Napping

We wrap up Domestic Activities Week with this picture. The photo is from 1904, and it shows a woman napping at her table at the end of a busy day. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and get plenty of rest.

Shopping

Today's picture shows a woman shopping for groceries in the 1920's. Back when we shopped like this do you think we really dreamed of Super Walmarts? I think not. I really hate the huge super stores. The zombie-employees walking around the store are unhelpful. Its like you ask them a question, and they roll their eyes like you are inconveniencing them to be in the store. One day someone will figure out that customer service matters. Hire people who care, pay them fairly, train them, and then hold them accountable.

Doing Dishes

Domestic Activity Week continues here at OPOD with this picture of a woman doing dishes with her daughter. The picture was taken in 1942. Now most of us have dish washers, but sometimes I wonder how much time they save, given that some people think you need to pretty much wash the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, and then of course the hassle of emptying it. I have noticed that women get mad if you put your plate in the sink instead of putting it in the dishwasher. They also get mad if you put it in the dishwasher if the dishwasher has clean dishes, even if you partition your dirty dishes to one segment of the machine. So, it appears that we men are often left in a no-win situation. Put it in the sink, get in trouble, put it in the dishwasher, get in trouble. The only solution I have found so far is to put the dirty dish in the very bottom of the trash can, and hope no one sees it.

Now Mrs. PJM is a dish washing machine. It doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter when, if there are dirty dishes around, she is going to find them and clean them. Case in point . . . this is a village in a remote area of Eastern Africa. We were not there 5 minutes and and Mrs. PJM found some dishes to do. 

Washing Machine

This picture was taken in 1940, and shows one of the first advances towards mechanized clothes washing. The lady has a motorized clothes ringer. I am not sure how much help this really was . . . it does not appear to have any sort of agitator, so maybe she just does not have to ring the water out by hand. Still, I would think laundry would be an all day job.

Churning Butter

Domestic Activities Week continues here at OPOD with this picture of a woman churning butter. The picture was taken in 1897. Love the little kitten trying to get anything that splashes up. Now for the question . . . have any of you churned butter before? I have never used a butter churn, but you can buy whole cream in the grocery store. If you get some and shake the carton real good butter will start forming. At first it is like little flakes of butter falling out of the cream, but as you continue to shake, it starts forming a glob. I never got beyond pulling the glob out and showing I had made butter. I am not sure what you do with the liquid you have left after turning the cream into butter.

Washing Clothes

Domestic Activities week continues with this photograph of two girls washing clothes in wash tubs. I can not tell for sure, but it looks like they might not even have a wash board. The picture was taken in 1916 and the girls are 12 and 13 years old. The photo was taken in Nicholas County, Kentucky.

It is interesting, that in many parts of the world, laundry is still done this way. The lovely Ms. EAM has a girl that comes by twice a week to wash her laundry by hand. I felt bad seeing a young lady have to work like this, but Ms. EAM explained that the girl really needed the work to survive. Ms. EAM pays her generously by the local standards, and serves her a nice breakfast each day she comes by. Still, it is hard to imagine an area where labor is so cheap that no one would ever even consider purchasing a washing machine, because you could pay a person much cheaper than what a machine would cost to purchase and operate.

When you look at conditions like this, I continue to sit and scratch my head and try to figure out . . . how can we make things better in Africa? 

Domestic Activities

Those of you hoping that "Cat Week" would follow "Dog Week" are going to be sorely disappointed. This is going to be Domestic Activities week. We will look at the toil of women over the years. We start with this picture from 1908 of a woman ironing. Actually, this was an advertisement for GE electric iron, which was a big improvement over the ones you heated on the cook stove.

Dogs Motoring

OK, I know I have used this picture before, but it is one of my all time favorite photos, so will use it again today. It shows a picture of a dog going for a ride in a car in 1910. It is funny to me how much dogs like to go in the car. I guess it has always been that way.