Blessings of Work

Work in my family of origin was generally assigned for me to do on my own.   The times we worked as a group or in pairs were rare.  I remember a couple of times receiving some training prior to doing an assigned job, but mostly, I would do the job, then receive feedback to what I needed to do better. 

  

 We had a dish washing rotation schedule.  We didn’t have a dishwasher all the years I was growing up.  I usually had one night a week that was mine for washing dishes.  I’m pretty sure after dinner, no one brought their dishes to the sink or helped put away food.  That was all left for whoever’s turn it was that night.  I remember shutting the sliding doors to our kitchen, turning up the radio to a favorite music station and cleaning the kitchen.  Doing it in this way made it more pleasurable.  My father tried to establish the procedure of washing silverware first, then cups, and so forth, but then my siblings and mom said that as long as it got done, why worry about the order, so that’s how we proceeded.  I remember sweeping the floor was also required.  I probably preferred closing the sliding doors and turning the radio up full blast because of the example of my older siblings.  Even though I had to clean the kitchen by myself, listening to a “cool” radio station while doing so, became a sort of rite of passage. Occasionally when the rotation for dish washing fell on a holiday with a bigger meal or where we had company or something like that, we would have help from my mom or siblings. 

I also had an area of the house for which I was responsible and would typically clean it on Saturdays.  It’s funny to think now that I don’t remember doing any upkeep of my area during the week.  I wonder why?  When we first moved into the house of my growing up years, there were two bedrooms, 1 ½ baths, kitchen and living room.  It was probably no more than about 1000 square feet.  About four years later, when I was almost eight years old, we began a remodel/addition, adding 2200 square feet.  The updated home included a very large family room, dining area, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and extra space at the front and back entries as well as some additional closet space down one hallway.

My sisters and I were mostly the ones responsible for the areas in the house.  When the rotation fell to be a turn for the family room, we cringed.  This was because it was such a large area, one that was used heavily and needed the most cleaning.  The dining area was the easiest one to clean.  I also cleaned a bathroom about once a week too, at least I would scrub the sink, tub and toilet.  I don’t remember mopping bathrooms that much, but I did some.  I also mopped the kitchen and family floors sometimes.  Our huge family room had vinyl flooring with area rugs in some spots. 

I was also responsible to keep my bed made and my room cleaned.  Because I shared a room until I was a junior in high school this was sometimes a point of contention with the siblings with whom I shared.  I remember under my bed was always very cluttered.  Probably about quarterly my mom would insist I clean under my bed and in my closet.

Spring and summers brought more outdoor chores.  Weeding was a frequent one.  My dad had us weed the lawn, pulling out one weed at a time.  After I married Alan, he controlled weeds in the lawn by spraying or sprinkling weed killer once or twice a year.  I was so amazed!  You mean, you don’t have to pull every dandelion out of the lawn by its roots?!  Of course that’s the way to do it.  Alan only worried about weeds in the garden.  We had vegetable gardens during my growing up years.  I remember weeding them some.  I remember clipping the roses after they finished blooming.  We had probably 30 rose bushes along the edge of our yard and in some flower beds too.  My mom loved blooming flowers.  We also had daffodils and Dutch iris, as well as regular iris.  She taught me about trimming those too.  We seemed to always have fresh flower arrangements in the house from the flowers that grew in our yard.  After I turned 16 and went to formal dances, my mom would make boutonnieres for my dates from the roses growing in our yard.  She did that for my older sisters as well.  I don’t know if she ever made a corsage for my brothers’ dates.  I’ll have to ask them sometime.

We had about four or five flowering peach trees.  The trees were very lovely in the spring. The fruit was no good for eating.  One of our unpleasant early summer jobs was picking those peaches, but it seemed the majority of the picking was done after the peaches fell off the trees.  They were mushy and messy.  We encouraged our mom to make plenty of flower arrangements with those blossoms of pink, white and striped pink and white.  We figured the more branches of blossoms she used for indoor décor the fewer peaches we would have to clean up.

Each summer weekday we worked for a couple of hours or so in the morning before we were allowed to play with friends.  Often we would have a trip to the beach planned, or swimming at a friend’s house for an activity after the work was done. 

One weekday summer job that took the longest was laundry.  I remember only a few brief months where we had a working washer and dryer in our home.  It may have been longer.  But for most of the 14 years we lived in the house in which I grew up, my mom did laundry at a laundromat.  During the school year, she did the laundry on her own.  But in summers my siblings and I would rotate a day each week to take care of laundry.  Generally we had about 8 to 12 washer loads and 4 to 6 dryer loads.  So while the laundry was washing, I would read my latest book.  Then when it was time to transfer to the dryers, then I became a little busier because I had to watch the hanging “permanent press” clothes and quickly remove them to keep them wrinkle free.  The trick was to keep them tumbling, to time the dimes right, but not too long, and pull out the item to be hung.  Plus all the folding of non-hanging clothes, towels and bedding.  My mom would drop me and the laundry off and then pick me up about 4 hours later. 

We had several fruit trees: apricots, plums, nectarines, oranges, lemon and kumquat.  The citrus we ate fresh or would sometimes freeze excess.  With the nectarines we also froze some blended that my father would use in punch, otherwise they were no good bottled as fruit.  But the apricots and plums we always bottled, either as fruit or jam.  When I was about junior high age, my mom tried fruit “leather” letting in dry in the sun with window screens over it to keep of the flies.  But I didn’t eat that much of it.  I was so spoiled by the fresh fruit, as much as I could eat all summer long, that bottled or dried fruit felt unappealing to me. Summer bottling was a group project with my mom, siblings and occasionally my father all working together.  Those are happy memories for me. 

Other group work with my mom and siblings included spraying off the house each summer.  We’d be sure to close all the windows tightly and watch the doors too.  Then use a spray nozzle with the hose to spray off all the dust and cobwebs that collected on the siding and stucco parts of our house.  Also washing windows was at least a two-some job. 

There were a few major projects we did as a family.  I remember when we hooked up to the sewer and no longer used a septic tank or leech field.  We saved the cost of hiring out the excavating by digging the trench for the pipe ourselves, or actually, we may have had it dug but we filled it in ourselves.  There were a couple of other times when we all worked together to rake leaves in the fall.  All the trees growing in our yard shed many leaves each fall. 

I think because the bulk of my chores were assigned to be completed on my own, that when I became a mother, I had greater difficulty learning how to work side by side with my children, even though those times were happy memories for me.  Thankfully, Dad knew how to work side by side because of his family of origin, and all of you grew up learning how to work.  

Hopefully you all have happy memories with family work times.  We would love to hear about them if any of you would like to share.   Or to share how you work together as families.

We love you all!

Mom and Dad

P.S. You may remember a quote I had on the wall at times in our homes by David O. Mckay, "The privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, and the love or work is success."