I’ve found these stories by going through the old Church magazines, mostly Relief Society Magazine but one of these stories came from the Improvement Era. Internet Archive is gradually posting scans of all the magazines, if you can figure out how to search there, or perhaps you live where you have access to paper copies of the old magazines.

“I always dust my closet shelves regularly every week.”

That sentence is as redundant as her habits.

Cut her some slack. She was just trying to distinguish herself from the bums who dust their closet shelves irregularly every week.

That sentence is as redundant as her habits.

I always dust my closet shelves regularly every week.

Slacker. I dust my closets twice a day.

As much as we feel like slapping the husband at the end, I think even that last line was meant to be funny. In an age of the idealization of gender equality it may not seem funny, but it’s the same vein as the sitcoms of just a few years ago that show dads as incompetent bumblers, or from earlier years that show women as dizzy-headed dames (think: I Love Lucy), all for laughs.

It’s very different from modern taste, but I suspect it was very much enjoyed by our grandmothers.

I always wondered as a kid why my mother said she could never rest…