Why Housekeeping Today is More Difficult than 150 Years Ago

Despite the advent of things like: Washing machines, dishwashers, vacuums, cleaning services, indoor plumbing and roombas, there is a very LOUD gripe amongst homemakers that their job is NEVER done.

I think about how, in the past, Sundays would be a day in which no one would do any cooking, cleaning or other kind of work. It was a day meant to be spent in thought and prayer and leisure. Despite all of the aforementioned “helpers” we still become the weekend warriors.

I don’t know about you, but cleaning my house is never done. There is never a moment in which I could sit back and think, “wow! The laundry is all washed and away. The toilets and shower are scrubbed. The kitchen is immaculate. The windows and baseboards and walls and floors and ceilings are scrubbed. The beds are all stripped. The rooms are all clean.” It’s just not going to happen. Well it might, for a moment, but that’s about it.

Which got me thinking. People are usually saying how much easier us homemakers have it now than we did a 100 or so years ago, we certainly do. But, in all fairness, they had it easier than us too.

*Their laundry could be done in one day for the week, because there was only 3 outfits {if that} per person: 2 work clothes and 1 Sunday outfit (and they were probably wearing one of them while doing the laundry). They didn’t have 40 t-shirts, 10 pairs of jeans, 15 pairs of underwear, 30 pairs of socks ad nauseam per person.

*They didn’t need a dishwasher, because everyone had one plate, one cup, and one set of utensils. In most families each person cleaned their plates etc after each meal, but even if they didn’t…there wasn’t more than a few plates, cups, utensils, and some pots.

*They could clean their entire house in less than an hour, because their house was most likely one or two rooms that had a total square footage of maybe 200sqf, and barely had any furniture.

*They had no, if any, toys or other “clutter” items. People didn’t have the option of buying thousands of different toys, books, tchotchkes, or any number of other “necessities”, particularly those of the baby variety. Without them, there were a lot less things to clean up.

*Kids were expected to HELP. Not like today when it’s now considered child-abuse to expect your kid to clean their room and help around the house.

What ways do you think people had it easier keeping-house in the past?