Do you ever feel grateful when you clean the house? If you don’t, you might feel differently after reading this post. Here we’ll be going over 5 big differences between cleaning habits and norms during the mid-century verses today. Here’s an obvious hint, we definitely have it much easier.
1. Lye Soap to Surfactants:
During the mid-century, concentrated lye soap was commonly used for various cleaning tasks, including laundry and dishwashing. While effective lye soaps had a caustic nature, making it harsh on skin which caused safety concerns as many women washed dishes and some of the laundry by hand. Today the wide range and availability of gentler, more effective detergents are marketed using surfactants rather than lye.
2. Elimination of Dangerous Chemical Combos:
Borax was a household staple in the 1950s, used for laundry, cleaning surfaces, and even as a pest control method. While still available today, its use has declined due to its dangerous effects when combined with other cleaning agents. During the mid-century, many households also relied on a mixture of ammonia and vinegar for cleaning surfaces and windows. However, this combination can produce harmful fumes, leading to a shift towards safer, pre-formulated cleaning products. Borax and vinegar are still commonly used for DIY cleaning products but today cleaning surfaces has largely been replaced with disinfectant sprays and wipes.
3. The Lead Up to an Efficient Vacuum:
Instead of vacuuming during this time, many households used carpet beaters to remove dust and dirt from rugs and carpets. This is because vacuum brands were limited and were much less efficient in the mid-century in comparison to manually beating the dirt out. This method has obviously been replaced by the modern vacuum, which became vastly more efficient by the 1970’s as well as lighter and less cumbersome. Today we have cordless vacuums as well as spot cleaning bots that help us without having to lift a finger.
4. Labor-intensive Laundry:
As stated before, women typically washed much of the family’s clothing by hand or used a wringer washing machine, which required manual effort to wring out excess water. While washing machines were becoming more common, many households still used older models that required more hands-on operation. Automatic machines were available but not universally owned and clothes were often hung outside on clotheslines to dry. Today washing machines and dryers are fully automatic, with various settings for different fabrics and soil levels, requiring minimal effort and drastically reducing time needed to do the laundry.
5. Reduction of Daily Chores
In the mid-century, as women were typically confined to domestic house duties, a lot of pressure was faced to keep the house pristine and pressed. In the modern century, many practices that were a common daily chore are no longer part of our typical routine and may only be done on special occasion or not at all. These chores include things like making all the beds in the house, opening and closing the curtains during the day and night, ironing every piece of clothing, setting and dressing the table for dinner, sewing and mending clothes, scrubbing wood and tile floors daily on hand and knee, arranging the living room for a relaxing evening, and throwing back covers or “turning down the bed”, which meant pulling duvets to a corner so someone can get in the bed easily while it’s still made.
