Collection DX24 - Housekeeping accounts

Housekeeping accounts kept by a Hobart housewife with a husband and four daughters . The mother had attended the Zerco Business School in Hobart after leaving school and, no doubt because of her training, kept careful, detailed accounts of all minor cash payments for housekeeping expenses. These accounts were entered in octavo cash books or diaries and include details of each purchase or expense, totalled at the end of each page. Cash payments included groceries, meat, vegetables, fruit, bread, milk and also occasional minor expenses
such as "shirts", "clinic", gas, cleaner, shoes, shoe repair, sweets, tram fares and later petrol, creche, nappies. There were occasional treats such as cake, pictures
[movies], theatre, ices, "solo losses", tennis, and incidentals such as raffle tickets, church magazine, Sunday School magazine, chiropodist. The accounts only record small cash payments, possibly from a housekeeping allowance, and not major expenses such as house rates, rent or repairs, insurance, clothing or household furnishing, school or medical expenses. They are, however, a useful record of the cost of basic foods.