What would a 50s housewife do?

Growing up, I didn't have a particularly good role model for keeping a neat house, unless of course, you count June Cleaver.


I have always idolized her and her perfect (TV) house, but never thought I could aspire to such perfection. Then yesterday, I read a post over at Little Jenny Wren and in her post she linked to another's post. I must say, I admire the woman who wrote it. She is doing more than I would ever consider doing towards keeping a June Cleaver home, but what really struck me was the pride she had in it all. I could really use a helping of that. Now, I am not going to get up before everyone, shower, dress, put on make-up etc, to put breakfast on the table, but I started thinking "What would a 50s housewife do?" or "Would a 50s housewife do that?" when I was going about my day. I felt like I was working on something positive. I started expanding that thinking.

I realized that a 50s housewife wouldn't have a pile of garbage sitting in the hall from the remodel, just because no one had taken the time to put it out at the curb. The bedroom closet in a 50s house wouldn't be filled with boxes. There would be clothes in the closet. (We have a garage where boxes etc could go, but it is in a pretty disastrous state, too.) I thought of our linen closet which has house painting supplies, a broken clock radio, a light fixture cover etc, and yet our towels are piled on a bookcase in another part of the house, albeit close to the bathroom, but not actually in a closet built for the purpose of housing them. If I start putting things where they belong, towels in the linen cupboard, clothes in the closet, and removing things that don't belong, paint supplies to the garage, broken clock radio in to the trash, we will be able to not only find things, but find places for all of the random things, even if that means donating them or putting them in the trash.

Reading back over this, I know what I have written would be obvious to most, but I am rather excited that I've found a new way to look at it all.

p.s. A friend of mine is working on getting her family's finances in hand. One idea she had that I thought was particularly clever was to have the homepage of her web browser set to her bank account, so that whenever she went to check email or whatever she would see it and be aware of what was going on in her account.