LHitBW - Chapter 2 - Part 1

Laura and Mary helped Ma with the work.

It's funny, but reading descriptions of Laura and Mary as tiny children making beds and doing the dishes always makes me want to jump right up and start doing housework of my own.

I admit, I'm a lousy model of a Victorian woman, at least one who wasn't upper class. I like my lazy times. I like leisure. It isn't that I can't find satisfaction in work, but I prefer, as most people do, to do work that I enjoy.

But reading about children going through their chores makes me feel just a little bit guilty. There are so many things I could be doing right now, and instead, I'm just not.

Wash on Monday
Iron on Tuesday
Mend on Wednesday
Churn on Thursday
Glean on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday

Ma really had some structure to her life. More than once I've been tempted to follow her example and set specific days for specific tasks.

I couldn't use Ma's schedule, though. At least, not at the moment. I don't have an iron nor an ironing board, I don't have any clothes that need mending, I don't churn my own butter, and at the moment, the only thing to glean is snow, and I don't quite think that counts.

But I can wash, bake, and rest with the best of them! And come the growing season, I already plan to do a fair bit of gleaning, supplementing my food stores with delicious edible things that grow wild.

Maybe next week I should make my own work schedule like this, and try my best to stick to it. I'll post on my progress, of course, and let you know what changes I have to make to Ma's plan in order to better fit my life at the moment.

Though I suppose that begs the question: what did Ma do on days where she couldn't follow her work plan? In the winter, what did she do on Fridays when there was nothing to be gleaned? When the cows ran out of milk, what did she do instead of churning? If all clothes were in good repair, did she make new ones instead of mending, if she had the material?

We all know Ma as an industrious woman who kept busy. The Shaker motto, "Hands to work and hearts to God" could be Ma's personal life motto, really. Did she look on those days, though, as days of a little more rest, or did she busy herself with something else?

I wonder too, if Ma found it hard to keep up with that sort of schedule during the harvest or butchering seasons, or when other unexpected windfalls or troubles brought along unexpected new workloads. Did she feel that she had fallen behind in her daily work if she couldn't do something on the day she had planned for it? Did she try to fit it in the next day instead?