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?

I think this is it really - some people had messy houses and some people had clean ones then, just like some people have messy and some people have clean ones now… Hard to come up with a universal picture that isn’t biased or rose tinted.

The one thing I would say about women working was that in the 1950s families like mine, with a working mother and a war-disabled father were not unusual.

Someone upthread mentioned about shopping being delivered being a new thing. It really isn't. The grocer delivered directly to my grandma through the back door and onto the kitchen table, until about 1965 when a little supermarket opened and doors started being locked.

Deliveries ceased with the upsurge in break-ins, car ownership, and the supermarkets becoming widespread. In the early 00's it re-emerged.

I think about stuff like this. My mum says people washed their clothes less, and bathed less, and generally had a lot less stuff to tidy/clean. I feel like kids (girls anyway) would have pitched in a lot more though, or at least be expected to.

Working class women worked, either things like factory shifts or piece work that they could do at home.
Middle class women didn’t work as much outside the home, unless they had a professional job.

If you look at the sitcom Butterflies for example the husband is a dentist and although the wife doesn’t go out to work she had a daily. Same in What Ever Happened to the Likely Lads, the married couple have a daily but she goes out to work.

Nope.

1. working class women always worked

2. the more time you are in the house the dirtier it gets

3. the standards are much higher now

4. nowadays kids do messy play indoors rather than playing out from dawn til dusk

Daily shopping is another one so more crockery storage and less food storage.

My grandparents house was definitely more tidy and organised despite having a lot of ornaments and saving things for ‘just in case’.
My grandmother didn’t work and spent a lot of her day on housework (and the gardens). She had very high standards and we were roped in from a very young age even if it was just sweeping or dusting.
I loved their house.