What Are the Seven Days of Chores, Anyway?

During one of my periodic bouts of schedule-planning, I consulted the classic authoritative guide to cleaning, How to Clean Everything by Alma Chesnut Moore where, under "Schedule" I found, "The old jingle, incidentally, goes: Wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday, mend on Wednesday, upstairs Thursday, downstairs Friday, bake on Saturday, church on Sunday."

I next consulted the Internet, and it appears to know nothing about Moore's variant of the "old jingle." I Googled and Googled, and found only irrelevant seventeeth-century variants, ones that include days for churning and sometimes brewing, obviously not anything helpful to developing a schedule for modern household chores in the twenty-first century.

I know of at least two other variants of what Moore calls an "old jingle" and neither can be found on the Internet, either. Two sets of tea towels I found in the family collection of needlecraft are how I know those variants. 

One set, my mother gave me to embroider, although I never did, and I was able to sell it through an online estate sale, supposedly to someone who wanted to do the embroidery. It featured an anthopomorphic cat, and each towel was identified by day. 

Here's what that set depicted: On Monday, the cat walks in the rain, which of course could represent washing. On Tuesday, she bakes. Wednesday, she embroiders, which, like mending, is needlecraft. On Thursday, she sweeps, Friday, she shops. On Sunday, the Day of Rest, she rests on a swing.

What I never did get, though, for Saturday, the anthropomorphic cat was depicted riding a bicycle. Just what kind of chore is that? Are we all supposed to ride a bike on Saturday? What does it represent? Exercise? Travel? Play? Recreation? Of course I found nothing on the Internet to help.

The second set of tea towels, I still have, and those, if memory serves, were made by my grandmother. They depict a "Sunbonnet Sue" character in bonnet and hoop skirt. The towels don't label the chores by days.

Some of this second set's chores-by-the-day are easy to guess. The Sunbonnet character hangs up the laundry, that's Monday. She holds an iron, that's Tuesday. She holds a pie, that's Saturday. She holds a little black book, that's a Bible for church on Sunday. 

The remaining three designs, I can't match to a day. She sweeps, and that could be either Thursday or Friday. She holds a market basket, which could be Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. She gardens, and I have no idea what day that might be. Once again, the Internet is no help. No matter how much I Google, I can't find any "old jingle" that includes a day for gardening.

The closest I got was some ghost town of a blog where someone had come up with her own seven-day schedule, paying no heed to any old jingle. She gardened on Monday and rested on Tuesday, apparently not caring what Christians or anybody else might say about resting on Sunday or washing on Monday.

Back in January 2025 I wrote a column about how I was puzzling over what advice this "old jingle" gives. It was titled "Chores by the Day" and ran in Senior Reporter. Of course I make my schedule independently of any "old jingle" but I'd still like to solve the mystery of what those tea towels represent. Anyone reading this want to venture an answer, or a guess, about what biking on Saturday represents and what day of the week is for gardening? Anybody want to discuss any other versions of the "old jingle" as Moore calls it?