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How to Run Your Home Without Help
How to Run Your Home Without Help (first published 1949) is, as its title implies, a book about housework, republished because it is useful, it is a fascinating historical document, and, sixty years on, it is a funny and at times extraordinary bulletin from a vanished world.' This book tells the newly servantless housewife what to do and is perfect for the newly-wed in need of some guidance or the son or daughter who has just left home.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 21, 2021
“1-2 ½ hours for the daily tidying; 3-4 hours for shopping, cooking and washing-up, and 2-3 hours for house-cleaning, washing and other big jobs. That’s good enough as a starting point.”
Starting point?!
Image: The daily round
“You should be free of the kitchen between 8 and 8.30pm. And is the rest of the day yours? Well, don’t forget the ironing, and mending or knitting. But you can sit down for these.”
Fascinating, funny, horrific.
Time and place
This was published in the UK in 1949:
“In some ways it has never been harder; in others it’s much simplified from the days of plenty.”
It was for a very specific readership: middle-class women, raised with live-in staff or daily help, who have silverware, furs, and maybe a little chandelier to care for, and will be familiar with the works of Dickens. The author was a former editor of Good Housekeeping, which has always tried to add glamour to domesticity, and many of the line drawings show women dressed more for allure than chores.
Image: Dolled up for the washing
These women now had to run a home to high standards, unaided, during austerity and rationing, and they hadn’t been taught:
“Those who must be both mistress and maid.”
The tone is relentlessly cheerful about the daunting, exhaustive, and exhausting regime of solo housewifery.
“Bedmaking can be quite a pleasant interlude from the dusting and sweeping.”
It’s comical from a distance of 70 years, but shocking to contemplate for real.
“Who wouldn’t rather be bodily tired out than mentally exhausted?”
On the cusp
What I found so interesting was the competing demands of a society in transition, on multiple fronts:
• Nostalgia for domesticity in days of plentiful help and supplies versus excitement at technological improvements to the tools of housewifery.
• Aspiration (“It’s rather pleasant to get a reputation for doing one or two dishes extra well.”) versus trying to be realistic about when and where you can cut corners.
• Making necessary drudgery empowering: careful planning to ensure efficiency, but with adaptations for different circumstances and tastes.
• Men are necessary (breadwinners, advisors, and for occasional help with washing up) but also pretty useless: “A man about the house usually makes more work than he performs”.
• Passively accepted misogyny and strict gender roles versus equality: a wife must defer to and pamper her man, but also have her own “time for talk, for outside interests, and for plain fun”, and when giving chores to children (from the age of five!), "Don't differentiate between boys and girls".
Image: One thing the husband can help with.
Content and format
There is a lot of information in under 200 pages: plans and routines; tools and equipment; floorplans (kitchen and whole home); cleaning; laundry; budgeting (time, money, and ration points); meal-planning, shopping, and cooking; entertaining; mending; adapting when pregnant, with a small child, or if working part-time outside the home; “beauty while you work”, and a chapter about getting one’s husband to pitch in.
“Weigh up the value of leisure, and the health and happiness a little more of it may give you.”
Image: How to do a calico patch
It’s organised for busy readers to find relevant information quickly. The table of contents has a two-sentence summary of each short chapter. There are clear subsections, plenty of illustrations, and an exhaustive appendix of equipment (eight pages about different types of water heaters alone!), another of useful information (replacing a fuse, stain removal), plus index.
Image: Electric kitchen, designed for the small contemporary house
This edition, republished by Persephone Books, has a preface from 2005, giving background context.
See also
• An Edwardian approach for men to make time for self-improvement (because the women are doing all the domestic work) in Arnold Bennett's, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, which I've reviewed HERE.
Starting point?!
Image: The daily round
“You should be free of the kitchen between 8 and 8.30pm. And is the rest of the day yours? Well, don’t forget the ironing, and mending or knitting. But you can sit down for these.”
Fascinating, funny, horrific.
Time and place
This was published in the UK in 1949:
“In some ways it has never been harder; in others it’s much simplified from the days of plenty.”
It was for a very specific readership: middle-class women, raised with live-in staff or daily help, who have silverware, furs, and maybe a little chandelier to care for, and will be familiar with the works of Dickens. The author was a former editor of Good Housekeeping, which has always tried to add glamour to domesticity, and many of the line drawings show women dressed more for allure than chores.
Image: Dolled up for the washing
These women now had to run a home to high standards, unaided, during austerity and rationing, and they hadn’t been taught:
“Those who must be both mistress and maid.”
The tone is relentlessly cheerful about the daunting, exhaustive, and exhausting regime of solo housewifery.
“Bedmaking can be quite a pleasant interlude from the dusting and sweeping.”
It’s comical from a distance of 70 years, but shocking to contemplate for real.
“Who wouldn’t rather be bodily tired out than mentally exhausted?”
On the cusp
What I found so interesting was the competing demands of a society in transition, on multiple fronts:
• Nostalgia for domesticity in days of plentiful help and supplies versus excitement at technological improvements to the tools of housewifery.
• Aspiration (“It’s rather pleasant to get a reputation for doing one or two dishes extra well.”) versus trying to be realistic about when and where you can cut corners.
• Making necessary drudgery empowering: careful planning to ensure efficiency, but with adaptations for different circumstances and tastes.
• Men are necessary (breadwinners, advisors, and for occasional help with washing up) but also pretty useless: “A man about the house usually makes more work than he performs”.
• Passively accepted misogyny and strict gender roles versus equality: a wife must defer to and pamper her man, but also have her own “time for talk, for outside interests, and for plain fun”, and when giving chores to children (from the age of five!), "Don't differentiate between boys and girls".
Image: One thing the husband can help with.
Content and format
There is a lot of information in under 200 pages: plans and routines; tools and equipment; floorplans (kitchen and whole home); cleaning; laundry; budgeting (time, money, and ration points); meal-planning, shopping, and cooking; entertaining; mending; adapting when pregnant, with a small child, or if working part-time outside the home; “beauty while you work”, and a chapter about getting one’s husband to pitch in.
“Weigh up the value of leisure, and the health and happiness a little more of it may give you.”
Image: How to do a calico patch
It’s organised for busy readers to find relevant information quickly. The table of contents has a two-sentence summary of each short chapter. There are clear subsections, plenty of illustrations, and an exhaustive appendix of equipment (eight pages about different types of water heaters alone!), another of useful information (replacing a fuse, stain removal), plus index.
Image: Electric kitchen, designed for the small contemporary house
This edition, republished by Persephone Books, has a preface from 2005, giving background context.
See also
• An Edwardian approach for men to make time for self-improvement (because the women are doing all the domestic work) in Arnold Bennett's, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, which I've reviewed HERE.
August 1, 2020
A fascinating piece of social history this. In 1949 Smallshaw published this guide to running a house without staff - the country is deeply in debt post WW2, rationing is still in force and will be for some time, the concept of every home having an automatic washing machine or (can you imagine?) a dishwasher is decades away. Intelligent and educated women, many of whom were doing important war work, had to get back in the kitchen so that the men could return to their workplaces. So turning housework into something valuable and Worth Doing Well was essential for women's morale.
Firstly, to read this book is exhausting. Smallshaw's bright and breezy tone belies the fact that domestic labour was time consuming, physically arduous, and never ending. She describes the daily work, the weekly work, not to mention the boiler repairs, the endless mending, the metal polishing, the jam making and pickling, not to mention the seasonal tasks and the dreaded spring cleaning (hand washing carpets! scrubbing walls!). The commitment to the laundry alone would send a modern woman straight to the gin. And when the babies arrive, you'll be boil washing your nappies while doing your daily tidy up, airing the beds, and putting on a hot meal for lunch (which can be heated up for your husband when he arrives home).
There are some brilliant details which remind us how far we've come. Emptying the numerous ashtrays is a feature of the daily routines, and when it comes to food, we're reminded not to use 'pointed' (rationed) food when entertaining, for fear of embarrassing one's guests. We are told to remember the Ministry of Food's advice on not overcooking vegetables, yet advised to put the veg on to boil while we eat our starters, returning 'a quarter hour later' to take them off the heat. We are taught to use our fat rations wisely, and how to keep one's figure and ones hands in a youthful condition despite the endless washing and use of elaborate solvents for cleaning and polishing. References to borax, potash and 'the new liquid soap substitute' (Fairy Liquid?) remind us that once, one's housekeeper's box must have resembled a chemistry lab storeroom.
No working mothers here: a rather optimistic chapter on how to persuade our husbands to lend a hand is next to a chapter on the 'part-time housewife' who goes out to work and whose lifestyle sounds hedonistic in comparison to the norm.
A super read which made me look at my rather grubby house with shame, but at my automatic washing machine with gratitude and respect.
Firstly, to read this book is exhausting. Smallshaw's bright and breezy tone belies the fact that domestic labour was time consuming, physically arduous, and never ending. She describes the daily work, the weekly work, not to mention the boiler repairs, the endless mending, the metal polishing, the jam making and pickling, not to mention the seasonal tasks and the dreaded spring cleaning (hand washing carpets! scrubbing walls!). The commitment to the laundry alone would send a modern woman straight to the gin. And when the babies arrive, you'll be boil washing your nappies while doing your daily tidy up, airing the beds, and putting on a hot meal for lunch (which can be heated up for your husband when he arrives home).
There are some brilliant details which remind us how far we've come. Emptying the numerous ashtrays is a feature of the daily routines, and when it comes to food, we're reminded not to use 'pointed' (rationed) food when entertaining, for fear of embarrassing one's guests. We are told to remember the Ministry of Food's advice on not overcooking vegetables, yet advised to put the veg on to boil while we eat our starters, returning 'a quarter hour later' to take them off the heat. We are taught to use our fat rations wisely, and how to keep one's figure and ones hands in a youthful condition despite the endless washing and use of elaborate solvents for cleaning and polishing. References to borax, potash and 'the new liquid soap substitute' (Fairy Liquid?) remind us that once, one's housekeeper's box must have resembled a chemistry lab storeroom.
No working mothers here: a rather optimistic chapter on how to persuade our husbands to lend a hand is next to a chapter on the 'part-time housewife' who goes out to work and whose lifestyle sounds hedonistic in comparison to the norm.
A super read which made me look at my rather grubby house with shame, but at my automatic washing machine with gratitude and respect.
November 4, 2014
Wow. The 1950s don't seem that far ago in the big scheme of things: people had running water and electricity and canned food. But wow, I'm so glad I'm taking care of a household now and not back then. Cooking everything from scratch (and working around rations); doing the laundry by hand (and starching and ironing); cleaning the house to incredibly high standards (they polished everything!): things are easier now.
I'm going to go put a load of clothes in the washing machine now and enjoy how they magically get clean without me having to boil them on the stovetop and put them through the wringer.
I'm going to go put a load of clothes in the washing machine now and enjoy how they magically get clean without me having to boil them on the stovetop and put them through the wringer.
February 2, 2025
disgraceful that people are calling themselves tradwives who don’t even polish the furniture every day
March 30, 2018
How to Run your Home without Help addresses the challenges faced by the post WWII middle class woman in maintaining - or attempting to maintain, or ditching some and carrying on others - the standards to which her husband and social class were accustomed. These were formerly achieved by the labour of paid help, but due to changing circumstances they now have to be taken care of by the woman of the house - which, if she is married, is a full-time job. If single, she may be able to manage to have a career as well, and a brief chapter discusses the management of that situation.
Men in may well be willing to do such jobs as lighting the boiler before he leaves for work, vacuuming, and even more when a baby is arriving or has arrived.
The grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning is full-time toil. Electric refrigerators are a new and somewhat luxury item, rendering shopping for food every few days a necessity. Washing machines are rudimentary boilers and the washing alone is a full day job, best scheduled for a Monday when you can serve cold leftovers from Sundays roast rather than toiling all day over a boiling pot of washing and then trying to cook as well. Ironing will be done on Tuesday. And so on.
As much as I hate the plastic era, this book really made me appreciate how things like central heating, refrigerators, electric washers and dryers have rendered keeping a home and the decencies of cleanliness etc so much easier and quicker. I love our log stove, but reading about how a housewife in 1949 had no hot water until her husband started a fire in the morning, the incessant cleaning out of all the grates in all the rooms at the end of each day, laying the fires ready to be started again, the constant clearing up of ash, each room having to be dusted everyday, wow. I am so grateful to be able to turn on the thermostat to get heat, turn on a tap and have hot water in just a few moments, etc.
Of course now many women don't have a great solution either, because most are expected to work and manage the house, and it seems that the vast majority of men's attitudes on sharing housework equally have not progressed much since 1949. Still happy to "help out" but viewing the home as the wife's responsibility, even if she works as much as he does outside the home.
Some of the principles of course are still relevant today - planning ahead, prioritising the preparation of vegetables over making baked goods, ordering ahead of time from shopkeepers to save time, getting things delivered where possible, having a routine, thinking about why and when you are doing things and whether the system can be improved on. Mentions are also given to self-care (protecting your hair while dusting, facemasks, hand lotion, etc) not being too tired by all the work to have time with your husband when he gets in, not trying to achieve things that are beyond your means of time money or energy. Suggestions are given for simplifying hospitality menus and so on to adapt to the times. Don't expect yourself to achieve the same standards you would if you had paid help! :D
Men in may well be willing to do such jobs as lighting the boiler before he leaves for work, vacuuming, and even more when a baby is arriving or has arrived.
The grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning is full-time toil. Electric refrigerators are a new and somewhat luxury item, rendering shopping for food every few days a necessity. Washing machines are rudimentary boilers and the washing alone is a full day job, best scheduled for a Monday when you can serve cold leftovers from Sundays roast rather than toiling all day over a boiling pot of washing and then trying to cook as well. Ironing will be done on Tuesday. And so on.
As much as I hate the plastic era, this book really made me appreciate how things like central heating, refrigerators, electric washers and dryers have rendered keeping a home and the decencies of cleanliness etc so much easier and quicker. I love our log stove, but reading about how a housewife in 1949 had no hot water until her husband started a fire in the morning, the incessant cleaning out of all the grates in all the rooms at the end of each day, laying the fires ready to be started again, the constant clearing up of ash, each room having to be dusted everyday, wow. I am so grateful to be able to turn on the thermostat to get heat, turn on a tap and have hot water in just a few moments, etc.
Of course now many women don't have a great solution either, because most are expected to work and manage the house, and it seems that the vast majority of men's attitudes on sharing housework equally have not progressed much since 1949. Still happy to "help out" but viewing the home as the wife's responsibility, even if she works as much as he does outside the home.
Some of the principles of course are still relevant today - planning ahead, prioritising the preparation of vegetables over making baked goods, ordering ahead of time from shopkeepers to save time, getting things delivered where possible, having a routine, thinking about why and when you are doing things and whether the system can be improved on. Mentions are also given to self-care (protecting your hair while dusting, facemasks, hand lotion, etc) not being too tired by all the work to have time with your husband when he gets in, not trying to achieve things that are beyond your means of time money or energy. Suggestions are given for simplifying hospitality menus and so on to adapt to the times. Don't expect yourself to achieve the same standards you would if you had paid help! :D
August 3, 2020
This Persephone Books edition is definitely a niche-interest read, as it’s a mid-century handbook on housekeeping without hired hands. As someone who loves mid-century novels about British women’s lives, this book explained so much about the day-to-day lives of women. It provided a glimpse of behind-the-scenes details and loads of helpful tips that even I, a twenty-first century stay-at-home mom, could use to make my life a bit easier
December 10, 2019
Gosh, if I was making a movie about post-WW11 Britain, this would be my design bible. Not only does Kay Smallshaw tell you how to get soot off the carpet and how to darn socks, she goes in to the intricacies of all the current labor-saving devices and how to fix them. Wonder Woman, ca. 1949!
April 19, 2019
Leaving aside the odd line that would make any feminist shudder, the book is best read as an economic history of the times, seen through the lens of how Middle-class homemakers coped with post-war economic change.
A surprisingly pleasant read (if you ignore the lines that would make any feminist shudder).
A surprisingly pleasant read (if you ignore the lines that would make any feminist shudder).
December 16, 2019
A wonderful piece of social history from the Mrs Hinch/Gemma Bray of her day. Reading the amount of housework expected of a woman in the post-war years makes Team TOMM seem a breeze!
My favourite aspect was the costings of household appliances - fascinating to compare to the current prices.
My favourite aspect was the costings of household appliances - fascinating to compare to the current prices.
May 14, 2019
I desperately want an upholstery whisk now.
September 24, 2021
3.5 stars. Fun, but half a star off for not being very practical. Times have changed in ways that make this book outdated to the point of being mostly a novel retrospective.
October 17, 2021
跳读很快。学到了很多有用的家居小知识和tips，不过大多数对我现在的生活帮助很小（没有那么大的房子；没有那么细致的清理需要；劳动被更先进的科技替代）。男人在家务的时候真没用啊……！原来二战后的英国依旧是性别刻板印象那么强的地方……
July 5, 2013
This was surprisingly helpful, both as a picture of housework used to be done, and as a guide to how people used to think about housework. It doesn't give you a romantic picture of working at home, or gloss over the fact that it's hard work, but it does offer you a cheerful and positive approach to it.
Some things have changed: a street is no longer full of women who are at home all day and can join forces to do the washing or carry mattresses about. Women have to do housework and a paid job as well, so don't have the luxury of a full day at home to get things done. But technology has changed things for the better: I was born in 1964, lived with central heating from 1981, a washing machine from 1989, a dishwasher from 2003, online grocery shopping from 2006 and there isn't one of those things I would be without. I don't miss for a moment taking heavy clinging wet sheets out to the garden to dry or getting out of bed in a cold bedroom, and I wouldn't wish those conditions on anyone. But there's a charm in reading about how to deal with it. And some of the detail is still useful: some good stuff on stain removal and how to organize work to save effort!
Some things have changed: a street is no longer full of women who are at home all day and can join forces to do the washing or carry mattresses about. Women have to do housework and a paid job as well, so don't have the luxury of a full day at home to get things done. But technology has changed things for the better: I was born in 1964, lived with central heating from 1981, a washing machine from 1989, a dishwasher from 2003, online grocery shopping from 2006 and there isn't one of those things I would be without. I don't miss for a moment taking heavy clinging wet sheets out to the garden to dry or getting out of bed in a cold bedroom, and I wouldn't wish those conditions on anyone. But there's a charm in reading about how to deal with it. And some of the detail is still useful: some good stuff on stain removal and how to organize work to save effort!
January 2, 2015
I admit I'm unusual: I like housework. I like doing it well. It's part of what makes my world a good one, that I have a house to look after. I used to spend hours cleaning and tidying my dolls' house and swiftly progressed from Brownie Home maker badge (leave a tin of biscuits by the bed when someone comes to stay - yes, wonderful) to O level Home Economics. So there. As I had nobody to ask how to do such things,now I instinctively warm to Kay Smallshaw as someone who would have been there beside me, offering sensible advice. However. It's pretty scary, the amount of work that was involved in 1949. You needed muscle and good joints to clean a room then, and don't even think of the dark and deadly chemicals you would ingest in the process. I wonder how many of the middle-aged women in our street in the 1960s had married with rosy visions of modern house work but then been worn down (quite literally) and hardened in mind and joints with rubbing, scrubbing, scraping, at stains and dirt.
August 15, 2015
I want a teapot spout cleaner and an upholstery whisk after reading this. Seriously though, this was aimed at the middle class wife who had never had to do any household work, unlike her working class counterpart. It's an interesting read with a mild bit of feminist thought thrown in - when children are old enough let them take a share. Don't differentiate between boys and girls. Both should learn how to cook a simple meal, and clear it away, before the teens are reached.
Some of the cleaning tips are still applicable - tidy up last thing, clean as you go, planning meals in advance, having a budget.Persephone publish some interesting forgotten stuff.
Some of the cleaning tips are still applicable - tidy up last thing, clean as you go, planning meals in advance, having a budget.Persephone publish some interesting forgotten stuff.
October 6, 2014
A very enjoyable read & a trip back in time, not least of which for the fact that rationing was still in force when this was written.
I remember Vim from my childhood - windolene's still going.....
It recommends turning one room a week - mine a lucky to be done yearly!
An inisght into a world long gone - what I'd LOVE to know is if anyone actually ran their houses this way?
I remember Vim from my childhood - windolene's still going.....
It recommends turning one room a week - mine a lucky to be done yearly!
An inisght into a world long gone - what I'd LOVE to know is if anyone actually ran their houses this way?
December 31, 2012
Fascinating
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