrow's breakfast and decided to try the "sponge method" instead of the "straight dough method" I tried last time 'round - unsuccessfully. While I wait to see if the sponge is going to take, I've got lots to post about the weekend...

Friday marked the third week in a row that I've given my kitchen a thorough cleaning. It's hard work - takes me about three hours of good, honest elbow grease - but one thing I've noticed is that I'm finding new hiding places for dirt every week. I guess all those little cracks and niches stand out more now with all that cleanliness around 'em! So the kitchen is getting progressively cleaner every time. The manual recommends that housewives clean one cupboard or several drawers each time they clean the kitchen. By the time they've made their way through each of the kitchen cabinets, it's time to start at the first again. In my own home, the contents of my cupboards have kind of evolved hit or miss since the day I moved in here. I didn't really think through where I ought to store this or that when I started unpacking my belongings and brought home that first bag of groceries. Since I've begun scrubbing out my cupboards, I've collected all my baking ingredients in one place, all my cereals in one place, all my canned vegetables in one place, all my less-used dishes in one place. Things are slowly becoming more efficiently organized.

The thing about the kitchen cleaning that's still a nagging issue for me is that I can't seem to get it all done in one sitting. I can do about 2/3 of it and then I'm just exhausted --- so the rest gets done on Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon. I keep thinking that as I get better at this it'll take less and less time and soon I'll be able to do the whole thing at once, but maybe this is as fast as it's going to get. At any rate, I think I may have to make some adjustments to my routine if the kitchen thing can't be done completely on a weekday evening.

Drat - just checked the sponge. It's not taking. The dough should be all light and bubbly. Okay, I'm going to try that dough saver I used last time. Here's a link to the dough saver recipe:

http://destination1940.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-simple-luxury-it-is-to-make-bed.html

Something else that's vexing me is how much I hate messing up my sparkly clean kitchen by cooking in it afterwards! Just when I've finished cleaning it on Saturdays, I turn around and create a great mess of dishes on Sunday evenings. My countertops are messy, my stovetop spattered, and the sink is full of pots and pans. It doesn't take me all that long to clean it up, but it's never quite as clean as it was 24 hours ago. *sigh* I suppose that's a pain felt by every homemaker since time immemorial. A wonderfully clean kitchen is great to look at, but lasts about as long as the morning dew on a summer's day. A kitchen is one of those spaces, I guess, that just needs to be worked at continually to keep it clean.

Now my dough is finally rising. Thank goodness! I've tried to scrub away all traces of that first batch by running a load of dishes and cleaning the kitchen counters, but my table is still all floury. Can't clean that up yet - I've got more kneading to do.

I was reading an issue of Family Circle during my lunch hour today and found myself snorting out loud at some of their decorating suggestions. I guess they were trying to give some recession-friendly suggestions for perking up the look of your home, but they were the kind of things that make it blatantly clear that modern women's magazines don't have any real interest in improving the efficiency of your home. They don't even recognize that the kitchen is a working environment. To them, the kitchen has become a pretty little backdrop in which you can pour a glass of juice, but had better not even attempt to do any cooking. Oh, maybe you could open one of those tubes of refrigerated cookie dough and slice them neatly out onto a cookie sheet. Heck, you could probably even open up your takeout and divvy it up onto plates. But the kitchens in these magazines are not designed for a woman (or man) preparing three meals a day for a family. Never mind baking a big, messy batch of Cinnamon Rolls!

Tip That Annoys Me #1
"Choose a pretty table lamp for the kitchen counter. It's much more flattering than overhead lighting, and it makes the room more like a living space."

Excuse me - since when was a kitchen supposed to be a living space? It's probably the most intensely busy room in a household where people are actually eating meals they've cooked themselves and dining as a family. There's a photo next to this tip of a tall, stylish table lamp with a tall shade. I'm not sure how on earth you're supposed to get any work done in a room with mood lighting!

Tip That Annoys Me #2 --- here's a non-kitchen tip
"Remove all the pictures hanging above your mantel and lean them against the wall for a more contemporary look. Add a framed sketch or photo to the mix."

Yes, and that is going to make cleaning that room sooooooo much easier. Can you imagine the dust bunnies that'll cling to the bottoms of each of these pictures? And you couldn't possibly have any children or pets in a home like this. How is a person supposed to clean the floors? Artistic? Sure. Functional? Not a smidge. I think these magazines have forgotten that we still have to live in our homes. These tips are for people whose homes are sterile places. I would never had noticed this a few months ago, though.

Update on the Cinnamon Roll Dough: The second rising is done. I'm just waiting for my dishwasher to finish the drying step so I can open it up and get my rolling pin back!

My 1945 dinner menu was surprisingly good last night. Here's the menu:

French Fried Potatoes
Beets
Tossed Greens with Tomato
Chili Dressing
Banana Nut Ice Cream
Soft Molasses Cookies

The French Fried Potatoes came out remarkably good. I couldn't believe it myself! They were cut to the size of what we'd call steak fries today. Parboiled, then fried on the stovetop in a fair bit of canola oil. I was terrified of the hot oil --- especially after my disastrous attempt to fry Corn-meal Mush in January! But I dried out the potatoes as much as possible, held my breath, kept the lid on the pan, and let the oil do its thing. Didn't try to get in there and move the potatoes around with a spatula or anything. And it worked! They were hot and crispy and all soft and potatoe-y on the inside. I'm ridiculously proud of 'em. Canned Beets were much easier to work with than the whole beets, but not nearly as tasty. For the Chili Dressing, I ended up adding a tablespoon of bottled chili sauce to the French Dressing recipe. The balsamic vinegar pretty much neutralized the chili sauce, but there was a bit of a zing there.

My first two sheets of Cinnamon Rolls are now in the oven. It's up to my Kenmore to do the work now.

I didn't think I'd have any luck finding Banana Ice Cream, but there are several varieties for sale - Chunky Monkey, Banana Split Ice Cream, Banana Pudding Ice Cream --- I ended up going with Banana Nut as it seemed more basic than the others. The Soft Molasses Cookies were okay fresh out of the oven, but they're dreadful today. I didn't read all the tips on working with rolled cookie dough until it was too late. Apparently, it's easier to work with dough like that if it's been chilled for 10 minutes or so. Better luck next time!

I'll let you know tomorrow how the Cinnamon Rolls turned out...

Stood Up

Sixty years ago, women probably spent more time with their ranges than they did with any other appliance in the home. They wrested a meal from these appliances three times a day. Got right down inside the oven in order to scrub it clean and scoured the drip pans 'til they shone. They struggled to master burners and ovens that must have seemed fairweather friends so much of the time. Even women with the most modern of homes would have remembered their mothers and grandmothers gauging the heat of their ovens "by hand." Heating water for laundry on the range. Perhaps even heating a portion of the home itself with the range. We might not err in calling the range a housewife's Gal Friday when it came to keeping house - the one appliance she could not - traditionally - have done without.

This "relationship" was beginning to ebb by World War II as electricity began to power the work of so many other appliances. Toasters and crockpots and electric coffeemakers broke things up, taking on some of the work once done solely by the range and stealing the housewife's affections. The barbeque grill of the '50s took on even more of that work. Then toaster ovens came along. And - in the '80s - the microwave. Our ranges now sit wistfully by while we plug in our steamers and our George Foreman grills, waiting for that one chance they can prove their devotion - alas, only to be asked to heat some frozen French fries! (We're not even sure what to call them these days. Are they ovens? Are they stoves???) They must long for the days when every burner, every chamber was busy three times a day - when they were a vital partner in the housewife's fight to make a home...

While the authors of the manual provide instructions for two different kinds of refrigerators (automatic and ice), they deal with an even wider variety of ranges. Care of the gas range is described first - which leads me to believe it was the type most often found in American homes circa 1945. Next comes the electric range, the kerosene range, and - lastly - wood and coal ranges. My own range is an electric appliance, so here are some instructions I'll need to keep in mind when cleaning my kitchen:

ELECTRIC RANGES

Daily:

Wipe up any spilled food before it dries.

Wipe the surface and drip tray with a damp cloth.

If the oven is used let it cool off and then clean off any spatterings with mild scouring powder and fine steel wool. Charred material can be removed with a brush or spatula.

In some models the oven heating element can be removed while the oven is being cleaned.

Caution:

Never wash enamelled surfaces when they are hot, or the finish may craze and crack.

Occasional:

If food boils over or spills on the top stove unit it can be burned off. If these units are the open type, with exposed coils, turn the heat high until the food is burned off. Let the unit cool, then blow out the charred particles. (The flat tool attachment of your vacuum cleaner makes a quick job of this.) Never brush or poke this type of unit.

Keep the metal ring which surrounds the element clean and shining. A cloth wrung out of soapsuds will usually do the job. Rinse with a cloth wrung out of clear water. If food is stuck or burned on use a little mild scouring powder or fine steel wool to remove it.

Bins and Boxes

Both my vintage housekeeping manuals are in agreement. Once a week, the housewife should:

Clean, scald and sun vegetable bins, bread and cake boxes.

At first, I thought they were referring to the vegetable crispers in my refrigerator. But they're not. Though vintage refrigerators also contained a bin for vegetables, the authors of America's Housekeeping Book (1945) recommend that the ideal kitchen include ventilated vegetable bins located near the sink. If I had a scanner, I'd scan the illustration for you - but I don't, so I'll try to describe them. Imagine a sink with a double basin. Under the left basin, is a slim door which opens to reveal two metal drawers with mesh sides that slide out on rollers. I wonder what kinds of vegetables would be stored in bins like these... Were these a holdout from the days when iceboxes didn't have storage space for any but the most perishable of vegetables?

I don't have one myself, but I've seen plenty of bread boxes. Usually the type with the rolling or flip-up top. I've taken to freezing the bread I buy so that it won't go stale before I eat more than a few pieces, but I can certainly see how handy a bread box would have been to a livelier household where all meals were made at home. Here are a couple of darling enamel-coated bread boxes:





I don't think I've ever seen a "cake box," though. Plenty of covered cake trays and cake stands. Do you think that's the kind of thing the manuals are referring to or something completely different? Now, I grew up with a mom at home and a cookie jar always stocked with homemade treats, but even I can't fathom having such a supply of cakes that you needed to keep a separate container for 'em on the countertop at all times! Maybe - like the vegetable bins under the sink - these were found primarily in older homes or rural homes where iceboxes or small refrigerators just didn't have the space to store cakes and other baked goods.

I finished cleaning my kitchen today, so it's full steam ahead for another of my 1945 dinner menus tomorrow night. Here's the plan:

Pie with Carrots, Potatoes, Peas, Potato Crust
Cucumber, Lettuce Salad
Bread Pudding
Lemon Sauce

Fine Tuning

Has it been a week already? It seems like just yesterday I was recovering from all those sore kitchen-cleaning muscles, and now I've got sore muscles and pruny fingertips all over again... I had planned on starting a new weekly mission today, but because this kitchen thing is still quite shaky - I'm giving it a second whirl tonight - I think I'll wait on the new mission for another week. The kitchen is about 2/3 of the way done and that's taken me 1 3/4 hours. Last week, the same amount of work took me about 2 hours. So I'm gaining! I've got more work to do, but it's getting late and I still have some evening chores, so I'll finish the kitchen tomorrow morning.

I'm not quite convinced that the refrigerator really needs a thorough cleaning every week, but I'm trying to stay open to the idea and see if it has any surprises for me. It really is useful to take this opportunity once a week to empty the fridge of leftovers that are past their prime, produce that needs to go, and other items that may have expired. This Friday, I wiped down the exterior as well as the interior and was pretty skeeved to find how dirty the side of the fridge had become. It's one of those surfaces I walk by several dozen times a day and had never really noticed how much it needed cleaning! The refrigerator is shining now, along with the range.

Speaking of the range, did you know some of these appliances come with a little metal thingie under the stovetop which can hold it up as you clean underneath? Just like popping up the hood of a car! I had no idea it was there - but it comes in very handy. So did the steel wool I picked up last weekend to clean the drip pans this time. They're not spotless yet, but much shinier than last time 'round.

You know, it occurs to me that housewives who cleaned the outsides of their refrigerators on a weekly basis would probably find it easier not to keep any magnets or other odds and ends stuck all over it. I've always thought refrigerators with a little decor, shall we say, made a kitchen feel more cozy, but it sure takes a heck of a lot of time to remove all that decor in order to clean what's behind it! Let's just say some of that decor didn't make the cut this week.

Too Tired for Titles

My, oh-me, oh-my... What a day! I spent in total about three hours working on my kitchen. Most of it this morning - then I cut out at noon as I had some place to be - then I was back to work this evening to finish the job. Thus far, cleaning the kitchen has easily been the most physically demanding chore. I took a couple breaks to drink some water and, once, to lay down on my bed and close my eyes for a few minutes.

The basic layout of the routine is organized around the three major appliances. First, the refrigerator. Second, the range. Third, the sink. Which makes sense - as you use the sink so much in cleaning things - from the crisper bins and racks in the refrigerator to the drip trays on the range. By the time you're finished cleaning everything else, the sink gets a final scrub and polish and you're finished. I'm actually not quite finished. My garbage can is airing dry outdoors on my landing. I'll bring it in in a few hours and throw a clean bag inside.

What was interesting was how few cleansers I needed in a room that gets as dirty as the kitchen. Per the manual, I used baking soda dissolved in cool water to clean out the inside of the refrigerator. Scouring powder to clean the drip trays. And lots of hot water, scalding water, and soapsuds. The only tools I needed: a sponge, a few clean dish towels (I put these in the wash as they got soiled), and a nylon scrubby thing. Some steel wool would have done a better job on the drip trays, though, so I picked up a box of those at the grocery store for next week. You really can do an amazing job with just a very few simple tools and cleansers. The disinfectant habit is so ingrained in me that it was tough not to use some of the stronger cleansers I had on hand. For a finishing touch, I guess. We've been so bombarded with ads promoting antibacterial cleansers and disinfectant wipes that it's tough to figure out whether these things are truly important in housekeeping or not. The only time the manual recommends using a disinfectant is occasionally in cleaning the garbage can.

Although I didn't even notice when I typed up the list of chores for the kitchen, there are several major items missing! The floor, for one. Which is strange, as the manual mentions floor care for every other room in the house. They do mention in a chapter on "Floors" that the "kitchen floors may need to be damp-mopped every day" and "may require washing once a week or oftener." They just leave this item out of the daily and weekly routine entirely. The authors of the manual never mention cleaning up smaller appliances. And they neglect entirely any care needed to a breakfast nook or dining alcove in the kitchen. These kinds of things are certainly covered in other chapters, it's just odd that they are aren't mentioned specifically in daily or weekly chores for the kitchen. The authors are usually so detailed!

I'm so tired I can't even think in a straight line, so I'll leave you with my 1945 dinner menu for tomorrow evening and call it a night:

Whipped Potatoes
Buttered Beets
Tossed Greens Salad
Chocolate Pudding

Week Seventeen: The Mission

Today, the bedroom. Tomorrow, the world!

Or at least the kitchen.

Just typing up this week's mission makes me cringe. For a 1940s housewife, the kitchen was a room that had to be cleaned several times a day. Every time a meal was finished, there were dishes that needed to be scraped, rinsed, washed, and dried (or stacked for washing later). There were foods that needed to be put away, refuse for the garbage can. Once a day - preferably about mid-morning, just after giving each of the other rooms in the house their daily once-over - the authors of America's Housekeeping Book (1945) recommended that the housewife give the kitchen its daily cleaning and wash the breakfast dishes. Once a week, ideally "the day before you do the bulk of your weekly food marketing," the kitchen should get its weekly cleaning.

For any of you who've just started reading my blog, I have a full-time job outside the home, so I don't have the time to give every room of my apartment more than a little daily maintenance. Instead, I'm trying to blend most of the daily chores for each room with the weekly chores - so each room gets some intensive attention once a week. That's my plan for the kitchen, too. Obviously, it still needs to get cleaned up after meals, but there are plenty of other tasks I can reserve for the weekly cleaning.

Saturday is the day I plan on doing the bulk of my weekly food marketing, so I'm going to dedicate Friday evenings to the kitchen. (If I do happen to have some social plans on a Friday night, I'll move that cleaning forward to Saturday morning. Everything's pushed forward one day this week as I had plans last night.) The romance! I feel a bit like a wife scheduling dates with a husband she hasn't felt very romantic with lately. My kitchen is now my Friday night date --- and deservedly so. I've paid it very little attention over the years. The only time it really gets cleaned up is if I'm expecting guests or Bob, the apartment maintenance guy.

So here it is. My mission for Week Seventeen. It's a doozy - and I'm properly terrified.

1. Open windows top and bottom for free circulation of air, or open kitchen ventilator.

2. Rinse and stack dishes, pots and pans.

3. Check and reorganize foods; put away all foods except those belonging in refrigerator. Remove all foods from refrigerator. Wash interior of refrigerator. Return food to refrigerator.

4. Collect all refuse and put in garbage can.

5. Wipe off top of refrigerator.

6. Wash dishes. Dry and put away, if not room to rinse with hot water and leave to dry.

7. Wipe off surface of range. Clean spilled food from drip pan or oven. Clean range thoroughly.

8. Clean, scald and sun vegetable bins, bread and cake boxes.

9. Clean out and wash 1 cupboard or several drawers in rotation weekly.

10. Dust radiator or register.

11. Dust lighting fixtures. Dust window shades or Venetian blinds. Wash wall behind sink, stove and work surfaces, if washable. Wash work surfaces. Wash exterior of cabinet work and shelving to remove fingermarks.

12. Take out garbage. Clean garbage container thoroughly. Put clean lining in garbage can.

13. Clean metal fixtures, soap dish, sink strainer, dish drainer, and sink. Wash, rinse and scald dishcloth or mop or send to laundry; hang outdoors if possible.

14. Collect soiled towels; wash. Hang fresh towels.

Daylight Discoveries

Last Saturday was the last time I did any real housekeeping, and I got a lot done - despite the fact that I was beginning to feel icky and my stomach turned over at the thought of eating the dinner I spend so much time preparing. Nevertheless, it was an interesting day and one I've been wanting to share some thoughts about ever since.

My sister was back in town, my babysitting duties were over for the time being, and I had shifted Thursday's cleaning-of-the-bedroom forward to Saturday morning. What a difference there is in housekeeping by day! It's amazing how much grime you can actually see when you're cleaning a room in broad daylight. I have a painted wooden nightstand in my bedroom and was startled to discover these rings of grime around the knobs. Where my fingers actually come in contact with the wood every time I pull a drawer open, I guess. It only took a damp cloth to clean them up, but *gasp* what other horrors must be sharing this apartment with me!

I've been trying to add a little something new to my routine in the bedroom each week. Here are the new steps added last week:

Dust high mouldings, door and window frames, window shades and Venetian blinds when necessary.

Dust high objects if necessary (mantels, high shelves, window sills, tops of bookcases, etc.).

Because I've been such a crummy housekeeper, I'm just going to take it for granted that these chores are always necessary. Better to be safe than sorry. Besides, my spartan living arrangements haven't left me very many of these kinds of things to dust as it is. No high mouldings, no window shades, no mantels, high shelves, or tops of bookcases. I do have some Venetian blinds that just attract dust like magnets. And my window sills were super grimy. Oh, yeah - here's another discovery I couldn't see when housekeeping at night: there were rusty colored stains on the wall beneath my window. Obviously water that had come in through the screen in the window at some point and dripped down the wall. I'd never seen them before cleaning the bedroom last Saturday! Just a wipe of the cloth and they were gone, but what a scary surprise.

One of the nicer surprises when cleaning during the day last weekend was hearing the sounds of cleaning coming from other apartments which look out on my courtyard. While I was unwinding the cord to my own vacuum, I could hear other people vacuuming their apartments. There was a kind of kinship in the fact that we were all spending this Saturday morning indoors making our homes a little happier. We tend to think of '40s housewives as leading isolated lives when they were at home day in and day out, but I'll bet they felt a kind of camaraderie as they watched their neighbors hanging the laundry out to dry or heard somebody in the building running a vacuum cleaner.

I did find a little clarification on the mattress turning question when I was reading the manual's tips on the care of innerspring mattresses:

Turn the mattress top to bottom one week, and end to end the next week.

Now if I could only think of a way to remember which direction I've turned the mattress the week before...

Perception v. Reality

Feeling under the weather is so dreary. I guess colds and viruses have their way with us all every once in awhile, but I can't wait to feel better again! I looked at my blog today and couldn't believe how many days have gone by since I felt like posting - or eating - or, well, doing much of anything. What a week!

The chores I do these days are done out of pure desperation. Run out of clothes (well, good clothes)? Guess I'd better haul myself down to the laundromat. No time or energy for sorting or turning out pockets or mulling over modern fabrics. I made my bed once a few days ago when I couldn't stand not having the bedcovers tucked in all tidily. I have no appetite still, so I'm eating catch as catch can. My housekeeping routine flew a white flag to illness several days ago.

So I'll make this a brief post. I noticed that my one-month mission in analyzing my food dollar ran its course a couple days ago. Here is how America's Housekeeping Book (1945) recommends that housewives spend their "food dollar":

It helps also occasionally to keep a detailed food record for a couple of weeks or a month with separate totals for cost of cereal foods; fruits and vegetables; meats, fish and eggs; milk and cheese; and in a final class, fats, sugar and miscellaneous items. On a modest income, in order to get a balanced diet, not far from 1/5 of the food money should go for each of these five groups.

As embarrassing as it's been to bare how my own food dollar breaks down, I guess things can only improve from here!

Fats, Sugar and Miscellaneous Items = $247.04 (66%)

Fruits and Vegetables = $40.40 (11%)

Cereal Foods = $37.95 (10%)

Milk and Cheese = $30.64 (8%)

Eggs, Beans, and Soy = $19.64 (5%)

Part of the reason the first category is so large is because I eat many more frozen, prepared foods than is good for my pocketbook or my waistline. When you have a deathly fear of doing dishes or dirtying up a kitchen you don't want to clean, reheating frozen foods is a heck of a lot easier than cooking a meal from scratch. Using multiple pots and pans. Spilling things on the stovetop.

I am very surprised by the total I'm spending on food. In one month, I spent $375.67. What I thought I was spending on food was about $250-275 per month. Quite a difference between perception and reality! I'm sure that as I reform my dinner habits - slowly, but surely - there will be some changes here. So I'll try this mini-mission again in several months and plan on seeing some improvements.

Sun and Air

My sister is home at last, so my niece is in good hands again - and I'm sick. I think I caught whatever virus Kitten was coping with, so I'm glad it held off until I could be sick on my own time. My routine took a hit on Thursday evening (I didn't get home until 1 a.m.) and again on Friday morning (just barely made it to work), but I'm taking it very easy this weekend. Trying to get lots of rest, but moving slowly through my accustomed chores. Did a little bit of Wednesday's marketing last night and this morning have just begun Thursday's weekly cleaning-of-the-bedroom.

Cleaning the bedroom isn't exactly a fast-paced chore. After stripping the beds and hanging the covers out to air, you tote your bric-a-brac out to wherever you're going to dust or polish it and bring your cleaning equipment and fresh linens into the bedroom. Then it's just a matter of waiting for fresh air to do its part of the job. You see, the mattress and pillows need to be aired, too. Now, if you were cleaning several bedrooms, you could probably work the timing out so that you were getting things started in each of your other rooms while you were waiting for the first room to be properly aired. Here are some guidelines from the manual for putting that fresh air to work:

Mattresses

Innerspring:

Sun and air once a week (strip off the bedding and open the windows wide for at least an hour).

Pillows

Air pillows at least once a month by placing them on chairs near an open window.

Bedding

Bedding should be aired at least once a week. Spread it over two chairs near an open window and leave it there for at least an hour. An occasional airing out of doors over a line is good for it. Choose a day when the weather is fair to warm.

My bedroom window is open and the blinds have been pulled so the mattress and pillows are getting as much fresh air as possible. I've hung my quilt and blanket over the railing outside on my landing, and I'll give them a good shake before bringing them inside. Get all the dust out. Apartment Land is not an ideal place for doing these kinds of chores - what I wouldn't give for an outdoor clothesline!!! - and I live in a city with a lot of crime, so I'm always a little worried my bed covers will disappear while they're airing!

Unless my appetite takes a nosedive, I'm going to try the first of my 1945 dinner menus this evening:

Steamed Rice

Buttered Carrots

Celery Cabbage Salad

Steamed Molasses Pudding

This is a weekday (Monday-Saturday) dinner with a few alterations. I'm omitting the meat course. 1940s home economists believed that each dinner should contain both a starchy vegetable or grain (potatoes, rice, etc.) and a bread. That's way too many carbs for me, so I'm going to have one or the other. Since my dessert is a bready-type dish, I'm going to opt for the Steamed Rice over the Enriched Bread this 'time round. The recommended beverages are Milk and Coffee. Do you drink a full glass of milk with your meals? It's been years since I did so, and though I'm not sure this is a good thing (am I really getting enough calcium?), the thought kind of icks me out after all this time. Coffee at breakfast is more than enough for me, so I think I'll just go with a glass of ice water at dinner. This time, anyway.

My hour is up and it's time to get to work making up the bed. Hey, if I'm going to be feeling under the weather all weekend, there's no place for recuperating like a fresh, clean bed!

Housework and Childcare

The last few days have been frazzled ones. My niece (I'll call her Kitten) has been sick with a virus since the day her mother left. Poor thing! My brother-in-law and I took her to the emergency room last night as we were getting really worried about dehydration, but the doctor told us she was in good shape and the virus would just have to run its course. We just have to keep finding creative ways to get her to drink, drink, drink. And with a toddler - even with a low energy level - the last thing they want to do is be in the dreaded bed, so she's still up and about. I've been trying to find lots of quiet things we can do indoors. Just this morning, I'm starting to feel a little peaked, so I'm afraid I've caught the virus myself and won't be of much help in a day or two.

The first evening I was there, Kitten was still feeling pretty good. As I tried to wash up the dinner dishes while she was playing in the living room, I couldn't help thinking about housework as it relates to childcare. Mothers of small children really have to be quite creative and flexible in order to get anything done. It seems to be all about corraling them where you can watch them long enough to do a few dishes here, a load of laundry there. Naptime or bedtime seems like it would be a great time to get things done, but Kitten's nursery is on the same floor as the kitchen and living room, so I don't want to make too much noise until she's sound asleep. (It'll sound too much like there's some party she's missing!) Besides, I found myself taking a nap at naptime yesterday.

The manual mentions children frequently. The authors recognized how important it was in designing or redesigning work spaces that mothers be able to keep an eye on their children at all times. "One end of the kitchen, away from dangerous areas near the range, can sometimes be reserved for play space." Here, a "low cupboard" could be set aside for toys or "cooking equipment" with which children might safely play. They encouraged mothers to find housekeeping tasks that children could help with even when it made the job a bit longer:

Small children are always intrigued by the work that is done in the kitchen. Almost invariably they want to "help," and if this urge is understood and valued, the children will find tremendous satisfaction in cooperative work, besides feeling "wanted," which is important to happy family relationships. Then, too, the educational value of guided cooperative work is an important factor in child training.

The laundry room is also a space where mothers had to spend a significant amount of time before the process was better automated. An "enclosed play space" was recommended for this room so that babies and toddlers could amuse themselves under Mother's watchful eye. Older children could play outdoors, but a window should look out on the yard so that Mother could keep an eye on them, too.

A whole chapter is dedicated to furnishing rooms for children - from nurseries for infants to rooms for adolescents. The authors of the manual advise their readers, though, that children should spend most of their time with the family. By the 1940s, the age of nannies and governesses was long gone in the U. S., and mothers were expected to be the primary caregivers for their youngest children. Living rooms should also contain "child centers":

"A table, chairs, and shelves for toys and games can be assembled inexpensively..."

Here, on my own child-less home front, I've been getting along pretty smoothly. I moved Thursday's cleaning-of-the-bedroom to Friday evening. It occurred to me while dusting that it's no coincidence the manual instructs the housewife to dust everything before vacuuming. All that dust that's been building up on surfaces high and low should be lightly settled on the carpet before it's vacuumed. I also realized that my dust rag didn't get near as dirty this week as it did last week. If you're dusting your bedrooms every week, your cleaning materials will be easier to wash themselves.

I didn't plan my morning very wisely yesterday and ran out of time before making my bed. When I got home from the hospital, I was feeling so blue I skipped the evening routine entirely, but I wasn't too blue to notice how much it crapped to be climbing into an unmade bed. It's amazing how quickly I've become accustomed to that little luxury!