Why I Will Never be A Domestic Goddess ~ A Cautionary Tale

An old zinc washtub at one of many Hwy 127 yard sales today–no I didn't buy it, but maybe should have done as it has plenty of storage for muskmelons! Read on...

Dear Pantry Reader,

It's not for lack of trying. I truly do want to be the domestic master (or is that mistress?) of my home place. However things like writing, thinking (in my head and on paper, often called "daydreaming"), reading and being with family and friends always get the better of me. And then there's blogging and the occasional writing-for-hire project which is always gratifying, even if the dishes pile up and the dust bunnies gather. Most recently, there have been the delightful distractions of day trips and yard sales after a long, dry spell (a year, actually, since we moved and I really shouldn't even be going near an antique shop or yard sale right now). Housework, I suppose, like sports or cooking, is something you actually have to do instead of looking at an article about how to "Lose 30 inches in 30 days with our Amazing Knee-Bend Plan!" or reading recipes from cookbooks (a favorite pastime, actually).

I also have a very hard time, increasingly in my old age, with both multitasking and project management (sometimes even project completion). It's called Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. I know it is an issue that a bit of "Mother's Little Helper" could help, and occasionally does (ah, the wonders of well-managed pharmaceuticals), as well as avoiding carbs (too many carbs blur my focus and tap my energy). All of this said, I do organize a mean cupboard–I'm more of a "surface clutter" kind of gal, but my closets and drawers and cabinets are immaculate. [What's with that?]

So when you translate all of that lack of effective multitasking into things like laundry, office filing, lots of farm fresh meals brought to the table three times a day by a smiling, aproned and well-coiffed Mamma (I had you there, didn't I?), and "gardening" (that's another blog), canning, freezing, oh yeah, and CLEANING, well, there's a lot that can get swept under the carpet (and, believe me, if this doublewide didn't have tolerable plum-colored wall-to-wall carpeting, that's just what I'd be doing). PHOTO: At least this "Mother Hubbard" knows how to keep a cupboard and it is rarely bare. [And no, I didn't buy this at the yard sales today, either, but I liked its look.]

Fact is, I'm tired of trailer livin'. My kitchen is adequate (I mean 12x12 in a 30x70 doublewide isn't that bad) but it feels like I'm cooking in an RV. The sink is jammed into a corner and if someone opens the fridge (which ALWAYS happens when I'm in the kitchen trying to be a domestic goddess or at least getting some semblance of dinner), I'm trapped and ticked off about it. You try doing dishes or putting stuff in the garbage can while someone has you pinned into a corner. [And I should mention here, "someone who shouldn't even be in the refrigerator because they are about to have their supper...well, um, maybe in another hour or two."] Furthermore, I miss my sink: my big-enough-to-wash-a-baby kind of sink (and it did, many times) with two deep basins and a long gooseneck faucet so you can actually wash stuff under it, like big kettles. And a pantry or two...and lots of countertops. Rooms to move around and breathe in. An attic and a cellar to store stuff in again! Don't even get me started.

So I'm not complaining, not really. I've always been great at making do and finding the glass half full or even, at times, overflowing. I'm just pointing out that I do often pine for old wooden houses, historic patina and fabric, for a house that smells old (and I'm not talking socks) and that if you punched the wall (not something I do on a regular basis), your hand would not come out on the other side. The dream farmhouse is in my head and will emerge in time. We chose to leave a very old dream house in a New Hampshire village and I suppose this is our penance. Right now we have other priorities and as I said, I'm not complaining nor should I. I do love our new landscape and emerging farm and the state where we are living, and the people in it, so the shelter we are living in is cursory to what is most important.

So the point of this typically long blog entry is that I do want to share this one "Why I will Never be a Domestic Doublewide Goddess Tale" with you. We have a good-sized mudroom/laundry room. I love it and it is something I never had in our honking big 1813 Federal New England mansion and to be honest, is one of the things that sold me on the prospect of a few years of doublewide living. I can walk ten feet to throw a load in the dryer instead of walking a 1/4 mile down to the cellar and back. And it's cute: I mean I have space for some of my vintage laundry collection, zinc-topped sorting table and old funky cupboard where everything from dog food to fish emulsion is kept.

Because the laundry is also the mudroom and our most-used side entrance–and has a partial make-shift pantry–we often dump stuff there. Lately it's been melons as here in Kentucky it is melon season and we can't keep up with the offerings of friends and our fridge is not big enough to keep them all cool at once (the fridge issue is also another blog posting for another day). So last week my dear husband (who when we first married would not have tolerated my recent lack of "domestic focus," but he knows that I left willingly from my "old familiar" and he is also more tolerant than I am now) put two musk melons–and here in Kentucky they grow them very large–into my laundry basket on top of some clothes.

It made sense at the time: no room anywhere else (yes, the mud room is now just that, a true mud room) and the clothes provided a soft cushion. Well, soon more clothes were piled on top of them by several other members of our household and Domestic Dingbat here forgot about the melons altogether (yes, as well as the laundry–well, that's harder to forget when it's staring you in the face all week, but like I said: family, friends, yard sales). At one point, a melon was removed but the second one? Let's just say that this morning when I went to do a bit of laundry before hitting more Highway 127 yard sales, I had a warm, mushy and very stinky surprise in the laundry bin.

That musk melon (and now I know why they are called that–they stink even when not rotting in a laundry bin!) was a liquified mass of slimy mush. [An aside: in Kentucky cantaloupes are also called "mushmelons," perhaps with good reason.] I can't even describe it without losing my dinner or recalling the smell. Let's just say that several items of clothing had to be thrown out (fortunately some old shirts and underwear). The rest was washed several times to get the smell out. The wooden basket was power-washed with a hose attachment and left to dry and sterilize in the sun (and the old Shaker laundry basket was given to me by a dear writer friend who would be horrified with my lack of task management!). Had I left the pile to steam compost for the rest of the afternoon, I would have had to call in an emergency OSHA team. [But I may have solved one environmental problem: mix layers of laundry and rotting compost together and you can generate enough indoor heat to fuel a home.]

Last fall, for my birthday, my friend Teresa gave me an old book, written in the 1950s I believe, on how to fail miserably, and happily, at housekeeping. Amidst the actual practical tips, there is much humor and it is a treasure. What is even more of a treasure is to find friends along the way who "get you" and know and share your secret: that in our trying to seek perfection, or expecting it in others, we will only disappoint ourselves, and each other, perfectly. I will one day quote from the book here on this blog. Frequently. That is, when I can find it. And yes, dear understanding reader, right now I can assure you, it's not in a pile of laundry–nothing like a little rotting musk melon to get the laundry done in a jiffy!

Your friend,

Catherine

Wash Day

For once I am actually doing laundry on a Monday and it has been productive in others ways as well. Multi-tasking up a storm here on the ridge, although, alas, not outside much on this glorious day (hopefully a bit of time in the garden after supper–people tend to garden here in summer during the longer, cooler hours "of an evening," as they say). I got caught up with most of our laundry on the weekend but today I washed those things I wanted to hang outside on my old Victorian drying rack, a precursor to the modern ones. The day is just hot–and not humid–and perfect for drying clothes.

I have been in touch with Project Laundry List and they've invited me to contribute as a "Clothes Pegger" to their blog [For my first contribution, today, click here.] I have also been assigned two clothesline-related articles for Old-House Interiors and Early Homes about the subject and history of laundry–and the mighty clothesline in our domestic past and present (more about those articles when published in the next month and later this year, with links). It's been a productive "wash day"!

In the meantime, I have been gathering clothesline and laundry-related quotes and, horrors, just realized that I blogged about Wash Day already on my other blog, Cupcake Chronicles, way back in March 2008. [I was either having a "senior moment" yesterday or a complete brain freeze but you will find on that blog some more illuminations on the subject of laundry and all things good.]

Along with "several" wonderful friends in New Hampshire, I contribute the occasional blog posting to Cupcake Chronicles. Our blog started two years ago this August as an off-shoot to our newly-formed book group that is now virtual (although we are privileged to meet in person from time to time). If you enjoy the posts here at In the Pantry you might also enjoy what we talk about at Cupcake Chronicles–not just books but all manner of topics: food, home, recipes, the odd musing or rant, and well, yes, most blog entries usually integrate books in some way. It is a welcome conversation and one way to stay connected with dear friends through the miles. [I post both as Catherine, my alter ego "Della T. Lutes"–who likes home-related discussions–and a few others, and you can click directly on most of my archived posts (some may not be) here or if you go to the right sidebar on the Cupcake page and just click on "Della." I know that you will also enjoy the blogs of Peaches LaRue, Edie and Queenie.]

I will be back soon this week with "more blogs about pantries and food" (to paraphrase Talking Heads), root cellars, and even pie–oh yes, pie. I also have some new monthly mini-columns–"Pantry Cupboards" and another one I wish to introduce–on similar topics and will invite your participation. Right now, I'm on deadline for an article (tomorrow) and must also go start something for supper!

However, I will leave you with this wonderful quote from Mildred Armstrong Kalish's book, Little Heathens–Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression [Bantam: 2008] The Cupcakes read it this past spring and there were moments I was reading it it in bed and laughing so hard my husband thought I was really losing it. This memoir has detailed descriptions of farm life growing up in the Great Depression as well as many memorable stories. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

From the chapter, "Wash Day" (which was always on Monday):

Is there any sense in trying to make the modern-day reader understand the immense satisfaction we experienced in viewing our bright, clean wash arranged in such a meticulous fashion on the clothesline? Heaven knows we had more than enough to do without this added display of superhousewifery. But the whole ritual was a matter of pride.

There was a rumor in Garrison that a wily housewife, whose husband drove a long-haul semi truck, resulting in frequent and erratic absences, chose the clothesline method for signaling her handsome, blond lover. When her husband was in residence, she pinned the belt of his pants to the line; when he was absent, she pinned the legs of the pants to the line so they hung upside down. I never knew whether this was true or not, but it did make for good gossip.

There were a few years when the women in Garrison hung their panties and bras inside a pillowcase to conceal them from the eyes of any lascivious males who happened to pass by while these unmentionables were drying. But people made fun of the practice and it was soon abandoned. I don’t recall that we ever engaged in that bit of silly primness on the farm.

In the summertime the clothes would sometimes dry so fast that by the time we got the second basket out to the line, the first batch was already dry. We removed the clothes from the line as soon as they dried, being careful not to wrinkle the sweet-smelling, deliciously warm, sun-dried garments. We, meaning Grandma, Mama, my little sister, and I, would immediately put the sheets and pillowcases back on the beds, looking forward to the time when we could lie down on them...

To crawl between crisp sheets, warm and fresh from the sun and air, at the end of a bone-wearying day, is one of the true soul-restoring luxuries of life, which hardly anyone of the current generation will ever know.

The Right to Dry

Dresses hang at an Old Order Mennonite farm in Casey County, Kentucky.

I was going to blog about root cellars today (very soon!) but instead find myself on this humid Sunday, with the laundry more or less caught up, thinking about clotheslines. The "Right to Dry" movement is not new, a few years old now, and is probably not news to many readers. But this morning it was news to me. [Photo by an unknown photographer, taken during the 1930s, perhaps WPA sponsored.]

While watching some of CBS Sunday Morning with my coffee I learned that there is actually a movement out there to banish clotheslines from suburban developments and other areas. Project Laundry List is an entire "green" movement (and there is even a blog for "clothes peggers"). I was surprised that there even needed to be a movement lobbying for "the right to dry" and hang up clotheslines, especially in this new era of conserving our resources and dollars.



Alexander Lee, director of Project Landry List, which is based in Concord, New Hampshire (another reason I'm surprised I didn't know before, as Concord is about an hour from our former home), told The Boston Globe in an article written in 2008 that, in America, the oft-considered offensive clothesline has an image problem that is not shared in other parts of the world. "We want Martha [Stewart] and Oprah [Winfrey] to make the clothesline into a pennant of eco-chic," he said, "instead of a flag of poverty."


Curtains flap in the breeze at a farm outside of Hancock, New Hampshire.

I've always seen the beauty in laundry hanging and billowing on a clothesline (in fact, an old-fashioned laundry room is as near and dear to me as a pantry). Years ago, at a farm where I lived for a while (not the farm where I grew up) in the former servants' quarters at this sprawling Victorian farmstead, there was a clothes drying yard on the northwest side of the house between the kitchen ell of the main house and large barn (and just behind the connected annex/woodshed of which my apartment was atop). I loved hanging my laundry out whenever I could and would bring it home from the laundromat in town just to do so. The splendid, seemingly private, view of Mount Monadnock sprawling before me to the northwest was only part of that experience for me. The yard was also private, as so many laundry yards once were. [And yes, somewhere there are photos...in a box...someday!]


One of the highlights of writing and styling The Pantry was finding great spaces like this early 1900s farmhouse laundry room, still in use, which we included in the book even thought it isn't technically a pantry (a "laundry pantry," if you will). I styled it using what was already on hand and still in use there. [And I want one!]

A few years before that I lived and worked at the Gibson House, a Victorian house museum in Boston's Back Bay, where I was resident guide (and lived in the old fifth floor servant's quarters, up five svelte-inducing flights of stairs–and yes, I guess I have a thing for living in former servants' quarters!) for a few years in the 1980s. Some laundry may have been hung to dry in the service courtyard behind the kitchen near the back alley. Imagine laundry hanging in downtown Boston or any urban area today!


The laundry room at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in Harrodsburg, Kentucky (as above right, also).

But as for people seeing my laundry? Why not? I've peppered this blog entry today with other people's laundry that I have taken in recent years with my digital camera, like this photo, right, of laundry drying in front of the Sawyer Farm in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. The farm is near to the farm where I grew up and we've always been family friends–a place near and dear and still in the same family for five generations. [Their pantries are described in The Pantry.]

I also like to hang up duvets and air out bedding. There is nothing like a line-dried sheet: it has a certain smell and crispness to it and I liken it to having a field grown tomato ripened by the sun versus one in a hot house. They are not the same thing. That said, does anyone like towels hung on the line? I certainly don't but maybe it was a lack-of-using-fabric-softener kind of a thing.



The clothesline industry is big business, too. Lyman Orton, owner of one of my favorite stores in Vermont (and via catalogue), The Vermont Country Store, has seized upon the "Right to Dry" movement and sells many laundry products for outdoor drying and old-style care and washing. Also Lehman's in Kidron, Ohio (where I stopped on my way back from Akron, Ohio last month–Holmes County and environs, although increasingly more touristy in recent years, has been a favorite destination for us for the past two decades) has been selling clothesline and laundry-related products as long as they've been in business. ABOVE: Old Order Mennonite laundry hangs near a bell used to call in the troops for meals.


My friend Norma on wash day. Many Amish and Mennonites have large attached rooms to their kitchens that they use for washing and canning.

Many people I know in Kentucky–"plain people" and others–have a clothesline and some still wash their clothes by hand on their back porches. Double washtubs, galvanized tin tubs and washboards–and clotheslines of all varieties–are put to good use here and don't just serve as old-timey porch ornaments. There is a beauty to driving by a farmhouse and seeing a load of laundry on the line, even though there is little romance in actually doing laundry (but there is a calming purposefulness in the task, I will admit). Those who don't see that not only don't "get it," they clearly aren't farm girls or guys, now, are they?


"Monday is Wash Day." I don't recall when every day had a designated chore but what a great idea. Here are some laundry-related items in my laundry room.

I have collected clothesline and laundry paraphernalia for years: old wicker laundry baskets (one an old Shaker one given to me by a dear writer friend who even had her name penciled on it, perhaps for laundry sent out), clothespin bags in the style of dresses and pantaloons (back when they were affordable on eBay and still an occasionally affordable find when trolling in an antique shop), clothespins, laundry "stuff." You are probably wondering, as I am: does she have a clothesline now? The short answer is 'no' – we are waiting to put one in "when we build our new house" (a chorus of late). Right now, I am happy and grateful for my chicken house (which we designed to go onto a roll top and move up the hill when we do build...). Most available land around our place will soon be used for pasturing cattle. However, I might just have to put up a makeshift clothesline this year, maybe to the north of the chicken house on the island in the middle of our driveway loop. Already my porch rails are generally covered with things and I use several old clothes racks, too.



Here is a beautiful, spare poem by the belated poet, Jane Kenyon, who was married to former poet laureate Donald Hall. They lived for several decades in the old New Hampshire farmhouse that was his family home and are two of my favorite modern poets. Hall has also penned several memoirs and children's books, especially Ox-Cart Man and Lucy's Summer. [His current memoir is on my "books to read" list.] "Wash" is followed by the first and last stanzas of another of Kenyon's poems, "Wash Day." Like a true poet, she saw the beauty in the domestic and the every day. ABOVE: The preserved kitchen at the New Hampshire Farm Museum in Milton.

Wash

All day the blanket snapped and swelled
on the line, roused by a hot spring wind....
From there it witnessed the first sparrow,
early flies lifting their sticky feet,
and a green haze on the south-sloping hills.
Clouds rose over the mountain....At dusk
I took the blanket in, and we slept,
restless, under its fragrant weight.


Two vintage Old Order Mennonite quilts at a 2008 auction ~ wish I had bid!

Wash Day (first and last stanzas)

How it rained while you slept! Wakeful,
I wandered around feeling the sills,
followed closely by the dog and the cat.
We conferred, and left a few windows
open a crack.
Now the morning is clear
and bright, the wooden clothespins
swollen after the wet night.

How is it that every object in this basket
got to be inside out? There must be
a trickster in the hamper, a backward,
unclean spirit.
The clothes–the thicker
things–may not get dry by dusk.
The days are getting shorter....
You'll laugh, but I feel it–
some power has gone from the sun.

[For more laundry-related writings, click here.]

POSTSCRIPT ~ When The Pantry was accepted for publication by Gibbs Smith, Publishers, they sent me a lovely little book that they wanted me to use as reference for size, design and "look" for my book design and format. It is called The Clothesline by Irene Rawlings and Andrea Vansteenhouse (and is still available here). It captures the bliss and vintage nostalgia that many feel towards clotheslines and laundry things. It is one of many favorite domestic-themed books in my collection. ABOVE: Vintage photo of two girls in front of a clothesline from eBay (available for sale now).