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.
7 comments:
I wonder what sort of prompt action was expected on discovering insect life in the woodbox? Standing on a chair and screeching would work for me...
I love my fireplace. Luckily, I make that man's work, haha =)
My parents have a cast iron stove in their home. At times, my mom will use it to cook stews, soups and such instead of using her kitchen stove. Luckily, my dad cleans the interior stuff of it for her. I do like the feel of it though.
lpm
My grandmother cooked on a wood stove year round and they used a wood heat stove to increase the warmth in the winter.
She lived in central Florida.
I can't imagine how miserable that must have been!
My mom remembers Granny being able to just stick her arm into the oven interior and know if the temperature was right for whatever she was about to cook.
We are SO blessed and have it SO easy!!!
Amen to Roxanne's comment, only my grandmother lived in the north. But, when it is 105 degrees and canning...
Actually, up to about 5 years ago we heated our house with wood. I really miss it - even the mess. The nice parts about a stove vs a fireplace are: the stove doesn't have to be cleaned out every day, and it holds the heat much better than a fireplace. We even had a glass door and a screened "door" that we could put on if we wanted the ambiance of a fireplace.
Insects - yes. Ants, spiders, earwigs. Just part of life.
Jo, they do describe the situation pretty delicately, don't they? If you follow the page references in The Manual, it directs you here to a whole chapter on insecticides, etc.
lpm, a great job for a man! Keeps him in touch with his inner Paul Bunyan.
Roxanne, my great-grandmother heated her home with a woodstove and I can remember it was always so hot there when we went to visit during the summer! She lived in northern Maine, so this would've been great half the year. Florida? Yikes.
Packrat, fireplaces do create a bigger mess of things. It's beginning to make sense why cleaning up the hearth and laying a new fire is the FIRST job the housewife attends to when she sets to work in the living room. Get all that dirty stuff done before you bother with anything else.
We have a fireplace in our new haus. I love reading in front of it - and I'm so glad that it's neither cast iron nor wood-burning - I'd hate to have to clean and chop!
A crackling fire in the fire place + darkness outside + a good book = nirvana. Even better with a cup of hot chocolate.
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