sugarplumkitty | Remembering Senior Homemaking

I was responding to a friend considering changing jobs to one that paid less but had benefits her current job didn't have. It tweaked a memory for me.

I graduated from high school way back in 1973. All girls were required to take senior homemaking to graduate back then. I'm not sure if there was an equivalent course for the boys, but if there was it was probably shop or something.

Do any schools still have senior homemaking? The room was cool. It had rows of mini-kitchen modules each with a stove, dishwasher, sink and counter. We learned how to cook simple meals, how to plan a balanced diet, how to properly clean up and use those dishwashers. My mom had taught me incorrectly. She still loads her dishwasher with the eating parts of utensils up "so soap and water can get to them better." In school we were taught to put the handle up so when we unload the dishwasher, the clean eating ends weren't touched by human hands. We learned how to sew buttons and mend loose seams.

We learned the current percentages of our wages to assign to rent, utilities, food, clothes and entertainment. Never spend more than 1/3 of your take home pay on housing, she taught us. Hahaha! We'd be on the street if we stuck to that. That's not possible today. The dollar value of job benefits could be calculated as a percentage of our pay. I'm pretty sure it was also 1/3, but now I'm beginning to wonder if I'm confused about that. We learned how to write a check and balance a checkbook.

I'll never forget the day the planned parenthood lady came in and passed all the birth control gadgets around for us to feel. We all had trouble handling the condom, well most of us did. The others were probably pretending. Somehow the diaphram and IUD's were less icky. The lady was wearing dangly earrings we didn't pay much attention to until she told us they were IUD's! LOL This was a few years before the Dalkion Shield infections knocked the IUD off the top of the "best contraception" stack. It was also several years before AIDS surfaced, but there were pictures and dire warnings about syphilis and gonorrhea. If they warned about herpes, I don't remember.

Did you take senior homemaking? I'd love to know your memories from it if you did!