Coming back after your honeymoon to find that the house has been burgled is the stuff of nightmares these days - but back in 1965, the unthinkable was returning to discover that the bride had yet to be acquainted with a mop and duster.

"Ideally speaking one's new home should be ship-shape and ready to move into upon returning from one's honeymoon," advises the writer of a piece entitled "The Home" which appeared in The Irish Times on August 26th, 1965. "In fact, many a bride will say her honeymoon trip was spoiled through worrying about being carried over her new threshold into utter chaos."

Any bride who lulls herself into a false sense of security that the home can wait until after the honeymoon is living in a fantasy world says the writer: ". . . even if she isn't going out to work, it will amaze her how little time is available when there is a husband about the place."

Even worse if the unsightly mess the bride is carried into is a rented unsightly mess. "Even the tiniest house in the most crowded or shabby district can be an investment for one's dream house in the future, whereas rent is just money thrown away."

Filling that tiny house in an undesirable location with furniture was the next step. "Irish furniture used to be awful," says the writer, "but has improved greatly and one can buy good pieces such as chairs, beds, tables and other basic articles bit by bit . . . One doesn't need a three-piece suite for instance nowadays. Odd armchairs and settees are as acceptable as precious odd cups for serving afternoon tea."

Maintaining the home was not as daunting as it first may have seemed: "It is amazing how quickly a man can learn to `do it yourself' when it comes to built-in things for the home and a good course of carpentry and household maintenance ought to be one's preparation for marriage." The clever bride is advised not to wing it alone when equipping the kitchen. The writer tells of a bride she knows who "did an inventory of her mother's supplies and then checked with mother as to what was actually needed".

It wasn't only the bride who was thrust into a whole new reality according to a 1959 article. "Together with the choice of a career, matrimony, a house and a car, the decision on whether to go for central heating (and if so which system to use) ranks as a watershed moment in a man's life. The creature comfort (and that of his dependents) concerns the spending of quite a lot of money - in some cases, as much as a new car."

The brave new world Irish-style was still a chilly new world says the article, "with less than one in 25 of its three-quarters of a million households capable of the kind of environmental control that central heating provides."

For the bride, getting married usually meant resigning herself to a life of housework and more housework. "The coming of spring is not all birdsong and crocuses as the poet would have us believe," according to a feature in March, 1952. "For the housewife the first bright sunshine acts as a reminder that there is an important job to be done before she can relax and enjoy the warmer weather . . . by starting now the spring cleaning should be finished by Easter."

Labour-saving devices came highly recommended. "Much unnecessary work and frayed tempers can be avoided if, before putting your spring cleaning programme into operation, you take advantage of the many modern materials and devices now on sale." The latest gadgets included a bubble washer which was new on display at Hodges on Burgh Quay - a contraption which could be connected to a vacuum cleaner and had a blowing attachment - and the new Hoover electric floor polisher, which could be purchased at Evans's on Dawson Street. By the mid-1960s, laboursaving devices had come into their own. In 1966, a London correspondent enthused about the James Bond-inspired features of the latest iron at the Ideal Homes Exhibition.

"Living means work and leisure but the exhibition proves that they are not irreconcilable. The new spray steam-iron rather reminds one of Bond's famous Aston Martin in Goldfinger. The iron is nearly as versatile as the car, for it can be used as a dry iron, steam iron, a spray/steam iron, or as a spray/dry iron. Press a button and, say the manufacturers (almost in Bond language) an atomised spray of water shoots down ahead of the iron, dampening a large area."

The correspondent goes on to salivate over the Bond Bathroom - a replica from the latest film Thunderball. "It exudes an aura of masculinity, with generous amounts of after-shave, colognes and deodorants lying around to make the Bond types all the more alluring . . . Bathrooms were once the Cinderella of the home. They used to have rigid conformity, and anyway it was considered a grandiose luxury to have more than one bathroom in a home. But the trend now is distinctly individualistic, although obviously there are a lot of conformist one-bathroom homes left."

Housewives with conformist one-bathroom homes were probably breathing a sigh of relief, because while two Bond bathrooms might have been the height of fashion and allure, there was no mention if they possessed any top-secret powers of self-cleaning.

One person who did appreciate the work of the housewife was the author of a December, 1967, article suggesting suitable gifts for "that centre-piece of the Irish home - Her. The Number One Her . . . Ask what would she really love, rather than need from her ever loving." Fur coats, diamonds and gold and a custom-made suit are some of the gifts suggested but the writer concedes that for some women practical is best.

"If she's a practical type, a knife that will crop like Jimmy Flahive or an electric mixer, grinder or liquidiser . . . old or new, extravagant or inexpensive, a wife and mother is probably the easier person to find gifts for; a vegetable peeler costs shillings and would make her just as happy as a string of pearls."

So much for the swinging Sixties. It's enough to make the modern bride thank God for the 1970s and female liberation.