A typical schedule for household duties in the 19th century. If you dislike sites that play background midi music, you may want to turn down your volume on this one.
http://www.geocities.com/victorianlace10/chores.html
A Woman's Work
Moderator: Adminlizzieborden
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Allen
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A Woman's Work
"He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the head of dispute." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Allen
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For those of you who are receiving the site temporarily unavailable error I'm going to try to copy and paste the content from the page into a word document, minus the pictures which of course won't show up, and make it available for you to read in this form.
"He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the head of dispute." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Allen
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Susan
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Cool, thanks Melissa! I can see why so much of this work was left to Bridget by the Bordens, so tedious. Thursdays and Fridays were house cleaning days, sounds like Abby was right on schedule on August 4th. 
“Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else's life forever.”-Margaret Cho comedienne
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Wordweaver
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And imagine doing all that when you're in an interesting condition, with several toddlers tugging at your skirts. With no summer air-conditioning, either.
My grandparents, who lived in rural Pennsylvania, had a coal range for cooking until 1968. No electricity until 1939, no indoor plumbing until 1950 or so, no telephone until the late 1950s. Why would they need one? Everyone they knew was within walking distance (defined as several miles). Their house was heated by a wood furnace, which finally got oil backup in the 1980s, when my grandfather was in his late seventies. He kept chopping wood to heat the house until the day he had a fatal stroke in 1994.
When we were young, our house was heated by a coal stove (coal shoveled in by hand, ashes taken out the same way), we ran clothes through a wringer washer, and until I was in high school we always hung up clothes to dry on a clothesline. My mother still hangs up the wash when the weather permits.
Of course, I'm middle-aged. But we're really not that far from Lizzie's time.
Lynn
suddenly feeling spoiled rotten
My grandparents, who lived in rural Pennsylvania, had a coal range for cooking until 1968. No electricity until 1939, no indoor plumbing until 1950 or so, no telephone until the late 1950s. Why would they need one? Everyone they knew was within walking distance (defined as several miles). Their house was heated by a wood furnace, which finally got oil backup in the 1980s, when my grandfather was in his late seventies. He kept chopping wood to heat the house until the day he had a fatal stroke in 1994.
When we were young, our house was heated by a coal stove (coal shoveled in by hand, ashes taken out the same way), we ran clothes through a wringer washer, and until I was in high school we always hung up clothes to dry on a clothesline. My mother still hangs up the wash when the weather permits.
Of course, I'm middle-aged. But we're really not that far from Lizzie's time.
Lynn
suddenly feeling spoiled rotten
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California. --Edward Abbey
http://unnaturalhistory.blogspot.com
http://unnaturalhistory.blogspot.com