Were 1950/60 family homes more clean and organised?

[Tumbleweed101]

With more women in those eras homemaking rather than working out of the home were those homes more organised than those today? As now many are encouraged to have both parents working when children are very young? Or is it more of a myth and lots of women were still working out of the home then?

Coal

Fewer things.
Kids playing out from a young age so far fewer toys.
Clothes worn for much longer.
Kids doing far more chores and housework : from a young age I was hoovering, ironing, peeling veg, bringing in the washing and going to the shop.
Plus, my mother had a terrible temper, liked things tidy and hitting children was normal so you soon learnt to tidy up/ do your allotted chores or you would not like the consequences.

I was born in the 60's and we had a vacuum and an old fashioned electric washing machine with a mangle and no coal fire, we didn't have loads of stuff so less mess. I had a built in cupboard in the living room that had all my toys in, that was always a mess. but once it was all shoved in and doors closed it looked better. Both my parents worked. My mother did all the laundry on a Monday afternoon on her half day. The house smelt great when I got home on that day

My GM worked p/t, and had routines for housework, that I remember from mid 70s:
Monday - wash day - it did literally take all day, by hand, scrubbing, boiling, spin dryer, mangle, pegged out. I remembered her getting an automatic washing machine in the 1980s.
Tuesday - beat the rugs
Wednesday - market day/food shopping
(also Saturday)

And so on.... a different thing every day, and cleaning the grates and laying the fires every day I think.

Then there was occasional stuff - cleaning windows, polishing brass/silver, mending, dressmaking /knitting some of my grandfather's clothes (and ours!).

That house was freezing cold, but always clean.

My mum had to choose between a fridge or a washer when my dad & her got their first house, she chose to carry on going to the laundrette & had a fridge. She worked full time up to having me & used to do shopping on her way home from work, most homes didn't have freezers at that time (1966) she went to the laundrette on a Saturday morning. Once I had arrived she followed all the other women in the yard, washing on a Monday, ironing on a Tuesday, upstairs on Wednesday morning & went to the Co-op for some shopping & milk tokens in the afternoon, hoovering & dusting downstairs every other day, windows & outside paintwork on a Thursday, shopping on a Friday which must have taken ages as supermarkets nearby were only small so most had to be done at separate shops, she had no transport so had to carry all the shopping on the pram & had all the greengrocers stuff delivered on a Friday afternoon. It must have been a full time job with no labour saving appliances, she didn't get an automatic washer until after my brother was born in 1972.

Some fascinating stories on here.

My prevailing impression of 50s houses is quite dingy - not necessarily dirty - but lots of heavy, inconvenient, mismatched things cramped together and beige /brown colour schemes. Apologies for the publication but this link gives 1950s interior photos which are what spring to my mind.

My upbringing wasn't like this-apart from being at least a decade later, born late 60s, I remember a bright red and white kitchen in my parents first house and lovely hardwood floors, no dinge

@WishIWasACavewoman picture is similar to what I remember of our kitchen for style and colour, we were fortunate because ours was a reasonably large for the time, kitchen diner, a lot of kitchens were quite small as the picture as people didn't extend their kitchens much then. We had a gas cooker, fridge, a cabinet with frosted doors at the top and a pull down middle to prepare food which was beige, a formica table and non matching chairs, crockery and pans were mismatched and a bit chipped though we did have a best set that was very rarely used. Cutlery was in one small drawer in the table

The copper and mangle was in rear porch which was like a small conservatory, we didn't have a washing machine then. The cabinet was something that a lot of people had, kitchens weren't fitted then. We had central heating fitted in the 60s which was fairly unusual I think and the kitchen housed a large boiler and immersion heater cylinder, we lived in a bungalow

One grandmother worked outside the home (and cared for her mother full time who lived with them) and the other worked from home as a seamstress. Both homes would have been immaculate, "cleanliness is next to Godliness" would have been the motto. In my head a very well kept house is stereotypical of the working class.

Mum had a wash boiler for the nappies, then you took them out with wooden tongs into the double sink - rinsed them and put them through the hand turned wringer a couple of times. Clothes went into the sink- if dirty were scrubbed against the washboard with extra soap. Then rinsed etc.

I was born in 1949. My mother worked full-time, my father was disabled. We had a hoover in the fifties and a twin-tub by the early sixties. In the fifties sheets and towels went to the laundry, shopping was delivered and we had help in the garden. We had coal fires in the fifties and gas fires in the sixties. When I left for university in 1968 we had a freezer and a dishwasher.
We were not well-off, but the house was clean, our clothes were washed (although not as frequently as now), food was fresh and home-cooked by my grandmother. My mother made all our clothes, sewing in evenings and at weekends.
Our home was cared for, clean and well-organised.
There is always a lot of ill-informed generational generalisation on these threads.

When my mum sat down in the evening she would also be mending clothes or knitting and my dad would often be mending something then. And everyone went to bed far earlier than now, no late night TV except at weekends .

Washing clothes after every wear and towels after every shower?! Good grief, I’m a slob in comparison. I wash clothes, towels and bedding when they need it which certainly isn’t after each use. Unless it it’s minging for some reason like courtesy of dog or kids.

There are people on mumsnet who do that but they are unusual and it’s really not that common. They just come out on the “how often do you wash…” threads and everyone boggles at them so it seems like more of a thing than it really is.

My Nan had a carpet sweeper and a Hoover with a visible bag! Like many others she was regimented by her days of cleaning.Monday Washing(Launderette was an outing ,she used to take me with her and sit me on the machine! (About 4 or 5) Tuesday polishing and so on .She always made hearty home cooked meals,and was also a keen gardener .Every 2 years they would "decorate" The lounge, and she would paint the woodwork.Her house was clean and tidy .Back then it was a mark of pride .I think.She also worked PT as a tea lady ,and looked after me! Now I think women work in more high pressure jobs which are mentally tiring as well,so although many women worked back then ,mostly lower paid ,less demanding work

I think the steamer was on daily in our house, either for a main course suet pudding with meat or a pudding like treacle pudding, it used to be on for hours. Sometimes a stew would sit there simmering but I'm sure sometimes the steamer would still be on as well for pudding, I remember my parents having damp problem in the kitchen because the Xpelair type fan couldn't cope with it all. All meals were mainly cooked from scratch but we did sometimes have Birds Eye frozen peas from the corner shop which I loved.

My Granny replaced her carpet sweeper with a Dyson in the mid 90s. Over the next month her carpets gradually changed colour!

My house is a tip compared to my parents and grandparents houses . It was simply not respectable to have a dirty home and people were in the habit of 'calling in' for tea so you really did have to keep it nice.

My GM worked in the shop they owned.It was a northern terrace but they had a car, twin tub, hoover, television (bought for the coronation) and they had modern furniture for the time as my GF liked to move with the times. They had less stuff, but rarely decluttered.

Sounds glorious.

My dad was born in the 50s. He said their home was always clean and tidy despite 4 children and mum, dad and dog and not much money. But mostly because they had a lot less.

The children each had 3 outfits for each season, 1 on, 1 in the wash and 1 clean and ready to wear. They only changed if it got wet, dirty or smelly (obviously clean underwear and socks each day). The same for school shirts though they only had 1 blazer plus two skirts / trousers each. One outfit for "best". And if it could be passed from eldest to next child then it would be. Make do and mend was a theme around the home.

My Nan did the bulk of the housework. They didn't have carpets wall to wall carpets like we do now, only in the middle of the room. The one in the main living space was taken outside each day and beaten over the washing line, the others once a week. Then the whole house was swept.

They had a fruit and veg man, a meat and fish man and a milk and dairy man (all different , not the same man for them all) who used to come a few times a week to the Close and they would buy a few days worth of food and there was never any waste. My grandad insisted they l helped with cleaning up after dinner though and from that point in the evening my Nan was allowed to sit down as she would have been on the go all day. Very modern from what she used to tell me about the neighbours, the men usually didn't lift a finger.

Monday was laundry day which took all day as they only washed by hand and had a mangle. Sunday was bath day.

It seems such a more simple life. Difficult at times but I do wonder how they managed.

Nobody spent hours on Mumsnet/FB/Insta/TikTok - and if you watched what you wanted to watch on TV given there was just a minimal choice of 2 channels, if you missed it you missed it. Radio you might listen to while doing chores.

My DM was a housewife in the UK from the 1950s.

She did a superficial clean of every room every day, using a duster and a Ewbank carpet sweeper. We did have a Hoover, but she refused to use it, saying it was too heavy, so my DF would occasionally Hoover all through. She then deep cleaned one room every week in rotation, so yes, our house was clean and presentable.

Monday was washing day, in a single tub washing machine with a mangle. Eventually, she got a separate spin dryer, but when that broke in the 1970s, she went back to the mangle. The washing machine was never used on any other day. If anything needed washed, it was done by hand on a daily basis.

Tuesday was ironing day and it was very rare that the ironing board came out on any other day.

We had a fridge from the mid 1950s, but she still shopped every day, but there was a full range of shops at the bottom of the road. We only lived about three miles from the city centre, but we only got on the bus and went to town twice a year, for new shoes and school uniform. Everything else was made at home or bought locally. In the 1979s, they tried going to Tesco once a week, but it didn't really work for them and to the end of her long life, my DM went to the shops pretty much every day.

As a tween, my wardrobe consisted basically of my school uniform, including a gabardine mac, one best dress, clothes to play out in. These were a pair of jeans, a pair of shorts and a couple of T shirts. I also had a nightie, a dressing gown and three pairs each of socks and pants. That was it.

My mum's wardrobe was pretty much the same. One set of clothes for mornings, one set for afternoons, one set for best and so on, rotated, so that this year's best would become next year's afternoons and so on. Morning clothes, when finished with, would be repurposed or made into peg rugs.

My Dad had more clothes, because he had suits for work and had to wear a clean shirt every day in the week. When his suits were no longer 'good' enough for work, he passed them on to our next door neighbour, who did a manual job and got several years more wear out of them.

In the through lounge of our modern bungalow, there was a three piece suite, a table and chairs and some book shelves in the alcove next to the chimney breast. The carpet was just a square, with Lino round the edges. In my bedroom, I had my bed, a bookcase and a chest of drawers. I was 13 before I got a wardrobe and dressing table.

My DM meal planned, but only once. Ever after we had the same meals every week with no deviation apart from the purchase of a chicken at Easter and at Christmas when the shops were closed.

My DPs did eventually move with the times. In the 1980s, they bought a television, but only because they could no longer rent a black and white one from Radio Rentals. However, they never replaced the gas cooker they bought in 1953. It was converted to natural gas in the 1960s and kept going until 986, when my DPs moved into an all electric sheltered flat.

Very different times.

My mother (born in 1925) worked. We had su pairs when younger. House was tidy though can't really remember.
Definitely agree we all had much less stuff! Christmas was one main toy (like a doll) and maybe one or two little things like crayons. Many of my clothes were hand me downs. We were not poor - my father was a doctor, but that's the way things were . People who lived through the war knew how to make do and were not wasteful.

There was lots of slum housing in the 50s and 60s so I suppose it depended where you lived.

They had less stuff and more reliance on elbow grease than gadgets and products to clean. If you put more effort in you tend to work to a better result.