Before mom and dad married,the back half of the house was rented. Moms family lived in the front half. Every room in the whole house had a fireplace. There was nohot running water,electicity,{kerosene lamps which we still used during a storm}central heating and the toilet was the outhouse in the yard. I come from a family of great story tellers and I loved hearing the outhouse stories.
Dad closed up all the fireplaces except the large one up stairs in the back half of the house.He installed a coal burning stove in the dining room, wired the front half and put a toilet in the small hallway led from the kitchen to the other side of the house.
My brothers slept on the other side of the house and the older children made their playground. It was way bigger than the family quarters. After my brother{who thought he was a scientist]blew up the kitchen on the other side while experimenting with chemicels from a chemistry set he brought though a mail order catalog,{mom said the first thing she saw smoke coming from his clothes and hair} that part of the house rapidly deteriorated.
Mom did all the cooking,baking and boiling water for cleaning,bathing and washing clothes from the wood stove in the kitchen,even in the summer. My brother,sister and I bathed in a tub put near the coal stove. It was very soothing in the winter months.
Mom had a victory garden and we had to go out front and shovel the horse droppings from the tin mans cart. He sold household items and such.And you could hear him coming because the tins clanged as his horse trotted up our hill. The droppings went into the garden. Mom was good at bartering. The droppings were shoveled up in exchange for items on the cart. We also raised chickens.
Mom canned everything and made from scratch:breads,cakes,candy,pies,jelly,jam,soap and quilts. While taking care of us she took care of the neighborhood. There was always an unrelated face at the table come supper time. She washed and starched dads dress shirts and ironed them with a iron heat from the wood stove. Until she got the plugin iron and washer,all the clothes were washed using a scrub board. These new appliances made a huge change. However, she still had to take each item out of the washer and put them through the ringer. I would watch in horror the few times mom struggled to pull her caught hand out of the ringer.
She brought in extra money teaching piano and cleaning homes. If there was a child,she would bring me along to be a playmate. In later years it angered me to think that a music and English major could only get a job cleaning homes.
I never heard my mother raise her voice in anger and never heard her complain about the choice she made.