The Rules For The 1950s Housewife Experiment

Let's lay down some ground rules, shall we? First of all, I have promised to get up, get dressed including my hair and makeup. As much as I'd love to actually flit around the house in a vintage house dress, I don't have one. *sniff sob* But I will someday. I have a pattern for just such a dress, I just need to squeeze it in with everything else I do every day....which is a lot! lol

So, we've got the hair and makeup thing covered. I WILL be donning the traditional 50s makeup and I will attempt the hair the best I can. Believe it or not, those styles are crazy hard to perfect.

     

                                        

On to the food part. I own a few vintage cookbooks from the 50s and 60s I will be using. Each day I will incorporate at least one item from one of the cookbooks. One day I might try a gelatin mold

 and on another maybe one of those decorative tomato thingies they used to do.

Each day will include at least one thing, but I promise you it will never be liver and onions or brain sandwich. Yep, those are both in two of my cookbooks!

If you haven't seen the cleaning schedule head over here and read through. Unlike the extreme lists that have been floating around lately, the housewife's daily chore list was extremely manageable and was usually completed in about 3 hours. The rest of the day was filled with cooking for the family (usually two sometimes three meals a day), sewing, gardening, canning, marketing (they were lucky to have one car. Most homes didn't have two and the wife would walk to the various specialty shops for groceries), walking the kids to and from school, and laundry. At this point more and more households had washers and dryers, but so many wives still ironed their family's clothes.

I will not be walking around saying gee whiz, golly, and swell, but I will be listening to my fabulous collection of vintage records. As we speak (I mean type) I'm listening to Andy Williams. Before this was Frank Sinatra. *sigh* Is there anything more beautiful than the old crooners on vinyl?

Oh, because my kids will be home Monday and Tuesday I will treat it as if I had small kids and actually prepare breakfast and lunch for them. (they absolutely refuse to eat breakfast before they get on the bus in the morning, but I don't know many teenagers who want to eat at six am). And my cat had her leg amputated this week and just came home today. I have to treat her wounds throughout the day and give her antibiotics. Yeah, I know, I kind of left you hanging with that story, but I promise to tell you the full thing in another post. AFTER the experiment! lol

So, there you have you it. I hope you stick around for all my successes and failures as a vintage housewife. I can't promise it'll be pretty, but if it's anything like last time it should be awfully funny!