"Housekeeping was a rugged occupation."

After every Sunday there was a Monday, and a work-week to follow. At the Mansion, household tasks were many, and servants were few. Sallie supervised everything. Monday was wash-day (wash tubs, rub-boards, line drying); Tuesday was ironing-day (irons heated on a stove, with chances for burning fingers and scorching clothes)  and so on.

Ima remembered how it was:

After the laundress came on Monday, Grace, the maid, ironed on Tuesday. Father's shirts and collars were sent to the Chinese Laundry nearby.

And once a year, after the nine fireplaces with a winter’s worth of soot and smoke were cold ashes, there was spring cleaning:
           

Springtime was an ordeal. The carpets were taken up, put on a stiff line and beaten. For some strange reason . . . the furniture went outdoors too to be scrubbed and perhaps varnished.

Housekeeping was a rugged occupation.

 Cooking wasn’t easy, either: a wood-burning stove, no mixes, everything from scratch.

There were certain days for baking salt rising bread, beaten biscuits, cakes of all kinds and cookies to fill the cookie jars for the children and their playmates.            

            

Things were purchased wholesale – barrels of sugar and flour, one hundred pound cans of lard, cases of canned vegetables when there were none to be had from the garden, etc. Chickens were purchased by the dozen on foot, turkeys as well. When chickens were $2.00 a dozen hardly anyone could afford them. Bacon was bought by the side and I think was five or ten cents a pound. . . . Each week were baked quantities of bread, cakes and pies with wholesale preserving and canning of fruits in season. Our store room was a delight. Mother went about with a great bunch of keys and nothing came out of the store room that she did not check. . . .

           

            Family meals were “simple and wholesome,” but there were three of them to prepare every day in the big Mansion kitchen, not to mention official dinners. Ima and Mike and Tom loved to watch the makings:

            From the upstairs back hall steps which led down into the kitchen was a favorite place for the children to sit so we heard kitchen talk while we watched the preparations.

         They loved to eat, and so did their father, who weighed 300 pounds.