1950s Housewife - Day Six

THE WEEKEND HONEY-DO LIST:

My Dearest Husband -

If it is to your liking and works into your schedule this weekend, please do the following tasks for me. I cannot possibly do them as well as a big, strong man can. Thank you. Sincerely - Your Loving Wife

• Hang the new hammock in the backyard. *I know you can do it without letting our neighbors know that you have a vocabulary that can sometimes come in handy if you are ever with the sailors down on the docks.*
• Refill the bird feeders and rehang them. *I so admired the way you took them down before the big storm and how brave you were when surrounded by the swarm of hornets who had taken up residence in one of the feeders - please dispose of any hornet carcasses left behind.*
• Dig up the Summer Garden. *What a great season it was - with the tomatoes really growing in like thunder! I know that next year will be the year your award-winning casabas grow in nice and round - sorry they were used as bowling balls by the boy this time around... perhaps he can help you dig it up today?
• Speaking of the boy, do you think you can get him out of the house for just a little errand or something this weekend? Anything will do. It is just a small request from your daughter and myself for a moment of peace in the household.

Thank you for doing these chores, Dear Husband. You are so very busy and intellectually engaged during the week - it really does a body good to do some manual labor on the weekend. It is no wonder that you continue to inspire me with your good looks and strong arms. Let me know if you need a glass of iced lemonade at any point during these chores, my love.

1950s Magazine Goodies

These are all from the June 21, 1954 issue of Life Magazine. The cover features a photo of the "Prettiest Chorus Girl in Las Vegas: Kim Smith" who is quite fetching in this close-up of her cute face and showgirl feather hat.

This Admiral Fridge has the freezer on the bottom! Amazing! And it can hold over 120 lbs of food! This freezer can "sharp-freeze foods and store them at 52 degrees below freezing - coldest cold ever produced in a home refrigerator unit"! (costs as low as $179.95 and never needs defrosting!)

This GE Freezer can really help out. By keeping a full storage of frozen items, you can shop only when you want to. It also has a special "Ice Cream Conditioner" that "keeps a gallon and a half of ice cream at scooping temperature!" It can hold 525 lbs of food and prices begin at only $299.95 (although model shown is $498.37). Wow, that's only about $5.04 a week!

GE again - they LOVE the Housewife! Here they try to make more out of a small kitchen space with the Big Oven Spacemaker for only $229.88 (only about $2.38 a week). It takes up 16 inches less than a 40-inch range and can hold a meal for 24! (24 what, it doesn't say). Here's an idea - use TWO Spacemakers at each end of your kitchen, "this is just one of many interesting combinations you can have with two Spacemakers."

"Never before so much of everything you've wanted - so much value in every way!"

(best ad copy ever - what else could I possibly add?)

1950s Housewife - On to Day 3

I had some failures yesterday, and I'm trying to figure out why... oh, thankfully, I did sleep without making lists last night, only to be awoken at 5:30 this morning by the boy - seems he wanted to talk things over...

My chief failure yesterday was not freshening up before serving dinner. So Dear Husband had to eat with a whole day's worth of odors and hair and such - I'm sure he was disgraced... BUT, I did manage to make him a strong Vodka Martini, so he may have been unnerved by my appearance at first, but I'm sure once dinner was done, he didn't care so much - about anything anymore! Gee - I hope this two weeks doesn't turn Dear Husband into some sort of lush!

My other failure included just generally running late in the evening due to the kids' lessons. An issue we face again today. I did have dinner ready, and just needed to reheat it... but I used the microwave, which I had initially put on my list of no-nos for the experiment. Today, I'll try a different strategy...

This is what I'm finding as the toughest part of the day - juggling lessons and dinner and the self-grooming that must be involved. Going back to yesterday's comment - a 1950s housewife would not have this issue, as lessons would be done directly after school, and within walking distance for the kids to go to alone - leaving ample time for cooking, making cocktails, and beatification. But the 1950s housewife always deals with what she's got - so here I am, and I have to figure out how to make it work (or just miss lessons next week if I can't figure it out.)

I must note that in the hour and a half between homework and lessons yesterday, my Dear Daughter was able to read half a book - so I think that is a good - no great! - thing.

All this extra careful hygiene is also working my nerves. I'm someone used to my work-at-home mom uniform: t-shirt and shorts. SOMETIMES I take a shower and comb out my hair. RARELY I apply make-up. And I'm lucky to find an unsmelly, unholy bra. Look, its not like I live in squalor, I just usually find other ways to spend my time, rather than on myself. Here, I've spent more time in the last two days cleaning myself than I have doing any one other thing! I'm annoyed by it, but I'm also intrigued. It has me spending time looking at myself in the mirror - and taking stock (mostly in a good way). It also gives me time in the morning to really organize those crazy mid-night mental lists into some sort of schedule for the day.

It has also made me realize that my make-up is two years old... I think this might be yucky, but I have no context, not being a very girly sort of girl. I can't bring myself to spend any budget on anything fresh, so I will make do with blecky make-up for the rest of the experiment.

Soon, I will be adding a slide show on the right. I've found these super-excellent magazines from 1952 and 1954. They are Life and the Saturday Evening Post. I LOVE them, they really tell a story here. I'm going to be scanning and showing things I find interesting, as I have time. Today we will see ads to make my 1950s kitchen more efficient and make my life easier - which falls exactly where my problem currently lies!

Today I need to get off the future-box and get on the ball as I have a luncheon and need to work my daily chores around that appointment. I wonder what I should wear?

- Mrs. P

1950s Housewife - Day One

One laundry load at a time.

I awoke as "Mrs. Porter" for the first time today. I got up before everyone else and changed from my scrappy definition of pajamas and put on the proper pajamas and robe of a 1950s housewife. I DID include the proper undergarmets, including girdle... fat lot of good that did when only my daughter noticed how cute I looked!

I went downstairs only to find that we had a shocking lack of groceries in the house (note to self - don't start experiments the day after returning from a long weekend at the state fair - be more prepared next time, dummy!)

So I scrounged what I could and then went back up to awaken the family. Everyone was quite pleasant to me, and no one gave me dirty looks or too much whining (although the boy did tell me a few times that he was still sleepy, but I think I roused him enough to make it through the day.)

Fed, clothed and out the door - I was able to get laundry going, make Jon's breakfast, and do some straightening up downstairs, as well as make beds and open window shades upstairs. It is such a beautiful day today, that I am airing out the downstairs with all the windows open... the fresh air is glorious!

Then I made myself up for the day, showering, make-up (yes, make-up) and I decided that I must wear a blouse each day, NO T-SHIRTS! I'm trying to avoid my typical mom uniform all together, although I have decided that capri pants are okay until 5 pm, when Husband is scheduled to arrive back home.

So here I sit at my amazing electronic typewriter from the future, and now I will choose dinner and go grocery. All in all, not a terrible start to this silly silly experiment.

More later -
from Mrs. Jon E. Porter, Jr.