A Day in the Life of a 50's Housewife: Daytime

After the 50's Housewife lovingly sends her family on their way, there isn't much time to relax...  She has work to do! 

A 50's Housewife Day:

• Neaten all the rooms in the house, gathering items into a basket that belong elsewhere from each room.  Placing them in their correct place as you move from room to room.
• Light dusting, fluff pillows, water plants.
• Make the beds.
• Hang up any clothes, place dirty ones in the hamper.
• Neaten the bathroom, put out fresh towels, refill the soap dispenser and toilet paper if needed, clean the sink.
• Wipe down the kitchen counters, sink, stove and inside of fridge.
• Take out the garbage.
• Sweep and mop the kitchen floor.
• Check your menu for today and tomorrow, make a note of anything needed from the market.
• Handle any outside of the home errands: grocery shopping, post office, etc.
• If you went to the grocery store wash vegetables and put them away.  Place the rest of the groceries in their proper place.
• Have a quick lunch.
• Start any advanced food preparations like thawing the meat or starting dessert.
• Complete an item from the weekly chore list. (There will be an entire post about this on a later date!)
• Set the dinner table.
• Arrange the living room for an evening of enjoyment. Such as the Mister's newspaper, book, and cigarettes.
• Do a quick sweep of the floors and double check that the entry ways are clear.
• Prepare a special dish for dinner.
• Freshen up before your husband returns from work.  Consider changing if your day's dress is plain. 
• Set out a tray for mixing cocktails in case the man of the house would like to serve drinks before dinner.
• Greet your husband happily when he comes home.  Do not burden with your troubles from the day as soon as he walks through the door.  Ask him about his day first, listen intently to what he has to say. 
• Serve dinner.

Wow!  That list turned out to be bigger than I thought it would be...  I'm going to do my list a little differently than I did for the morning routine.  I have a feeling if I write it out like I did last time, it's going to take quite a while!  I'll start where I left off last time... Quick recap: husband and children are gone for the day, breakfast has been served but not cleaned up, covers thrown back but bed not made. 

OK so a lot of my morning routine I got from a system called the FLY Lady System.  It's amazing and I cannot say enough positive things about it!  I'll post a link to it because I could write an entire blog about it and that's not what I'm trying to do today...  The list goes something like this:

• Let the doggies outside again. (I forgot to add that to my morning list.  I actually let them out as SOON as I wake up in the morning.  If I don't they pester me.)
• Neaten bedroom, pick up any laundry, put away any items out of place. (Don't make the bed yet, it's still airing!)
• Pick up any dirty laundry in the bathroom and put in hamper.  Straighten the sink and put away any items out of place.  At this point I do my Swish & Swipe (Flylady thing you can read all about it here.) Basically you wipe everything down with Windex (swipe) and you do a quick swish of the toilet bowl.  The idea behind this is if you do a small cleaning every day then you won't need to do a big hard scrub every week.
• Neaten the office, gather any dirty dishes or things that belong elsewhere.
• Make the bed.
• Move downstairs, bring down any laundry to be washed or dirty dishes.
• Neaten living room (put away things, gather dirty dishes from kids breakfast).
• Start a load of laundry and empty dishwasher.
• Place dirty dishes in the dishwasher, wipe counters and bar where hubbs and I have breakfast.
• Sweep the kitchen floor.
• Feed pets.

My morning routine only takes me about an hour or so, keeping things straightened up most daily keeps it from getting out of control. After that I have a bit of downtime while I wait to switch out the laundry.  I have a list of weekly chores but will do that post when I do the 50's weekly chore list.  I have a little bit more that I do after about noonish...

• Switch laundry from washer to dryer.
• Lay out any food that needs to thaw for dinner.
• Neaten up anything I've dirtied up through out the day.
• Tend to the doggies needs again.

That's pretty much it to my daytime list.  I don't fix dinner until around 6 so that'll be on my evening list.  Either I serve a later dinner than the 50's Housewife did or my hubbs gets home before the 50's Husband did!