Week Eight: The Mission

Wash on Monday,

Iron on Tuesday,
Mend on Wednesday,

Churn on Thursday,

Clean on Friday,

Bake on Saturday,

Rest on Sunday.

In this sing-song fashion, Caroline Ingalls taught her daughters in the 1870s how to assign each housekeeping task to a different day of the week. She must have been among countless 19th-century women who used the same saying to guide themselves in planning their housework. And though I'm not sure how long the saying has been around - probably in some fashion for centuries - this is the way Laura Ingalls Wilder remembered it when she wrote her first book, Little House in the Big Woods (1932).

For the '40s housewife raised in this tradition, Monday was Wash Day. This was rapidly becoming subject to debate, however:

It used to be a matter of pride to get the wash on the line as early Monday morning as possible. Now we wash on any day of the week and at any hour that is convenient. Sunday leaves an accumulation of work that must be done on Monday, and washing on that day is often too much of an extra burden. Tuesday is a far more sensible choice. And if weather, temperaments and schedules so dictate we can stretch washday over several days.

The 1947 Good Housekeeping manual also mentions the inconvenience of devoting Monday to the wash. Its authors suggest doing the laundry that requires ironing on Tuesday mornings - ironing it that very afternoon - and doing the laundry that doesn't require ironing (towels, underwear, etc.) on Thursdays. Despite all the debate - and despite their own misgivings - the authors of the 1945 manual end up including the wash on their "skeleton housekeeping schedule" for Mondays.

Late Forenoon (say between 10:00 a.m. and noon)

Washing, if done at home; if not, send laundry out.

Early Afternoon (between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m.)

Finish washing.

So that's my first mission for 2009. To add the Monday Wash to my housekeeping routine. Even though I'm not home during the day on Mondays, I'd like to share in this tradition in some way. I don't own a washer or dryer. There's a small laundromat in my apartment complex, but it's in high demand on weekday evenings, so I'm going to get up an hour earlier than normal on Monday mornings and get my laundry done before the sun comes up. This is something I started doing several months ago and the time of day has worked pretty well for me. No standing around waiting for others to come back and get their clean laundry. No washer stalking. (Those of you who've used a laundromat know exactly what I'm talking about!) It will definitely be a matter of discipline to get myself out of bed on a particular day every week.