Monday was laundry day; Tuesday was for ironing

[GeorgiaXplant]

On Saturday morning my mother called in our grocery order, the house got cleaned, bread was made, and baking done for the first half of the coming week. Grocery order was delivered in the afternoon. Saturday supper was almost always soup that included leftover veggies from during the week.

Sunday was the day we had a big dinner.

We raised chickens and ducks, and Sunday dinner was usually one or the other, having killed the bird on Saturday afternoon. I cleaned it, plucked feathers, sometimes *rescued* an egg that hadn't been laid yet (talk about fresh!).​

Leftovers were Monday's supper because there wasn't really much time for cooking since the laundry took up the better part of the day.

Starch didn't come out of a can; we cooked starch on the kitchen stove and starched clothes before hanging them up to dry, sprinkled them and kept them in the fridge until Tuesday. Ironing day.

On Wednesday we finished up whatever ironing didn't get done the day before and baked again for the rest of the week.

Fridays were for changing the bed linens.

I remember weeknight evenings well. We darned socks and mended clothes while we listened to the radio. The Green Hornet, Vincent Price.

What the heck was it that got done on Thursday?

In the summertime, we probably used those days (and whatever other time we could carve out) canning and making jam and jelly.

 

[RadishRose]

I remember my mother ironing- the sprinkled clothes not gotten to, tightly rolled and put in the fridge to finish next day! No darning that I recall.

 

[Marie5656]

Wow, such a busy week. But that is what families did. I remember my Italian grandmother had a root cellar in their house where she kept al the canned and jarred good, and stuff from the garden. Our house had one too, but my mom never used it for that. I did try my hand at canning once, and I have to say, I did well. I need to get into that again. At that time, I had a neighbor with me, showing me the process step by step (we shared the outcome). May need to find a class or something, as I am not sure that I could do it again, after one lesson 20 years ago.

 

[Aunt Bea]

I remember my mother ironing- the sprinkled clothes not gotten to, tightly rolled and put in the fridge to finish next day! No darning that I recall.

Me too!

Remember the aluminum sprinkler top that fit a soda bottle.

 

[Ronni]

I remember lying on the floor in the "lounge" (living room) listening to the radio and drawing pictures. The radio was housed in a giant console and my Mum would be sitting in her chair knitting, and my Dad in his, reading the paper.

 

[terry123]

Sounds like my house too.

 

[hollydolly]

You know, I was just thinking... our generation and especially the generation before me, are probably going to be the very last to ever, remember any of these things...

 

[GeorgiaXplant]

Wow, such a busy week. But that is what families did. I remember my Italian grandmother had a root cellar in their house where she kept al the canned and jarred good, and stuff from the garden. Our house had one too, but my mom never used it for that. I did try my hand at canning once, and I have to say, I did well. I need to get into that again. At that time, I had a neighbor with me, showing me the process step by step (we shared the outcome). May need to find a class or something, as I am not sure that I could do it again, after one lesson 20 years ago.

Google is your friend! So is You Tube. And then there's the Ball Big Blue Book of Canning with explanations, pictures, and recipes.

 

[Ruth n Jersey]

I remember all of this. When I was very small my Mom was always warning me not to put my fingers near the wringer of the washing machine. She also had a scrub board for the really stubborn stains on the clothes. She always hung the clothes outside. Sometimes they would freeze. I use to laugh when she would bring in my Dads long Johns as stiff as a board,then she would hang them on lines we had in the basement. As little as I was I often wondered why she just didn't start out that way on those freezing cold days.


We also had a coal bin and I remember my Dad getting the furnace going each morning and the clanking of the radiators as the heat would come up. When we had coal delivered it made such a noise going down the chute into the bin. When I came home from school in the winter my Mom would have my slippers all warmed up on top of the radiators.

My Grandpa would dump the ashes in the same spot in the yard and every so often he would go through it and pick out the small unused pieces of coal and throw them back in the bin. In the summer he grew corn and pumpkins in that area. It always grew well there.

My Grandma did most of the canning using the open kettle method for everything. As far as I know nothing ever spoiled.

It was hard work back then but I'm glad I remember those days. Families had time for each other and visited often.

 

[hollydolly]

Ruth apart from the canning..and the radiators (we had none just a coal fire then ultimately an electric one) ...you're describing my childhood too,...exactly

The frozen clothes were stiff as a board when we brought them in and we had to hang them on what we called ''the Pulley'' in the kitchen to dry out...

Like this...

 

[Ruth n Jersey]

Hollydolly, I never saw that pulley. That must have been a pretty modern contraption back then. Do you remember the curtain stretchers? My Mom spent hours stretching white curtains in layers. Those tiny pins were deadly.

 

[Pappy]

Had most of the things mentioned here including our root cellar. Grampa would order coal buy the ton and the delivery was though a cellar window with the ashes going into our driveway in the winter. We lived on a hillside.

We we raised chickens, ducks and goats. Used the old outhouse until we got indoor plumbing. My job, on wash day, was to wring out the clothes. And yes, I did get my hand caught. Just once...:sentimental:

 

[GeorgiaXplant]

Hollydolly, your family must have been really well off to afford such a sophisticated gizmo as that pulley. We just strung up clotheslines wherever we could!

And Pappy, when we came back to the US after the war, our house had no running water, just a well with a pump in the kitchen, and we had an outhouse. Lemme tell ya, it was darned COLD out there in the Upper Peninsula winter! The next summer, my dad tied us into a shared septic tank and also connected our house to city water. By Christmastime that year, we had a real bathroom complete with a flush toilet and a bathtub. Never mind that we still didn't have hot water. We filled up a copper boiler and heated it on the kitchen stove to empty into galvanized tubs to wash (using a washboard and Fels Naptha soap) and rinse the laundry until we were connected to city water. As soon as that happened, we got a wringer washer, and I was in heaven even though

I got my arm caught in that !@#$%^&*! wringer more than once. Before the wringer washer, my older brother and I wrung out the clothes after they were rinsed.

And about that bathtub...water for baths was heated in the copper boiler, too, and carried (carefully!) up the stairs to pour into the tub. I was in seventh or eighth grade before we had a water heater, and even then, the pilot light was only lit to heat up water on bath night...Saturday, of course!​

We had an oil heater, but we also a combination wood and gas stove in the kitchen. One of our summer chores was splitting and stacking wood. My older brother split the wood; I pitched it through the cellar window and stacked it in the basement. That basement had a dirt floor, and I HATED going down there to stack wood. I also hated being told that it was my turn to go down there to get wood for the stove. ("Why do *I* always have to do everything?")

The basement was what we had instead of a root cellar. It's where we stored 100 lbs of potatoes for winter and where all the fruit, veggies, chickens and ducks that we canned were kept. The potatoes were in a huge string sack and were hung from a beam in the ceiling.

 

[Aunt Bea]

My grandmother had an old gas/wood combination kitchen range!

When we were kids we were terrified that somehow the old range would blow us all to kingdom come!

When she needed to light the oven she would make a twist out of newspaper set it on fire with a match turn on the gas and wave the torch under the broiler then she would put the burning torch on top of the stove and bang her big old tea kettle down on it sending sparks in every direction!

Remember cross stitch?

 

[GeorgiaXplant]

Those towels explain it all...Sunday for resting, Monday for laundry, Tuesday for ironing, Wednesday for mending (see all those socks she's darning?), Thursday looks like either harvesting stuff from the garden and wringing the chicken's neck OR grocery shopping, Friday for cleaning the house, Saturday for baking. Close enough!

I was never scared of our kitchen stove, but I wonder why your grandmother didn't just chuck that twist of paper into the wood-burning section of the stove? We used those old wooden strike-anywhere matches to light the oven, lit the pilot light from underneath just like you described.

 

[Pappy]

This is a photo of me. Looking at camera, and my uncle, wire brushing the tin roof getting it ready to paint. My great grandfather built this house in 1900. It’s the one that had no plumbing until we installed one. The kitchen had a wood stove for cooking and the old sink, hand made, had a hand operated water pump.

 

[tortiecat]

Thanks for the memories!!!