Recovered my page from the hackers! And an ACCURATE 50s cleaning schedule!

A while back (before I got completely hacked and locked out of my blog) I'd posted a link to what has been perceived as the cleaning scheduled for women in the fifties. I'm an addict for anything and everything mid-century. Yes, I know the world was sexist and racist, I'm not naive. But here's the thing, even though women were told their place was in the home, they took pride in their work, in their homes, their children, and their appearance. They strived to do the best job they could. But I digress (damn soap box). After scouring the web, devouring as much as I possibly could about that time in history, I came across This post. Over at The Modern Day 50s Housewife she posted a more realistic schedule. Here's just a peek of this post:

Morning/Breakfast:

1. Mom would wake up and just like we do today her first chore was often to start the coffee. She had to do this first because it took ten to fifteen minutes to percolate.
2. While the coffee percolated, she would often prepare her husband’s and children’s lunches.
3. Next was breakfast prep, and despite what we’ve been lead to believe, every day was not a big breakfast day. Oatmeal, cold cereal, or toast were all typical weekday breakfast fare. Big breakfasts with pancakes and eggs and home fries were saved for weekend days. In some homes, dad would eat and leave before the children woke up. And in other homes, everyone ate together. In any event, the entire morning breakfast routine doesn’t seem to be much longer than our modern-day counterpart.
4. After eating, dad left for work and children were sent to make their beds, brush teeth and get dressed for school.  Clothing was usually planned and laid out the night before so there was no debate.  They knew what to put on and any resistance to getting these morning chores completed in a timely manner would be met with a promise to answer to dad later that day, so resistance was rare. Mom would often be tending to younger children at this time as well as possibly making her own bed and tidying her own bedroom.
5. Where a 1950s mom’s morning really hit the time crunch that we don’t feel today is when it came time for the kids to actually get to school. Back then, a car or second car was almost unheard of. Mom had to walk the kids to school.  I think if I could change one thing from our modern-day morning routine back to the 50s version, the walk to school would be it. It was great exercise for everyone involved and is probably one of the reasons obesity was less of an issue than it is now.

Late Morning/Early Afternoon

1. Once mom returned from delivering the children to school, she’d often settle any younger children then she’d take a small break for tea and maybe listen to a morning radio show (usually heavily slanted toward wives and mothers because career women were almost unheard of).
2. Then the busy work of cleaning would begin. The entire cleaning routine involved about three hours each day.

Definitely head over and read the rest of that post. In fact, have fun looking through her whole blog. It's fabulous.

You've seen my posts about developing schedules for housework, and thankfully, this post -if it's as accurate as my grandma says - is much more attainable. I always wondered why I had so many unfinished projects. Then I realized - I'm a perfectionist. If something isn't done just right, I get frustrated and walk away, telling myself I'll come back to it later, you know, when I lost the urge to put my fist through a wall. But of course, those projects stayed unfinished. I just pretended not to see the big ugly orange swatch of paint, or the paint splotches on the ceiling from my awful painting.

Since I've put myself on a schedule, life has seemed just a little easier, just a little more manageable. All those unfinished tasks don't seem so terrifying anymore, so overwhelming. I've shared my addiction to Nicole Mathurin's blog and her awesome schedules. But what do you use? Do you have everything written down and planned out? Do you wing it?