After cooking and house-cleaning, laundry was the most difficult chore for the women of the house. Those doing the laundry were usually Mamá María, Lupe, and Natalia. They would start early, just after breakfast, by loading the dirty clothing into the mule wagon. They took along a black iron kettle called a paila, a wide board, matches, and kerosene for starting a fire. Then they proceeded to one of the lagoons.

They had a choice of three or four nearby lagoons. One was close to Tío Anastacio's ranch; another was close to Agua Dulce. The lagoon of Don Merced lay the farthest away, next to Don Telésforo Garza's ranch. When the women arrived, their first step was to start a fire for the kettle and fill it with water. As the kettle began to heat, they put the clothing in to boil. Next they sliced the soap into the boiling water. They added bluing to the paila when washing the white garments. They laid a wide board near the water's edge for kneeling on as they scrubbed and rinsed the clothes. They stood on the board to squeeze out the soap when rinsing. Then they hung the clothing or spread it on the bushes to dry by sun and wind. At noon they ate their lunch, which included watermelons or cantaloupes when in season. After the clothing dried, the women gathered it and returned home.

Another difficult chore was grinding the kernels of corn into meal for cooking. Mamá María had a corn grinder called a molino to grind the cornmeal, or nixtamal, for the corn tortillas, and the girls had to grind a bucket of nixtamal. Anastacia said that whenever it was her turn to grind the nixtamal for the masa, she would throw some to the hens and chickens. When Mamá María finally caught Anastacia throwing the corn to the chickens, she commented, "No wonder when you grind the corn, the masa does not go far enough!"

Flour tortillas were considered a treat. They were sometimes served as a snack between breakfast and the noon meal, called almuerzo. The family also ate flour tortillas for an afternoon snack between lunch and supper, called merienda. On occasions, for merienda, the women baked leavened bread made with yeast, called pan de levadura, or cakes.

Cornfield ready for harvest

The corn had many uses.They brought the cobs from the corncrib, or chapil, and used a scraper called a desgranadora to separate the grains of corn from the cob. The desgranadora was attached to a wooden box to gather the grains. The family put the grains into sacks and loaded them onto a mule-drawn wagon, which they drove to a ranch near El Saltillero that had a gristmill. There the corn was ground into cornmeal. From the cornmeal the family made many kinds of food: cornbread; bread cookies called panochitas; toasted cornmeal called pinole; pudding, or atole; and other desserts. They used cornmeal as a thickening agent for meat dishes and as an ingredient in champurrado, a sweet drink made from cocoa, cornmeal, sugar, water, and milk. Besides using the kernels of corn, they also used the corncobs, las mazorcas, to feed the poultry and the hogs.