I Was Thinking... How Did She Do It?

As in most years since our daughters have grown up and moved away from home, we have hosted most of the major holidays. This, of course, required a lot of preparation for meals and getting the house ready for company.
I will admit, the level of preparation I feel is necessary is a lot less than what my wife expects. So, we get everything ready because a happy wife means a happy life.
On several occasions, when we were busy getting everything done, my wife remarked, “I sure didn’t help much when our folks hosted the holidays.” When our children were young, we would pack up everything and head over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house. We arrived and enjoyed what our mothers had spent hours preparing for us with little regard for all the work they had done. I say mothers because I know my dad or father-in-law were not very helpful around the house. While we seem to struggle to accomplish what we feel is needed, I can’t help but wonder how our mothers did it all.
My wife and I, plus our siblings, grew up in the 1950s and 60s. So, I’m remembering what it was like taking care of a family during that time span. Both of our mothers stayed at home for most of our childhood. So, if they were home all the time, was it really so hard? For those of you from my generation, let’s look back.
Our mothers had to make three meals a day, and most of what they made was from scratch. There weren’t any “ready to serve” meals you popped out of the freezer and served from the microwave. Besides, our only freezer was the little one above the refrigerator. Potatoes and vegetables might come from a root cellar and needed to be peeled and cut up before cooking. There may be some canned vegetables in the basement from the summer garden that she probably also tended. The pickles we ate had been hand-picked and processed by my mom as well. A good share of the bread we ate was homemade without the aid of a bread maker. I can still remember the smell of fresh baked bread. The same was true of pies, cakes and cookies. None of these came from a box. After all meals or baking, there were always plenty of dishes to wash, of course, without a dishwasher. Most women were still in the kitchen well after most of the rest of the family had moved to someplace else in the house. In addition to cooking, there was cleaning.
I grew up on a farm, so there were plenty of dirty clothes. Mom had a washer, but it wasn’t the type where you pushed a couple of buttons and walked away. The wringer washer required more involvement. The washer did much of the washing, but then the whole load needed to be run through the ringer into the rinse tubs. From there, they had to go back through the ringer to squeeze out the excess water. Then, they needed to be dried. There was no machine for this, either. Mom had to carry the wet clothes out of the basement to hang up on the clothesline outside. Sometimes in the winter, they were hung in the basement. But that wasn’t the end. Almost everything needed to be ironed.
The washing and drying took much of one day, and the ironing often took up much of the next. We didn’t have permanent press clothes, so mom ironed almost everything. I think she even ironed dad’s handkerchiefs. If bedding was washed, you needed to increase the time needed.
Cleaning the house was constant as well. There were no robot vacuums, and my mom used a heavy old Kirby. The linoleum floors needed to be mopped, and floors were waxed in those days. Being on a farm, there was always plenty of dust, and having a coal burning furnace didn’t help, either. When mom wasn’t cooking, washing, or cleaning, she also was in charge of mending any clothes that needed repair. In addition, she knitted.
Today, we have a dishwasher, a microwave, automatic washers and dryers, coffee makers, and food processors, and we still feel it is hard to get everything done. I still don’t know how mom did it.
Did You Ever Wonder? — Why do they call it a “permanent” if a woman has to go back some time later and have it done again?