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?

Plenty of people didn't have showers/bathrooms or even inside toilets. So weekly baths were probably the norm.

Housewives actually had a job to do at home, remember this was a time when many of todays modern conveniences hadn’t been invented or improved to be as efficient as today so it was a constant task to keep the house working and in order. The internet and daytime TV weren’t a thing so many of the distractions that tempt people from doing housework nowadays didn’t have an impact. Plus people didn’t own as much stuff as we do today.

I’m lates 40s and we didn’t have a car or microwave when I was a kid so that’s not unusual. We had a twin tub washing machine when I was younger only got automatic later on. We always had a fridge but I remember at my grandads there was no fridge. He had a pantry which was very cool where they kept the butter, milk etc

Yes and I would love to be like that again, simply can't keep on top of it after a full day's work. Can't even blame the rest of the household as most of it is mine.

I was born mid 50's and the one thing which sticks vividly in my mind is that all my family - very Irish Catholic - had a room which included a 3 piece suite, coffee table and a China cabinet which was never used unless you had guests you wanted to impress.🙄
I recall my mother and her husband lived in a tiny 2 up 2 down with my younger half sister - I didn't live with them - in the early 60's and they lived all the time in the back room which included a small kitchen area, a tiny dining table and 3 chairs and an open coal fire with 2 fireside chairs either side of it. The "Best Room" was totally out of bounds.🙄. Madness!
Did anyone else have this set up or was it just my nutty family? 🤣
Oh and let's not forget coating the edge of the outdoor step in something called red or white cardinal cream.

A bit further back but I've got an old book from the 1930s with a guide for young housewives. It advises being up early to sweep all your floors and passageways and get the majority of your cleaning done before doing your daily shopping by 10am at the latest. You needed to be back in time to make dinner which was the main meal of the day - often some kind of steamed savoury pudding or pie.

Working class women worked in the 50s - my Grandma did, they had to. Obviously there were less “professional” working women then though.

DH and I were born in 1960/62

In the 60s my grandmother and mother had: fridge, washing machine (twin tub), vacuum cleaners, food mixer, cona coffee makers. I remember flash, ajax, bleach, disinfectant, Fairy liquid, daz, tide, persil, ariel, etc., and by the early 70s they had dishwashers. They always had telephones. Grandma had a radiogram and central heating, mother had a modern wireless and stereo by the late 60s. Grandma got a TV for the coronation, both upgraded to colour in about 1970. They drove cars, went abroad, and regularly to London. They both worked into their 70s. Grandma wasn't houseproud but always had a homely home. Mother was immaculate. They both had help. Many people had washing machines, hoovers and music at home in the 50s/60s.

MIL had a washing machine, CH, indoor bathroom, fridge, etc in 1960. She didn't return to work until DH was 9/10.

The difference between Mother and MIL is that MIL is a bit grubby and not houseproud. She never cooked, changed the beds every 6 weeks and nobody had clean clothes every day. MIL was working class with a mother who cooked and cleaned at home and for other people so MIL was certainly used to seeing it done and done well. Mother is still immaculate, a great cook and very houseproud, yet she wasn't brought up seeing her mother do any of those things. MIL didn't learn to drive.

The twin tubs were a bind but bed linens, shirts, table cloth and napkins, etc, were sent out and came back pressed and neatly wrapped in pink striped paper. The shirts were beautifully folded.

Big supermarkets hadn't taken hold and both my grandmother and mother went to the: butcher, baker, greengrocer, delicatessen, fishmonger, even the poulterer. Butter, milk, tins, etc, came from small local grocers. The supermarkets that did exist were more on a scale of sainsburys/tesco local stores.

A real 60s/70s thing was the basin/vanity unit in bedrooms rather than multiple en-suites.

I think a lot of posters on this thread are thinking 20s/30s rather than 50s/60s.

@Brrrrrrrrrrrr there might not have been daytime TV and the Internet to tempt but there were books, radios, sewing and coffee mornings. Even then.

I grew up in the 60s. Our house was always a mess.

I was born in the 1960s, so my memories are probably more from early 70s

My mum was a teacher - but in the days when she left work when the children did. She returned to work when I was about 6.

Saturday was cleaning day in our house, we had a twin tub rather than automatic washer and all washing hung out on line or in veranda to dry. Any clothes washed in the week were hand washed but we had fewer clothes and things were sponge cleaned more often than just being chucked in the wash. I had to help with hoovering and dusting from later primary age . Mum used the water from the washer to clean the kitchen floor and the bathroom .

We didn't have a freezer, just an ice box in the top of the fridge so shopping was done more often - local independent shops and a small supermarket .

Mum used to make a lot of our clothes and do alterations as well .

I don't think our house growing up was any more or less clean and tidy than my own.

Some things are easier today with shopping deliveries and automatic washers/dryers but then there's less time if both partners are working long hours .

@JadeSeahorse my grandparents had a 'front room' with cabinets of China and the posh chairs in - that no one ever went in. They lived in the kitchen which had a dining table and chairs in front of the fire which was a range thing that had an oven too. With no central heating there would just have been this one room which was heated . I think that was fairly common for that generation .

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.
Yes to this. I felt like Cinderella. Mum was at work and when I got home from school I started on the housework. I did the opposite with my own DC, they knew how to do all the chores but I never made them do anything routinely.

a room which included a 3 piece suite, coffee table and a China cabinet which was never used unless you had guests
Yes. My grandparents lived in a semi with living room, kitchen and dining room. The living room, known as the front room was used only at Christmas.

In complete contrast to this one of my great-grandparents homes was apparently pretty dirty.

According to DM, you tried not to eat or drink there if you could avoid it because everything was a bit grim.

I know that the walls and ceiling were thick with nicotine and tar and it would be yellow and almost looking like it was dripping down the wall in places.

Everything they ate was fried - chips, chips and egg, bacon and egg, gammon, chips and egg...this was pretty much the menu.

They were also working class!

That being said they were considered the lower rungs of working class...my grandma's parents were not happy with the match believing that she was massively 'marrying down' and they were very working class and living in a two bedroom council terrace house themselves but were the 'respectable' working class...

The children (my grandad and his siblings) were still often barefoot and sleeping six of them in one bed with just coats for covers in the 1950s which was seen as unusually poor by that point...

Is it ill informed or just different experiences?

My DM still had coal fires, bathed in a tin bath in front of the fire and an outdoor toilet when you had a twin-tub!

In fact, I'm only 40 and we didn't have gas central heating until 1996!

I grew up with coal fires.

And yes to much less meal planning.

They had one week of meals and that was what they had week in, week out.

My grandma still does this now...

Friday is fish supper
Saturday is sandwiches
Sunday is roast dinner

The rest of the days were reasonably easy meals like gammon, eggs and chips.

I think food was very different in the 50s/60s.

Roasts on Sundays, cottage pie, meat pies, chops, bacon joint, stews and casseroles, fish on a Friday, generally with meat and two veg. Usually followed by something with custard, jelly, blancmange, rice pudding, etc.

We were quite ahead and had pasta, curry, French food in the 60s but more often than not had to go to London or the county town for ingredients.

I'm pretty sure housekeeping was ahead of culinary delights. No McDonalds, Pizza restaurants, other chain restaurants except Wimpy in the 50s/60s. However there were Italian coffee shops/ice cream parlours which all but disappeared in the 60s/70s/80s prior to the Coffee chain revolution.

@SarahAndQuack - what the actual fuck are you talking about? Please point out the misogyny in my post. I am a wholeheartedly committed feminist which you'll see if you search my other posts. I can't believe you posted what you did! How misguided of you.

Fact is women did nearly all the housework in the 1950s and 60s (which is horrible but not much has changed in my women's lives judging by the endless posts on MN about lazy partners) they also worked and looked after children. They had more time to clean because they didn't have TV or phones. NOWHERE AM I SAYING THIS IS A GOOD THING! OK?

Only cleaner and more organised if you had a parent who gave a shit about that sort of thing.

Mine certainly didn't.

We have truckloads more crap to organise, machines, gadgets, disposable clothes, toys etc. All utter crap. Children with lots of allergies, asthma on the rise. In those days central heating was not commonplace, housework was heavy menial labour, washing & drying clothes & sheets might be a days work, coal fires, time consuming cooking, food expensive for what it was, less choice. People used disinfectant a lot round the house and children had seemingly good immune systems and far fewer pets so no pet mites, dust or bacteria from them.

Lots of wonderful memories here. I was born in 1965, so had a few more mod-cons (eg a fridge).

One person said that children did a lot more. I remember that I was responsible, from a young age, of dusting in the living room and polishing the brass, every Saturday morning.

Funnily enough, now, we don't really have any knick-knacks that need dusting, or brass that needs polishing.

I was also sent to the shops a lot, usually with a message for the shopkeeper. I remember that so much of our food was canned in those days. I must have had the arms of an orangutan!

There was a lot of house-pride in those days, hence scrubbing the step every week, and redecorating every couple of years. Perhaps this was because if you were socialising, you did it at home, rather than going out to a girly bar, which didn't exist in those days?

Strangely enough we had an outside loo and tin bath until my sister got married in 1962 when there was room for a bathroom. We had a telly from 1949 when I was born though. There are some interesting first-hand accounts on here, but I find the "all houses were dirty" "everyone smoked" nonsense extremely annoying.

There are definitely differences of economic circumstances in people's memories here .

We most definitely didn't have a dishwasher, freezer or send laundry out in the 60s/70s, nor have basins in bedrooms .

@LindorDoubleChoc is right. I set up a daily notification to track time spent on my phone and the result shocked me. I was losing hours every day mindlessly scrolling then wondering why ‘nothing ever gets done’ in my house.

Well of course there were differences in economic circumstances; that is why threads like can only provide individual anecdotes not universal truths. We did have domestic appliances, probably because my mother was the sole breadwinner and an early adopter. Most of my friends lived in much bigger houses, had cars and foreign holidays. We were also well aware of people around us living in poverty and struggling to make ends meet.
Has anything changed?