"Wash on Monday" - a little history of homekeeping and my plans for the blog
It seems like we are at our peak of organizing and
homekeeping here at the cusp of 2020. The acme, the pinnacle, the culmination of knowledge from experts in the field. Martha Stewart, The FlyLady and Marie Kondo, just to name a few, are all here to
offer advice and methods to help make our homes work more efficiently. However,
they are hardly the first. Women have been organizaing and homekeeping from the beginning of recorded time, but starting several centuries back, in England, universal homekeeping regimes were adopted. These homekeeping schedules were shared mother-to-daughter and sister-to-sister until they were widely accepted. Nursery rhymes even incorporated them.
Ivory Soap added a Mother Goose rhyme about washing on Monday to one of their ads (below).
In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book Winter Days in the Big Woods, the
author notes the following schedule for homemakers:
Wash on Monday
Iron on Tuesday
Mend on Wednesday
Churn on Thursday
Clean on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday
However, in Antiques from The Country Kitchen by Frances Thompson,
a slightly different schedule is put forth:
Wash on Monday
Iron on Tuesday
Bake on Wednesday
Brew on Thursday (later marketing/shopping)
Churn on Friday (later housekeeping)
Mend on Saturday
Church on Sunday
It’s worth noting that “brewing” was not so that early American
homemakers could get tipsy. These were not early "desperate housewives." It was necessary because settlers were told not to
trust the water and so they would brew and drink apple cider instead. Thompson notes
that once the water controversy was cleared up, “Thursday was designated as marketing
day.” Another transition happened when farmers began providing dairy products
and it became unnecessary to have a segregated day for churning. “This relieved the
city dwellers of churning and making cheeses on Friday, and they began using
this day for housecleaning.”
As a lover of history, I’m fascinated by these rituals in which our early
sisters partook. I already knew about "wash on Monday" because in Louisiana, where I have roots, a cooked-all-day-long dish called Red Beans and Rice is served on Mondays in local restaurants. I'd always heard that it was because wash day was Monday and the women didn't have time to cook that day. The Cajun Coast, a convention and visitors' bureau web site for south Louisiana, offers more.
"In the 19th century, Monday typically was laundry day. Without a washing machine, the lady of the house tended to every article of clothing by hand. That didn’t leave much time for cooking, so dinner had to be something that required little attention. Enter the red kidney bean, brought to South Louisiana by those fleeing Haiti’s slave rebellion. After soaking the night before, the beans were set on the stove with the 'trinity,' the quintessential Cajun cooking base of onions, bell peppers and celery. It also was traditional to throw in the Sunday dinner’s ham bone for flavor. That’s now often replaced with sausage to complete a comfort food familiar to all South Louisiana dinner tables."
But what does that matter to us today and how does it apply
to this blog? Well, I was inspired by this schedule and will be posting along
in a similar fashion. I’m going to follow a little closer to Thompson’s:
Wash on Monday - Monday posts will be about linens. I love them enough to give them their own day
Tabletop Tuesday - Well, any ironing I speak about will come on Monday, along with wash, and so Tuesday posts for me will be about entertaining
Bake on Wednesday - I'll follow my early sisters here. Wednesday posts will be kitchen-themed: baking, cooking and recipes
Shopping on Thursday - Again, I'm sticking with the old ways here. Thursday posts will be about tag sale purchases and shopping
Housekeeping on Friday - Yep. Just following along on Thompson's schedule. Friday posts will be about homekeeping.
And Saturday? Who knows. Any post on Saturday will be dealer's choice!
For now, I'll leave you with my baking for today, since it's Wednesday. It's New Year's Day and here in the South, we all eat black eyed peas, turnip greens (meant to bring money in the new year), ham and a gorgeous pone of cornbread. You can't make real Southern cornbread from a boxed mix and you must only bake it in cast iron skillets. I consider this one a family heirloom. It belonged to my grandmother.
Happy New Year!
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