So I'm beginning to feel a little strange about leaving my bed unmade all day.
My 1945 housekeeping manual recommends that the bedcovers be turned down before leaving the room to prepare breakfast, but that the housewife needn't return to the bedrooms to give them their daily cleaning (including making the beds) until after she's cleared away the breakfast things and given both the living room and dining rooms their daily once-over. Every room in the house should have had some attention - and the beds should've been made - by the time the "early forenoon" has come to an end or about 10:00 a.m.
My 1947 housekeeping manual doesn't give me any advice about when to make the beds; it just states that this is one of the daily chores in each bedroom.
When LIFE magazine profiled Jane Amberg of Kankakee, Illinois in the 1941 article "Occupation: Housewife," she told them that she made four beds everyday "after doing breakfast dishes and getting the kids to school."
Here's the dilemma: I have to go to work on weekdays after clearing away the breakfast things. I won't get a chance to give every room in my house a daily cleaning. Those kinds of chores are going to have to be folded over into a once weekly thorough cleaning of each room, but making the bed may just need to be an exception. It's not really true to the spirit of the '40s to come home to rumpled bedcovers. If I make up my bed after clearing away the breakfast things each morning - just before going to work - am I giving my bedding enough time to air properly?
