The speaker of “This Is Just to Say” doesn’t describe a concrete setting, but context clues suggest that the poem takes place in some kind of domestic setting, such as a house or an apartment. The key clue comes at the end of the first stanza, where the speaker references having taken the plums “that were in / the icebox” (lines 3–4). The word icebox refers to the precursor of the appliance we now call a refrigerator. Prior to the invention of refrigerators, people kept food items cool using insulated boxes with compartments for ice. Just as we do now with refrigerators, people had iceboxes in their homes. For this reason, it’s reasonable to assume that the poem is set in a domestic context, probably sometime in the early twentieth century. The casualness of the speaker’s tone also suggests the intimacy of a domestic context, almost as if the speaker has left this poem as an explanatory note for their partner or roommate to find later.