Pioneer living with a weekly schedule

Little House on the Prairie. Great books, greater TV show (particularly when I was sick and home from school as a kid. Between that, The Price is Right, and Press Your Luck, I was set). And despite the obvious romanticizing of parts of her childhood, Laura Ingalls Wilder does a great job describing what life was like as a pioneer in the mid to late 1800s.

We’ll talk about that throughout this project. For today, though, we’re going to focus on having a weekly chore schedule. In Little House in the Big Woods, Laura describes her mother’s (Ma) schedule as this:

Wash on Monday,
Iron on Tuesday,
Mend on Wednesday,
Churn on Thursday,
Clean on Friday,
Bake on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday.

The concept of this schedule is wonderful. It’s thorough, specific, and covers all the areas of housekeeping that a person would need to attend to throughout the week (including building in time for rest. Alleviates guilt that way, and makes room for whatever faith you observe). And for someone like me who loathes housework and often has a difficult time forcing myself to do it, it’s a great way to break up the chores into manageable pieces. It makes the task of attending to chores less daunting since, you know, I’m not having to cram them all into one day.

The schedule is also flexible enough that it can be altered to accommodate each individual’s life. For instance, I can assure you I’m not churning butter on Thursday or any day (although I will be spending one afternoon making butter in my stand up mixer). As for ironing, if something that needs to be ironed makes its way into my house, I’m going on a rampage to find out who did it. And mending? That’ll happen whenever a button falls off of something. I’m not saving it up for one day.

But maybe instead of spending a whole day mending, I’ll spend the day sewing cloth napkins or some other sewing project. Instead of churning butter, I’ll designate a day for grocery shopping, menu planning, and assorted other errands. There’s no need to stick to Ma’s schedule as written; I’m not Ma and neither are you. There’s nothing wrong with taking her framework and making it your own!

I’ll get the schedule party started. I think, for now, my schedule will look like this:

Laundry on Monday,
Clean on Tuesday,
Dust and vacuum on Wednesday,
Catch up on missed chores on Thursday,
Errands on Friday,
Food prep on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday.

It’s worth noting that in this, I need to make time for work, taking my child to her activities, going to the gym, and volunteering at my child’s school. I realize this is way busier than a normal pioneer lady’s schedule but I’m a modern pioneer. My life comes with different demands than that of 150 years ago. Which is fine. This experiment isn’t necessarily about replicating exactly what they did back then. It’s about incorporating parts of their way of life into mine.

Also, I’m not entirely sure how this is a step towards self-sufficiency. I do think it’s a step towards organization which leads to buying less so maybe there’s something self-sufficiency related tucked in there. Regardless, it’s still using a pioneer living model (even if it’s probably fictitious) and therefore applicable.

Right?

Do you have a household chores schedule? Will you create one? What does it look like?