Week Forty-three: The Mission

Time to step things up again... When the latest additions to my routine begin to seem super manageable, I know it's time to take on a new mission!

Fitness
You know I'm the first to give it up to vintage advice, but these limbering and stretching exercises are transforming my figure. I'm amazed at the changes I've seen in my waistline and my arms since adding these exercises to my almost-daily walks. Don't get me wrong. The walking has made a tremendous difference, especially in my legs, but - after about three months of these vintage exercises - I'm feeling leaner and lither and more flexible than I have in years. These may be some very basic movements, but when done slowly and regularly they seem to be making a real difference.

Here are a few more I'm going to add to my evening exercise routine beginning tomorrow night. These hip-busters were written up during the early 1940s by Betty Clarke, a syndicated woman's page columnist:

20. Stand with feet apart, arms out at side, bend body, touching left arm to right foot, then right arm to left foot. (20 reps)

21. Put feet flat on floor, raising arms overhead. Bend forward, touching floor with palms of hands. Raise arms over head, bend body back from waist. Relax. (20 reps)

22. You’ll need a three-foot rope, but your lounging robe belt will do if you can make a secure loop at each end of it. Lie on your back and put a foot in each loop. Lift your right foot as far from the floor as the rope permits. Alternate lifting right and left. (5 reps)

Reducing
My weekday lunches are still a challenge. Particularly because I get tired of eating the same thing more than once or twice in a row. The hot dishes called for on these menus, even the coleslaw on my most recent menu, are hard to prepare in just one or two servings --- and there's only so much room in my freezer for storing additional servings! I'm going to continue plugging away at this mission, though. It's made me truly appreciate the convenience in convenience foods, but my figure and my health are going to benefit immeasurably in the long run from moving towards whole foods at lunchtime.

Grooming
Here's the next step in the 1946 grooming routine. After taking my evening bath (a morning shower on the weekends), drying briskly with a towel, applying deodorant, and brushing and flossing my teeth:

Down with a nice, long glass of water - and so to bed.

I can do that. I've usually reached my water quota by the time I head in for my bath, but it can't hurt to save that one last glass for a little bit longer. Plus it keeps me from trying to down too much water too quickly in the evening. The more I spread this water out throughout the day, the easier it is on my bladder!

Lunch Hour

I've been doing a pretty good job with these vintage lunch menus lately... I can only say "pretty good," because even this week I broke down and took one of my pre-mission frozen lunches to work on Wednesday. (I'd eaten the same lunch for the last two days in a row and couldn't face it one more time!) I've finally reached the bottom of that carton of soup, so I'm planning a new menu for tomorrow. First, though, let's take a closer look at the last one. How much of an improvement was this vintage menu over a typical pre-mission lunch? Here's the 1945 menu, with a few adaptations in the interest of my waistline:

Organic Creamy Tomato Soup
Open-faced Cheese Sandwich on Whole-grain Bread with Mustard and Lettuce
Celery
Olives
Fresh Pear

Now let's compare it to one of my normal pre-mission lunches - a frozen Enchilada Pie by Cedarlane.

Typical pre-mission lunch
Calories: 430
Fat: 14g
Sodium: 1,190mg
Carbohydrates: 52g
Protein: 26g

Vintage lunch, adapted
Calories: 350
Fat: 16g
Sodium: 1,530mg
Carbohydrates: 37g
Protein: 16g

Kind of a mixed bag this time. I certainly take a sodium hit whenever soup is on the menu. All in all, though, I'd say these vintage menus are doing well by me. Here's the original menu for tomorrow, straight from The American Woman's Cook Book (1945):

Oven Baked Beans
Catchup
Boston Brown Bread Sandwiches with Cream Cheese Filling
Cole Slaw
Applesauce
Milk

...with a few edits:

Vegetarian Baked Beans
Catchup
Open-faced Raisin Brown Bread Sandwich with Light Cream Cheese
Pennsylvania Cabbage Salad
Applesauce

Lunchtime at work is still a bit rushed. I zoom out the door at noon - as soon as I've slathered on some sunblock and thrown a cap on. I've been wearing heels most of the time these days, so I bought a cute little pair of slide-on canvas shoes with a good sole that make that noon walk so much more comfortable! My iPod in my pocket and away I go... You know, I remember vividly when this routine was new and it seemed like a massive rush to walk for 30 minutes and try to cram down a meal. These days, it doesn't really seem so bad. I'm usually back in the office by 12:35. My lunch takes less time to prepare - maybe two minutes in the microwave for my soup (versus five minutes for one of the frozen meals). That gives me a good 15 minutes to eat, a quick trip to the ladies' room to powder my nose and reapply lipstick, then I'm back to work. Admittedly, I don't always have time for fruit after eating my lunch, so I'm sure to fit it in as a mid-afternoon snack when that happens.

Once a week, I treat myself to a chance to wear a dress with those heels. I have one weekday off from my mid-day walk. One chance to dress up and wear the kind of clothes that I can't really do any power walking in. What surprises me is that I find myself a little antsy on my days off. That uninterrupted hour seems to go on forever! What a turn-around.

Week Forty-one: The Mission

It's that time again... I was planning to launch a new housekeeping mission this week, but I'm itching to kick things up another notch with my vintage beauty missions instead. I've got some serious momentum goin' on and don't want to lose it!

Fitness
An article in the October 1945 issue of Good Housekeeping includes a series of exercises designed just for the "tubby teen." (They didn't pull any p.c. punches in the '40s!) Luckily, they're accompanied by little drawings, because the written descriptions are very spare. I think these would make a nice addition to my morning exercise routine:

16. Waistline. [Lying on your back,] touch right foot to left hand, then left foot to right hand.

17. Hips. Lie on back, bicycle with legs in air. Repeat, lying on side.

18. Thighs. Hold on chair to balance yourself and swing leg back and forth.

19. Ankle. Roll each ankle 20 times, making a big circle with your toes.

I think I'll do 20 reps of each. Speaking of which, for the sake of consistency, I think I'll increase the reps of each of my other "limbering and stretching exercises" to 20 apiece.

Reducing
My weekday lunches are still a work in progress. I haven't by any means mastered this mission yet. Just yesterday, I left all my plastic containers sitting in the dish drainer in the kitchen at work. Again! Which means I had to pack a leftover frozen lunch today. I'm going to continue chipping away at this goal during the week ahead. Today is payday, and y'all have given me some great ideas about lunchware - so I'm hitting the stores this weekend!

Grooming
And here's the next step in the 1946 grooming routine. After taking my evening bath (or morning shower on the weekends), drying briskly with a towel, and applying deodorant:

Give your crowning glory a good swishing with the brush, dampen ends and pin up curls.

Hmmm... Well I certainly brush my hair after my evening bath-and-brief-shower, but I can't sleep in the curlers I bought. I've been rolling my hair in the mornings after re-wetting it under the shower for a minute. This step was definitely designed for the woman who only washed her hair once a week - and needed just to wet the ends on a daily basis in order to put it up in pin curls. The next step in the routine is one I could truly benefit from in the evenings:

Brush teeth carefully.

I always brush my teeth in the mornings - sometimes twice --- but I don't always remember to brush them in the evenings. And my dentist has been after me forever to floss regularly. I think I'll make brushing and flossing my teeth each evening my new mission.

The Housewife's Tool Box: Thinking Ahead

Let's hear it for persistence... I nailed that vintage lunchbox menu today. (It's about time!) And just because I want to make sure these vintage menus are really and truly better for me, I'm going to compare the basic nutritional stats to one of my typical pre-mission lunches. I used to love having one of those table-ready cans of Campbell's Creamy Tomato Parmesan Bisque with probably two or three servings' worth of Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits and Trader Joe's Chunky Olive Hummus. Yummalicious! And yet:

Typical pre-mission lunch
Calories: 640
Fat: 36.5g
Sodium: 1,480mg *gasp*
Carbohydrates: 82g
Protein: 16g

Vintage lunch, adapted
Calories: 360
Fat: 23.5g
Sodium: 370mg
Carbohydrates: 27g
Protein: 17g

Yikes. My vintage lunch menu today was a no-holds-barred improvement on a typical pre-mission lunch. So far, these 1945 lunches - with a little tweaking - are undeniably a change for the better. Here's the adapted menu for tomorrow:

Organic Creamy Tomato Soup
Open-faced Cheese Sandwich with Mustard and Lettuce on Whole-grain Bread
Celery
Olives
Fresh Pear

All this fuss over lunches here at the Jitterbug household has made me think about just how important forethought was to the 1940s housewife. You might have the latest washing machine, a state-of-the-art vacuum, and an amazing storage closet, but you couldn't run an efficient home without the ability to think ahead. To anticipate the needs of tomorrow and the day after that. To plan, to remember, to always have a foot in the next meal while cleaning up after the last one. The kitchen - the basic, never-ending demands of the battle to put nutritious, affordable meals on the table three times a day --- the kitchen probably requires more forethought than any other facet of housekeeping. And when it came to rationing - a family couldn't have survived without the forethought an experienced mother and wife had ready to apply to the challenge.

My own vintage meals are several days in the making. Before doing my twice-weekly marketing, I sit down to plan my menus for the week ahead. Buying produce especially can be a trick. If I buy it too far in advance, it'll spoil before it hits the table. Produce that keeps or that needs time to ripen can be purchased a little farther in advance. How many eggs have I got on hand? How many days 'til my milk expires? Can I get a better deal on spices at the supermarket or at the natural foods store? All these questions must be weighed as I make my way through the store. I'll bet most successful housewives constantly carry about in their heads a running inventory of their pantry!

In the evenings, I must look ahead to the morning. Have I got enough space in the dishwasher for tomorrow's breakfast dishes? Is there anything which needs to be taken out of the freezer to thaw? Anything to soak overnight? My latest question: What can I prepare in advance for tomorrow's lunch? If a vintage dinner is in the works: Are there any dishes I can make up before I've finished cleaning up after lunch?

I don't think this kind of forethought has to come naturally... If it did, I'd be in serious trouble. It's a learned skill, I think. Something you just become better at with lots and lots of practice. I haven't picked it up completely myself. There are plenty of moments where I wish I'd thought of something hours ago - or days ago. But those kinds of moments come fewer and farther between these days. See? There is hope for all you last-minute types like me!

My Fruit Dollar

Housecleaning and laundry aren't the only topics covered in exhaustive detail by America's Housekeeping Book (1945). The Manual also includes a chapter on the household budget. Sixty years ago, groceries cost much, much more proportionally than they do today. In fact, the authors of The Manual note than sometimes "the entire budget must be built around this item." The housewife was charged with a vital mission, then, in planning menus that could make the best, most efficient use of every article brought home from the market. Shopping for the best price, food preservation, creative use of leftovers --- these were topics of great importance to housewives and their husbands.

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.

So I undertook an experiment last winter to shed some light on my own "food dollar." Not only for budget reasons, but because this kind of spending reflects the kind of eating you're doing. For one embarrassing month, I tracked my own grocery expenditures. And it was not a pretty picture. At the end of the month, I realized that I had spent $375.67 for groceries - about $100 to $125 more per month than I thought I'd been spending. 66% of my food dollar had gone toward Fats, Sugar and Miscellaneous Items --- the category where I'd lumped in all the processed, packaged non-single-ingredient foods that hadn't even been thought of in 1940. I spent 11% of my food dollar on Fruits and Vegetables, 10% on Cereal Foods, 8% on Milk and Cheese, and 5% on Eggs, Beans, and Soy.

Fast forward six months. In late July, I started tracking my food dollar again. For one month. I've made lots of changes in my diet and should be able to see a difference in my marketing, right? Well, here are the results... My total spending on groceries for the month was $286.25. That's a significant drop - $89.42 per month I can put to a better use. (Like all these new clothes I have to buy to fit my new figure!)

Fruits and Vegetables: $105.55 (37%)

Fats, Sugar, and Miscellaneous Items: $96.03 (33%)

Breads and Cereals: $33.28 (12%)

Eggs, Beans, and Soy: $25.92 (9%)

Milk and Cheese: $25.47 (9%)

I'm not surprised that my spending on Fruits and Vegetables has risen so dramatically. I absolutely spoil myself these days with as much fresh fruit as I can possibly bring home. If I have it handy, I'm much less likely to do any snacking that ends up on my hips. I am surprised, however, that Fruits and Vegetables took the lead. And that my spending on Fats, Sugar, and Miscellaneous Items has been cut in half!!! Maybe I'll celebrate by sharing the recipe for the Rolled Oat Muffins I tried out last week. Though I was a little skeeved by soaking the oats in sour milk, they turned out incredibly. Moist and nutty and super easy to make. I ate two of them that first morning, then popped the rest in the freezer for rationing out from time to time.

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ROLLED OAT MUFFINS

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup white flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1 1/2 cups sour milk or buttermilk
2 tablespoons melted shortening

Soak 2 cups rolled oats in sour milk overnight. Sift dry ingredients together. Beat egg; add milk, shortening and sifted ingredients. Mix only enough to dampen flour. Fill greased muffin pans 2/3 full and bake in hot oven (400 degrees F.) 25 minutes. Makes 12.

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I wish this lunch packing thing came more naturally to me. I spent a while on Sunday evening prepping Monday's lunch and promptly went to work without the Hard-cooked Egg that was sitting in the fridge. This morning I was feeling antsy about a day-and-a-half-old egg - and realized at the last minute that I'd left all my plastic containers sitting in the dish drainer at work! - so took along one of my leftover frozen lunches instead. I'm determined to grit my teeth, though, and make a success of this second lunch box menu - so I'm going to cook another egg tonight and try it one more time tomorrow. The good news is that the Peanut Butter and Lettuce Sandwich was yummy! I'm looking forward to having that again.

All this talk of food is driving me crazy. I've got a basket full of ironing calling my name. Catch you later!

New Week, New Strategy

Just stopping in quickly with a brief post about lunchmaking...

I ran into some trouble with this mission last Friday morning. I baked a batch of Rolled Oat Muffins to include with my breakfast --- and I guess that was all the work in the kitchen I could handle in one morning. With five minutes to go, I realized I hadn't even started cooking the egg that was on my lunch menu. So threw up a white flag and grabbed one of my leftover pre-mission lunches.

New week, new strategy. I'm going to try packing as much of my lunch as possible the night before. It'll be part of my evening chores in the kitchen. Usually I just empty the sink of any pots or pans that have been soaking and make sure there's room in the dishwasher for the next morning's breakfast dishes. Now I'll add making my lunch for work the next day to that list. Of course, there will always been an item or two that needs to be assembled in the morning, but I ought to be able to get the bulk of the work out of the way the night before. That's the plan anyway! Here's the original 1945 lunch menu in the works for tomorrow:

Peanut Butter, Bacon and Lettuce Sandwiches
Cauliflowerets
Carrot Sticks
Hard-Cooked Egg
Gingerbread
Grapes
Milk

And here's the menu adapted for vegetarians and/or reducers:

Open-faced Peanut Butter and Lettuce Sandwich
on Whole Grain Bread
Cauliflowerets
Carrot Sticks
Hard-cooked Free Range Egg
Grapes

Peanut butter and lettuce? I'm not so sure about this one, but I'm up for an adventure!

"Be a safety-first girl..."

My little apartment has been in a state of upheaval for the last few days. I had some minor plumbing issues with the bathtub/shower, but it was enough to throw off that part of my routine entirely. After cleaning the bathroom on Saturday, I didn't want the tub to get all scurvy again before I had maintenance up to scope out my problem --- so I've been taking showers only since Saturday morning. Well, the maintenance guy was here yesterday and replaced my shower head and all the metal fixtures in my bathtub. You should have seen the water pressure I got this morning! Practically blew me out of the bathroom. I'm excited to get back in the bathtub this evening, though.

You know what I did learn during the last few days in Showerland? If I roll my hair up when it's freshly washed in the morning, it doesn't hold the curl nearly as well as when I wash my hair the night before and just wet it in the morning. I also found out that I'm way more excited now by the clean-ability of my bathtub fixtures than I am by their look. Once upon a time, I might have been concerned only with the fact that they were cute. The first thing I did when I got home yesterday was to check out those fixtures to see if they'd be easy to keep clean. And I think they will. Score 1 for the housekeeper!

My lunches for the last few days have been almost identical to Monday's. (I'm a one-woman household and that soup has got to be eaten up!) I'm definitely not feeling any afternoon hunger - which is a happy surprise considering that the vintage lunch has 2/3 the calories. One more day of the creamy broccoli/egg-salad combo and I should be ready for a new vintage lunch menu on Friday. This next one sounds a little, well, strange. Will I be able to choke it down? Will I actually enjoy it? Stay tuned...

I'm going to try the night-time deodorant thing tonight. The first time I read through the 1946 grooming routine, I thought it was nuts to apply your deodorant immediately after taking your nightly bath. Wouldn't you want to be as fresh as possible in the morning? Wouldn't you sweat it all away during the night??? So I was chatting with a friend the other day and she told me that she'd recently started using one of those new "clinical strength" deodorant/antiperspirants. Strangely enough, the directions on the container tell her to apply it at night! Maybe those vintage beauty experts were onto something after all. Well, we've sure got the right conditions to give this technique a run for its money. Temps should reach 104 or 105 degrees F. again tomorrow.

By the by, 169 seems to be my watermark when it comes to matchmaking. Since Monday, no less than two people have suggested setting me up with somebody! An acquaintance wants to set me up with a 44-year-old engineer who's a friend of the family. She describes him as "a little nerdy," but very athletic (hiking and swimming). She's one of the kindest people I know, so I'm intrigued. One of my closest co-workers also wants to set me up with a friend. Which would probably be a bad idea seeing as she's also kind of a supervisor of mine. I think I'll try to pass on that one!

Eating Out

You know what I forgot? Those sodium- and preservative-packed lunches actually make it pretty easy for me to get in that workout at lunchtime on weekdays. Today was my day off from walking, but it took me a good 10 minutes to assemble my lunch in the kitchen at work. That's going to be tough to pull off the rest of this week when I've only got about 20 minutes to eat... It also took me long enough to make my vintage lunch this morning that my whole sense of timing was thrown off and I actually had to leave the house without my bed made and with dirty dishes in the sink. Eek! Just one little change and everything's a mess. Here's the menu I adapted from the original:

Organic Creamy Broccoli Soup
Open-faced Egg Salad Sandwich on Whole-grain Bread with Lettuce and Tomatoes
Green Pepper Strips
Fruit Salad (Apple, Strawberries, Blueberries)

First, I'll have to say that it was a yummy, filling meal. Even without the Crackers, a second slice of bread, and the Cup Cake. What I might have eaten for lunch today without this mission in place is an Amy's Broccoli Pot Pie with some fruit for dessert. So let's do some basic nutritional comparisons of the non-raw fruit/veggie components of these lunch menus:

Typical pre-mission lunch
Calories: 430
Fat: 22g
Sodium: 630mg
Carbohydrates: 46g
Protein: 11g

Vintage lunch, adapted
Calories: 260
Fat: 19.5g
Sodium: 690mg
Carbohydrates: 32g
Protein: 14g

Interesting... My vintage lunch was better in every respect except for sodium. Boy, that soup sure packs a wallop! I'd bet if I was making the soup from scratch with a low sodium broth, I could make a difference there. I'm loving the drop in the number of calories. Will my lower calorie lunch make a difference in my ability to resist the temptation to snack tonight? It didn't make any difference this afternoon.

I'm sure I'll get better at packing these lunches. It'd help ginormously if I actually owned some good lunch-packing equipment. The American Woman's Cook Book (1945) has some serviceable sounding suggestions on preparing and packing lunches.

Sandwich-making tips:

• Whole grain breads should be used for sandwiches. Graham, whole wheat, oatmeal, brown, raisin, and nut bread are excellent. [I guess they hold up better to sandwich fillings!]
  
  
• Pack lettuce separately, to be added just before eating.
  
  
• Fillings for sandwiches may be packed in small jars and buttered bread in waxed paper included for spreading just before eating.
  

Adding a hot or cold dish:

• Special vacuum containers make it possible to include hot cocoa or hot soup in the lunch, also a creamed vegetable, a hot pudding, or other hot food. The containers should never be filled the night before the lunch is prepared.
  
  
• In the winter have something hot and invigorating in the thermos bottle: Hot soup, coffee, tea, baked beans, hot chocolate, or stew. Something cool and refreshing in the summertime, such as lemonade, tomato juice, fruit juices, chocolate milk shake, milk, iced tea or iced coffee, canned fruit juices.
  

General packing advice:

• Stewed or canned fruits may be carried in any small screw-top container. Cold puddings, custards or similar desserts may also be carried in this manner.
  
  
• All foods not in containers should be wrapped separately in waxed paper before being placed in the box. The neatly wrapped articles should be placed, so far as is possible, in the order in which the lunch will be eaten, so that those found first may be eaten first without disturbing the remainder. The heaviest foods, however, should be placed at the bottom of the box.
  
  
• Articles should be packed compactly in order to prevent the food from shaking about.
  
  
• Lunch boxes should be washed, scalded and aired daily. Those made of lightweight metal are best. Many attractive boxes are now made with a vacuum bottle which fits the box.

It is a bit hard to imagine toting one of those old-fashioned black metal lunchboxes to work with me everyday. (Imagine if I ran into Curly with one of those in my hand!) And yet most of the soft-sided lunch bags I see out there these days don't provide much support for items wrapped in wax paper. The only tools I've got right now are a few plastic sandwich-sized containers and some custard cups with lids. Usually I just toss a few things in my tote bag --- but they're frozen, so no big deal. That arrangement isn't going to cut it when I've got soup to carry along! I'd like to find something that doesn't really look like a lunch box, but provides the same protection to my noonday meal. Any ideas?

Week Forty: The Mission

Fitness
As I continue getting used to the extra resistance those 1-lb. wrist weights add to my arms, I'm going to add a few more limbering and stretching exercises to my evening routine. These exercises targeting "heavy hips" and a "thick waistline" were featured in the March 27, 1947 edition of Salt Lake City's Deseret News:

13. Get on your knees, keeping your back straight and arms stretched overhead. Bend your body sharply to the right side, and lower the hips as far as possible toward the floor. Then raise your body up straight, bend to the left side, and lower hips. Repeat 4 times; rest. 8 to 12 times altogether.

14. Stand with arms out to the sides, and kick your right leg across your body, trying to touch the left hand. Feel that stretch? Return leg to position, and kick the left leg. Do 12 times, alternating legs.

15. Now get down on the floor, flat on your back, with legs straight and arms out to the sides. Keep shoulders flat on the floor. Pull both knees up to your chest and roll them over to left side, then to right. Swing from side to side 6 times; rest. 12 to 18 times altogether.

Reducing
My weekday lunches have gone almost untouched thus far by the changes I've made to my diet. The only thing I've been doing differently at lunchtime is to opt for fruit when it comes to dessert. I guess I've been holding out on this meal because it's the high point of a working day which can sometimes seem like a long slog! Unfortunately, my lunch choices are often quite high in sodium - and probably in calories - and filled with additives and preservatives... So I've been collecting vintage menus for the lunchbox and am planning on trying some of these out. I'll have to make some adaptations, of course. Cut down on the carbs and eliminate the desserts. Stick to vintage portion sizes. Make open-faced sandwiches. And I'll keep an eye on the calorie content of these meals to make sure I'm not exceeding what I've been accustomed to eating for lunch on weekdays. Here's the original menu that I'll be adapting for tomorrow's lunch. It's included in a chapter on "The Lunch Box" in The American Woman's Cook Book (1945):

Cream of Spinach Soup
Crackers
Egg Salad Sandwiches with Lettuce
Raw Vegetable Strips
Apple
Cup Cake

Grooming
And here's the next step in the 1946 grooming routine. After taking my evening bath (or morning shower on the weekends) and a brisk dry with the towel:

Don't forget the deodorant under your arms.

Deodorant at night? Won't I be all sweaty by the time I head to work in the morning???

A Morning with the Ambergs

A few more pictures of Mrs. Amberg hard at work at home in September 1941. It's interesting that the shoes she's wearing are not the pumps we usually see in vintage ads of women at work; they're just oxfords. And she's wearing cotton socks. So she's dressed for comfort, with her hair tied up in a simple ribbon. Before preparing lunch, she's changed into a striped dress - maybe because Gilbert was coming home. Looks like it's toasted sandwiches and soup on the menu at the Amberg house. Stay tuned tomorrow to see how this 1941 housewife spent the afternoon...


Jane Amberg, housewife & mother, busy straightening up before launching into some heavy cleaning w. dust mop & carpet sweeper in her living room at home.


Jane Amberg scrubbing the bathtub in bathroom at home.


Jane Amberg using pop-up toaster w. slices of bread as she makes sandwiches for her three children at lunchtime in kitchen at home.

Jane Amberg, serving lunch to her husband Gilbert who has come home fr. the office a few minutes away & her ever-present kids at the kitchen table at home.