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Letting the house get damp with the A/ C off just makes me ill.  I had no idea how bad until the week without power after Helene.  I loved hearing the outside though especially at night.  

I’m interested to sew how you do sewing panties!  I set aside a pair that is fraying all along the waist band that I want to use as a template to sew my own underwear, but I have never sewn with knits so it will be an adventure.

I’ve felt like I haven’t really dived into the 1930s, but reading your blog post today helped me take a larger view of it.  We have zero debt.  I cook our meals from scratch (most nights) and bake our bread.  In the evenings we are all in one room with just the light for that room (or just the TV if we watch an episode).  I’ve been 100% line drying all of our laundry for almost two years now, and drying clothes this way helped us learn to wear our clothing even more than twice.  I mend things and find way to use what we have instead of buying something new.

Last Saturday I baked a pie, my first pie not using store bought crust in more than a decade.  I was baking an egg and potato casserole for dinner so I decided the electricity to run the oven would be best used to also bake a pie!  Because of various allergies I made a simple oil crust using avocado oil.  I was surprised that I still got a flaky crust!  The filling was made from canned peaches because I had some in the pantry, and while it tasted good, I should have trusted my instincts because putting the filling (which was cooked on the stove) into the crust I felt there was too much liquid, and there definitely was.  But that wasn’t the point, I was mostly wanting to try out the oil crust and to round out our dinner.  I do have some good frozen crusts that were only $1.35 for 2 crusts that I will use up soon, but after that it will be homemade crust only.  This morning I baked biscuits in the toaster oven, I wanted to see what size batch will work in there.  I made a single recipe (2 cups flour) but I think I could have done 1 1/2 batch with 3 cups of flour.  My son can’t eat my biscuits, he is dairy allergic but I am allergic to most of the dairy substitutes like soy, tree nuts, and unless something has changed coconut as well.  Sometimes I have to bake something he can’t have because my restrictions are far worse between multiple food allergies and autoimmune inflammatory bowel disease.

Lana D. I struggle with feeling sticky without A/C too!  I grew up without A/C although after I was 9 we did have a swamp cooler that worked sometimes, just not when it was also humid.  To this day I hate the feeling of damp in a house using a swamp cooler.  There are many things I am willing to change and give up, but the A/C will be one of the last things to go.  On very hot days I leave it set just low enough to not be sticky during the day (usually 78 - 80°F) but I have to turn it down to sleep.  One symptom of my autoimmune disease is having difficulty regulating my body temperature, and I can’t sleep if I’m too hot.  I have adjusted however, and this year when it is over 90°F during the day I can set the A/C to 74°F around 8PM, whereas for several years with uncontrolled disease I had to have it at 71-72°F at night.

What a reward for getting done with my work. A new post! Just what I needed. :) I am going to 1932 next week. All this time since May 1st I have been practicing. One thing I want to do in 1932 is to take care of my house better, so I was polishing furniture and washing windows and mopping floors the old fashioned way today. I dug out a bar of lye soap that I knew I had somewhere and washed the windows and mopped the floors with it. Lye soap really cleans well! I used my graniteware basin and sponge mop, the old kind, for the floors, soaping them with a rag first. I felt very 1932 putting my mop and basin outside to dry. I used a plastic pail for the rinse water for the windows. Plastic is not 1932, but it's what I have. :(

I've made one week of inexpensive menus that I'm repeating. I like knowing what it's going to cost for food each week. We don't have exactly the same thing every time. I might substitute meatloaf for hamburgers, for instance. We eat meat three times a week. The garden changes the vegetables we have. Spinach and lettuce are on their way out and the peas and cabbages and beets are now ready to harvest instead. 

Then there is my budget. I reworked it a few times and started my envelope system. I have to think every minute what if my husband loses his job? I've read about the Depression a lot, but I realized that I never believed a job loss could happen to us. It can! Not having an income is a frightening thought. When I did the Depression study in 2023, it was fun. Now it's serious stuff! But the timing of this study is so perfect for my need to think like the Depression now. Thank you, Grandma Donna. I really need to learn to squeeze those pennies!

I'll be going through our clothes later in the week. We keep things basic with our clothes, but I haven't taken an inventory in a long time, and I want to see what we have. 

I enjoyed hearing about the poor family who still had their pride of living decently. I find stories like that very hopeful. 

I'll be able to relax more next week. All the thinking needed to make the changes to go to 1932 has left me no time to think about other things. One thing that I am very good at for 1932 is going to the movies. I have practiced a lot. :) My movie admission can is getting filled. I may have enough money for some movie treats soon. 

I can't wait to hear what everyone else is doing. 

I had to turn my AC on for a couple of days the humidity was so high and even though I had fans and windows open I just could not breathe properly. My allergies were out of control so I broke down and turned it on. I keep it on 78 and once the humidity is out I can turn it to 80 and be okay. But I really didn't want to have to use it.  

Now we are in a cool snap and finally got some rain, I had been watering the garden by hand but rain is so much better.

I use the morning TV news as my 1930's morning edition of the newspaper and then again in the evening news as the evening edition. I am truly enjoying the quiet.  IF there is a show I want to watch I call it going to the movie and charge myself (money in a pot) to watch it . 

I have been using my newfound time to do things around my home, today it was sanding and repainting the door and trim and then I sanded and painted a couple floor register covers. I will continue with floor covers until I am out of paint.... The entry foyer looks so much fresher! A job that I had been putting off because I thought I didn't have time. I had everything I needed and didn't have to buy anything.

Made an icebox pie, strawberry cream. Made yogurt and have simplified my meals. I am picking salad greens and they determine my menu. 

Chickens are laying well and I have my DD sell the extras to people in her office and then she uses the money to buy and bring me TP from the store right beside her office. When I feel like I have enough TP stocked up I will figure out what else to stock up on. I am calling it "barter" even though it really isn't.  

I am truly enjoying the quiet and calm of my 1930's days. I really needed this study.

Thank you to everyone for the study and the comments, they "take me home".

I found some good incandescent lightbulbs last winter and they made such a difference in my well-being. I felt my body relax when I started using them instead of LEDs. They felt the way lightbulbs should, to me. They are expensive, so I only have them in my bedroom to relax there. My husband bought a solar generator a couple of years ago. It has solar panels that we put on a sawhorse on the side of our house where there's sun, but they're out of sight. The generator is about a foot long and six inches wide and eleven inches high. We put it under the solar panels and connect to the panels when it needs charging. We bring it back into the house when it's charged, and plug whatever we want into it. After reading this post, I put the generator by the head of my bed on the floor and plugged my floor lamp into it. Incandescent bulbs use more electricity than LEDs, but Grandma Donna has inspired me to think another way, and use my incandescent reading light for free. Thank you for all of your wonderful ideas. 

Today's post got me thinking. I read it before dinner.

While I live in a small house I have a large kitchen; well, larger than one would expect in this size house, which was put in a couple years before we bought it. So they made sure there was plenty of lighting unlike the rest of the house. If I told you how many lightbulbs were in here you'd laugh. There are more lightbulbs in here than the rest of the house combined.

Tonight I decided to use a single lightbulb (over the sink)  to clean up the kitchen after dinner and prepare for tomorrow's meals. Most of the kitchen was then in darkness. 

I remember my grandma's farm house. There was one light in each room. 

I finished my garden fence.  It looks more like a prison than a garden now, but I don't think Mr. Groundhog will be getting in.  My squash and beans are up and doing well, and I planted some melon seed, but it was from 2022 so I'm not sure if it will germinate.  Still working on tearing out the rest of the old pasture fence, rolling it up, and storing it in the barn.

I also started on digging out a large patch of daylilies.  I'm a bit sad to see them go, but they're invasive here and really never should have been planted in the first place.

Today was cold and rainy (with sleet on and off) so I spent most of it indoors, and took the time to write several pages of letter to a friend, and a shorter one to her little daughter.

It's been interesting to say the least, Donna - I have only recently discovered your blog.  I live in Queensland, Australia, and humidity in summer is one of the many things we suffer as well as heavy tropical rains and frequent flooding - we're on the lower end of the scale for cyclones but nevertheless they can happen here.  

We have split-system air-conditioning in the living room which we rarely use as mostly we spend our leisure time under the house (high-set 1960's house) - down here we have fans, nothing else.  We rarely use the air-con upstairs but we do have it installed in the bedroom - before retiring my other half worked a lot of night shift which is why we have it in the bedroom - this is only run on humid nights and we set it on what is called a 'dry' or teardrop setting which takes out the humidity but leaves the room very comfortable - the power it costs takes very little to run it.  

In this climate in winter, we simply don't need heating - we can go down to almost zero degrees but it's not freezing cold, and quite comfortable.  As well, our state government granted every household a thousand dollars toward the cost of living on energy bills and the federal government contributed three hundred dollars to the same - so we haven't had a power bill to pay for some time.  For lighting, we use fluorescent lights, have always done so, and these are much more durable and lasting, plus costing less to run.

I don't even own a clothes dryer these days, so everything is either hung out on the line or if damp I hang it under the deck where the breezes flow - doesn't cost a cent.  We have minimal electric appliances, I've mostly ditched the lot of them and just keep the odd one as we don't use them so why not donate them.  It's only the two of us, living on a pension with no other income, and we manage very well - meals are made from scratch and we have eaten our main meal in the middle of the day for some time now as it's better for our metabolism, with something light at night.

We don't pay for streaming services and just watch either DVD's or recorded programmes from free to air television - we don't go to movies now, they're too small and claustrophobic for me and there's really nothing that appeals anyway.  Life is quite simple - we've not grown our own vegies for quite some time as we're getting older now, but still have voluntary tomatoes and capsicum growing by themselves - and we 'shop' from the local farm gates and a very good small market chain whose prices outdo the big guys any old time.

Thank you and all the people who post on here - it's giving me a valuable insight into 1930's living (which my parents were very familiar with) as well as making me realise that our simple life is very satisfying.

Hello Grandma Donna, the pies look delightful. It is a lovely tradition to have. If you invited someone over for pie here, they would think it would be a savoury pie. Having sweets or a dessert wasn't a tradition for either side of my family. We would have homemade sponge cake with whipped cream and strawberry jam or apricot jam for birthdays, and a pavlova at Christmas but that was really all. You had dinner and you ate everything on your plate and then you were done. I think there was a feeling of austerity left over from the depression and war years. It wasn't a bad thing, it was just how it was.

I've been continuing with simplifying life. Making do as much as possible, using things up. Skipping the fruit shop every second or third week so we can empty the fridge. When my husband comments that the fridge looks empty, I say that is wonderful. That means we are not throwing anything away.  We are avoiding shopping centres and supermarkets and spending our limited dollars at family businesses who source their produce locally or grow it themselves.

i haven't shopped for two weeks but am still managing to find good things to eat.This morning for breakfast I had French toast made from a thick slice of homemade sourdough with cinnamon and sugar and a cup of tea. It felt like a real treat.

As always, I enjoy reading the comments. Wishing you all a safe and tranquil week.

My mother-in-law always called rhubarb "pie plant" because it was the first fresh fruit of the year and she baked pies with it.  She always baked pies, pies and more pies and they were always from scratch and yummy.  I do not recall a meal at her house where pie was not on the menu.  Her family's favorite was apple.  I think it was often in my f-i-l's lunch box.  Her son's never carried lunch boxes because they live 1/2 block from school and went home to eat.

As a child of the Great Depression, my m-i-l left school after 8th grade and started working as a hired girl.  As such she lived with the family she worked for and had only one-half day off each week on Sunday afternoon.  The job was very hard cooking, canning, gardening, helping with livestock, cleaning, laundry, carrying water in and dirty water out, wood cook stove and probably wood or coal for heating.  Air conditioning did not exist.  

This was her life until she married at 21 and she probably worked even harder thereafter. She started married life living in what was basically a shed on her uncle's farm.  My late dh was born in that shed/home.  They purchased a home that had three rooms and no bath in town and lived there until dh was in high school before building on a bath (the bath might have been earlier) and two bedrooms.   The bedrooms were definitely when dh was in high school.  

When my m-i-l was in a nursing home another lady was making fun of her due to her uneducated way of speaking.  I was ticked and told the lady off because my m-i-l was very accomplished homemaker and also had worked many jobs.  The skills she had learned as a homemaker and at her jobs, would be a benefit to any of us trying to cope today.  She taught me how to dress a chicken and helped me when I was learning to crochet, advised me on gardening and watching her encouraged me to learn new skills.  There wasn't much that lady wouldn't try!!  

Donna,

            I enjoyed seeing your garden. This evening, I was so proud of myself when I made a salad; everything except the salad dressing was from my garden. I haven't had a garden for years, so gardening is exciting for me. My garden isn't as far along as yours is, but I do have things coming up now. Where my daughter lives, they have a seed library where you can give or take seeds. I got some new seeds that I have never grown before, such as Backlund Bly Orach, Salsify, Painted Lady Runner Beans, and Good Mother Stallard Beans. I will be anxious to see if these grow and what they are like. I am also trying Malabar Spinach again since it is a green that likes the heat. It is pretty too. My peas have climbed to the top of the fence and are going down the other side. They only have one flower, so no peas just yet. My carrots are just starting to pop up. It seems like it takes them a long time. 

         I like your solar lights. I have many like that as well as some round ones that hang from the ceiling. I have solar panels for them in the windows. I also have rechargeable lights that go under my kitchen cabinets. They are nice since my kitchen doesn't get a lot of light. If I want to go to the kitchen in the evening, I don't have to turn the light on. Yesterday we had a power outage for about 4 1/2 hours. As soon as I saw that the storm was coming, I started charging all of my rechargeable lights. When the outage came, I had plenty of light to get me through. When the power came back on, I started recharging the lights I used. Whenever I see that there is going to be a storm, I ask myself, "If the power or water goes out, what will I wish I had done?" Then I try to get it done before the storm comes. Anything is easier to cope with if you have clean dishes, bedding, floors, clothes, etc.

    Which pattern will you be using to make your underwear or bloomers? I might like to make some.

     Our weather has been so beautiful lately. It has been in the 70s and low 80s. Just perfect for me. I live in southern Missouri, so I know it will be hot soon, but I'll adjust to it like I always do. I haven't used my AC or my furnace for about 5 years. It is hard when it gets in the 90s or 100s, but I know that people lived for thousands of years without AC, and I can too. When I was growing up, I didn't know anyone who had AC. We didn't have screens on our bedroom window either, so it was very hard. It was either be eaten alive by mosquitoes or swelter in the heat. We didn't have a fan either. When my Mom got a job, she bought us one of those portable window screens. We felt like we were rich when we got that. I will bring out my sleeveless house dresses soon. That is mostly all I wear in the summer. I put on a nicer dress when I go to town.

       Have A Great Day!

                                       Becky Sue

Although I am not going back to the 1930s, I have been continuing to embrace more of an old fashioned lifestyle with my husband. Slowing down, enjoying simple pleasures, using the resources I have, has gradually wrought a deep contentment, more serenity and happiness in my daily life.

It is wonderful that you have cut your electricity bill in half. If we make time to be quiet and to think, so many ideas begin to come to us. We all need to make time to simply “be” and allow those ideas space to grew in our consciousness don’t we?

I love your pie tasting experiments. I used to bake a lot because I spent quite a long time using the Ration Book recipes and books from WW2, here in the UK. Although, I was not as physically active as housewives back then, and baking made me put on too much weight. 

We have not had a television for years, no newspapers, and have deleted most social media. 
I find your blog posts encouraging and enjoyable to read. I also love to see your sewing, linens, and those adorable bunnies that keep deciding to move into different locations.

I did enjoy the sewing video. Mum said they had to hand-sew a pair of thick, navy blue school knickers, fastened with buttons, in the school needlework class in the 30s, to learn the different  flat seams, hems and buttonholes.

It is raining here in Staffordshire after some unseasonably dry weather. 

http://thevintagepatternfiles.blogspot.com/search/label/Underwear

I found a link to free knitting patterns for 1930s lingerie more suitable to our weather. It was knitted in the finest wool. Similar underwear is still available here in knitted cotton. 

Becky Sue K.,

It's such a great coincidence that you mention salsify.  I spent my whole life being only vaguely aware of what it was.  I knew it was an old fashioned root vegetable but that was about it.  Then on Sunday, I finally got around to looking up a flower I've been seeing by the roadsides my whole life, and learned that that's salsify!  Apparently it escaped from people's gardens back in the 1800's.  In reading more about it, I kept finding claims that "most people today have never heard of salsify" (which I think might be a bit of an exaggeration) but it's certainly true that it's no longer among the most common garden vegetables.  Happy growing!

Somehow I missed the notification about this article!  Well, I found it anyway.  

We've made it a game of sorts to keep the A/C off as long as we can take it.  Since we've reached daytime highs of 97 to 99F here (Florida) last week and this week, the A/C is on.  I can't sleep at night otherwise, even with windows open and fans running.  The thing I've noticed when we leave the A/C off in hot weather is that our leftovers don't last as long in the refrigerator, the milk goes sour faster, and the refrigerator and the deep freeze run a lot more.  We are on a well, so we have no chlorine in our water, and our toilets get mold in them, as does our bathroom showers, even though I wipe them dry after bathing.  When it is that hot and damp, I turn on the A/C.  We simply do not get enough cooling at night or air moving during the day to reduce the suffocating feel of high humidity and high temperatures.  Our humidity routinely goes to upper 90th percentile at night in summer.  How people lived here before air conditioning and refrigeration, I don't know.  I know their average age at death was fairly young.  

Thanks for the strawberry pie recipe; it looks like one I'd like to make, once I find a decent used metal pie pan.  All of mine are glass, and I can't use glass in the toaster oven.  I refuse to heat up my stove's oven in this weather.  I set the toaster oven outside on the front porch to help keep the house cooler, with or without the A/C running.

I have looked at solar bulbs - several reviewers said the solar panels didn't last.  Have you had that problem?

Let us know how the sewing goes!

Grandma Donna Wrote,

Joan S, anytime is a good time to pop in here.  I have not had any problems with the solar panels to the light bulbs.  I have had mine for several years now.  We have a small solar charger now that has a good solar panel on it and we use it to charge the light bulbs because they can be charged two ways, the solar panel they come with and the solar charger.  The solar charger will charge several bulbs and other items such as phone.  It is very handy and so this way I only have to put it out on a good sunny day and get it charged up and the next day I charge the bulbs inside the house.  However if I have several to charge I take them all outside during a sunny day and charge them.  Mine keep a charge for many days because I only use them early in the morning and for a short time at night.  I open my curtains and blinds during the day.  

There are many new solar bulbs and lanterns now that have the built in solar panels on them that work very well.  We have been slowly adding more solar items to our home such as we have reading lights that clip to our books, I have a light for hand sewing because my eyes are not good and I charge these with a port using the solar charger.  It was awkward at first but now we have a routine and it is working much better learning how long they will last and knowing how long to charge them.

It is like many things that it just takes practice. :)  So happy you found the post, we would have missed your here Hugs.

Grandma Donna, I have a question, please. I remember a post you did on homemade dishwasher tablets. Since the study started I have been hand washing dishes more often, but I'm not ready to give up my dishwasher. My question is did those tablets work and do you still recommend them? I've been going over my cleaning supplies list looking for ways to cut back, and cutting out dishwasher detergent would help. My cleaning supply list is lye soap, vinegar, an old fashioned lemon oil furniture polish, liquid dish soap, baking soda and salt and washing soda for homemade cleanser, bleach, and the dishwasher detergent. I need the bleach to disinfect my pruning shears between cuts. We get a lot of plant disease in my climate. The dishwasher detergent is the most expensive item. Thank you. 

Grandma Donna wrote

Stephanie G, I actually got rid of my dishwasher several years ago because the dishwasher detergent was expensive and I was not sure about the cubes that I made. Saying that, those cubes were a experiment for hand washing dishes. 

 I decided to hand wash because my dishwasher did not clean our dishes no matter what I used. I had to practically wash them before putting them in the dishwasher.  It was ruining our drinking glasses and to avoid that issue there needed to be another purchase to make to use the product to keep the dishwasher from streaking.  

I will tell you that it was not easy going back to hand washing the dishes at first after getting used to the dishwasher.  Also though, I dreaded emptying the dishwasher for some reason.  When I hand wash, I let them drain and air dry while I do other things in the house and then finish drying them and put them away and the job is done.  

But I am getting on with age now so I have a lot of memories tied to handwashing dishes before the dishwasher.  Washing dishes with my mother and my grandmother and the good meals and times we had.  My daughter standing on a chair and standing beside me washing dishes in an old farmhouse we were restoring.  It feels right to me to hand wash. 

My daughter has gone through several dishwashers and the one she has now is on the blink.  She has gone back to hand washing dishes and she likes that when she is done with the dishes they are done and put away well before dishwasher goes through all of its cycles and she doesn't have to empty it later or the next day. The fact that she has purchased four dishwasher in the past 18 years and her neighbor has had the same problem, she is looking at the cost of the dishwashers today and handwashing seems more economical since there is nothing to break and have to replace.

As far as dishwasher soap, maybe someone here in the forum can advise on the dishwasher detergent suggestions.  I am still working our regular dish soap like it was in the past but with less glycerin and that is a very big rabbit hole!

GDonna,

I have been through several dishwashers in the last 25 years, and I just replaced mine , plus I had to get a new clothes washer to replace yet another washer with an un-fixable breakdown.  I washed dishes by hand only for 20 years, until we moved to this house with space for a dishwasher. 

I opted for a clothes washer that is supposed to be really reliable this time.  We'll see if that's true!  "They don't make 'em like they used to" sure seems true to me for large appliances!

I almost skipped getting the new dishwasher, but I work full time and have a long commute.  Due to my dishwashers not working on occasions, I've washed dishes by hand plenty of times since moving here, and since I have to wash breakfast, packed lunch and dinner dishes all at once most days, it takes a larger chunk of my very limited evening time than I am comfortable with.  Once I retire, if (when) the dishwasher goes again, I probably won't replace it.  

Stephanie G, I tried several homemade recipes for dishwasher detergent, and I am sorry to say that none of them worked for me.  My water, machine and type of food might have affected those results, so you may find they work for you.  To save money, I use vinegar as a rinse agent, and I've found Costco dishwashing tabs work as well for me as the higher priced name brands.  I make my own laundry detergent, however, which works great for me and some other folks I know, but some people find it doesn't work for them at all. 

My dishwasher works great! As long as I rinse all the dishes first and use expensive detergent. :) I use Free & Clear Bio Enzyme Dishwasher detergent at $18 per small carton. Cascade from Costco didn't work for me. I've gone through all the brands at the supermarket too. I tried putting liquid dish soap in the dishwasher and ended up with a very clean floor after I mopped up all of the suds that came pouring out of the dishwasher. 

I think it was during the last depression study when I tried to hand wash all the dishes and got too bogged down and went back to the dishwasher. This time around I am cooking simpler meals and have fewer dishes. I'm already hand washing half my dishes because I want to keep the kitchen clean all the time, and I've cut down running the dishwasher to every other day. Maybe it's time to wean away from the dishwasher. I would like nothing better than to get rid of it and sew one of those under the counter skirts and use the empty space for storage. I'll bet my sweet potatoes would like to live there. :) 

Stephanie G., My husband once tried dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher - once.  

I use the Costco Kirkland brand of tabs, but as I said, detergents perform differently under different circumstances.  I barely rinse my dishes, and many, I don't rinse at all, just scrape.  I may eventually go back to all hand washing, but for now, while I'm working, the dishwasher is my best way to get clean dishes.  

I look forward to being home more, once I retire, so I can participate more here. 

I make my own dishwasher detergent - it's not for everybody but it was designed by someone who had family with a lot of allergies - it's not perfect but I had bought environmentally friendly powder from the health food shop before and compared notes on what it contained - and I've been using this for years with no problems - sure occasionally the glasses aren't quite as sparkly as they could be (due to the bi-carb soda) but I'm not that fussy, it's only us and if visitors don't like it, well too bad.

When I had a working dishwasher, I tried the Seventh Generation powder, which was horrible. A lightning strike fried the dishwasher. Hand washing isn't so bad. It has been about 3 years now, so I guess I am used to it. I'm undecided about getting a dishwasher again. Appliances break down so easily now. It hardly seems worth the expense of buying them. 

I hope Joan's new clothes washer works well. I bought a Whirlpool High Efficiency washer about 6 years ago. I bought all new appliances when I bought my house, but I didn't move in until a year later. By the time I started using the washer, it had issues, but the warranty had expired. It is the worst washer I've ever had. It completely broke down about 2 years ago. I finally decided to get it fixed now and put $170 into getting everything diagnosed, only to find out it isn't worth fixing. So it had about 4 years of use by one person. Now that I have found out it isn't worth fixing, I decided to get a wringer washer. I found a beautiful Maytag wringer washer on Facebook Marketplace, and it is being delivered tomorrow. It is about 50 years old, and I think it will probably outlast me. Modern appliances just don't seem worth it. My refrigerator is about 70 years old, and it is still working. I remember a commercial for a dishwasher back in the 1950s that was both a dishwasher and a clothes washer. I suppose that fell by the wayside when people thought about using the same machine to wash their dishes and diapers or underwear.

Pam C -- Do you mind sharing your dishwasher soap formula? I'd love to give it a try. 

Ten years ago we rented a house while we looked for one to buy. The stove in the rental worked horribly, so we put it in the garage and bought a no-frills electric stove for $350 to use instead. It's been the best stove! When we moved into our new house eight years ago, I took out the new glass top stove it came with and put in my little cheap Frigidaire stove instead. We replaced one of the electric coils once, but it's still going strong. I have a 15 year old smaller Frigidaire refrigerator. The new house we moved into has one of those built in cabinet things for the fridge and our little fridge looks so small and lost inside of it. If the cabinet wasn't holding up a dish cabinet above it, I'd remove it. I don't understand the purpose of a refrigerator cabinet that just makes cleaning around the fridge harder! 

The dishwasher that came with the new house, the one I'm using now, works great as long as I use the expensive dishwasher detergent. I clean the dishwasher with baking soda and vinegar once a year and check the filter occasionally. I hate bending down to load and unload it, though. It has a nice sanitize cycle that works well if someone is sick, but I suppose I could pour boiling water over my hand washed dishes and get the same effect. 

My washer and dryer are 15 years old. They're Samsung. The washer is a front loader. The washer works fine once I learned to run the cleaning cycle and clean the filter once a month! The washer doesn't have a pre-soak cycle, but I learned that once the clothes are wet, I can push the pause button and let the clothes sit to soak for as long as I want. I just push the button again to restart the cycle when I'm ready. It really makes a difference in how clean my laundry gets. The dryer needed a new heating element in 2023. It needed another one a few months ago, so we bought a better brand heating element and got two just in case. The nice thing about replacing the heating element is that you can give the inside of the dryer a good cleaning while you're replacing it. 

I sure hope someone gave you a dollar for baking that prize winning pie :-)

I am trying to remember if you posted such thing last time you did one of the studies, but I would love to know the daily “timeframe” or tasks.  Come to think of it, maybe it was more of a thought I had when you were posting the journals.  I realize it changed throughout the year but still find the daily tasks interesting.  There was no “turn on the computer” or drive through coffee pick ups. 
I have been getting my garden in (we are behind you in the season) and almost have it all in.  I have to sprout my beans inside so the birds don’t get them (grrr) 
Loving this study. 

Grandma Donna Wrote, Lady L, the dollar prize must have gotten lost in the mail. :)  (Lady L is talking about the prize money for the pies that they did in the newspapers in the past.  A little tidbit that when researching,  women were quite secretive with their recipes unless it was a contest they were entering or a entry into a cookbook that would be purchased.  They are mostly associated with an article and for certain years a menu would run in the paper and below the menu they would post the recipes.   

I am not quite understanding the daily timeframe or task question.  Are you talking about Sarah's diary when she did her daily tasks?  Timeframe of the day or year?  I need more added to the question because this old brain of mine is a bit slow. :)

We replaced our dishwasher last year, as at the time we were a household of 5 adults and the young people didn’t like handwashing.  Dishes would pile up because they were busy and rushing around to get to work, and at the time I was very very ill and unable to be washing the dishes for them several times a day.  This time around, we bought a very expensive Miele dishwasher, and we choose to buy the expensive detergent they sell for it (you load in a disc and it can do about 20-25 loads before it needs to be replaced).  We spend about $20 per month for the detergent, which does seem outrageous, but this is the first dishwasher I have ever had that we can truly put in dirty dishes that have only been scraped and not rinsed.  We even put in a really dirty pot one time and forgot to run the dishwasher, and decided to give it a real test the next day with the food dried on it, and it all came clean.  I regularly put my unrinsed egg plate in the dishwasher in the morning and it is clean the next morning (we run the dishwasher while we sleep).

I’m pleased that the dishwasher cleans so well, but I wonder why all dishwashers can’t work this well at a lower price.  Obviously we don’t save as much money on the hot water no longer needed to pre-rinse the dishes as we spend on the detergent.  But I am a believer in having a harmonious home, and dishes after meals are not my responsibility.  The menfolk like the dishwasher and the detergent system, so for now they can have them.  My guess is that like our clothes dryer, which we didn’t replace when it broke in 2023, this will be the last dishwasher we buy, and after that we’ll return to handwashing.

The dishwasher did come with a “free” superautomatic coffee maker worth more than half the price of the dishwasher.  DH and DS love that machine more than I would have thought possible, and as a bonus we no longer have to use a separate coffee grinder which always left a mess everywhere.  It does require all sorts of descaling and degreasing, but that isn’t my job as I don’t drink coffee

I think it might have been Sarah’s journal.  Yes, just the daily tasks- wake up, prepare self for day, then???   Breakfast, maybe while preparing breakfast also getting something ready for supper etc.  Seems like in one of your journals, the woman swept the house daily and washed the porch maybe weekly.  The rhythm of the day is what I think seemed more thoughtful and peaceful. 

Stephanie G wrote:

Pam C -- Do you mind sharing your dishwasher soap formula? I'd love to give it a try. 

Stephanie, it's not for everybody - but it works for me.  I have a Miele dishwasher which I'm very pleased with BUT I do still rinse my dishes, I don't like the idea of having old food swishing around while washing - just my thoughts of course.  I prefer to use a bit more salt than the original recipe as well, so I use 1/2 cup instead of a 1/4 cup.

DISHWASHER POWDER

1 cup Bicarb Soda
1 cup Soda Ash (washing soda, Lectic Soda)
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup citric acid
Few drops of Tea Tree Oil (smells nice and is antibacterial).

Shake the ingredients together well in a sealed container and use around a small amount per load. White vinegar also makes a great rinse aid.

You can also sprinkle a handful of baking soda over dirty dishes and in the bottom of your dishwasher to absorb odours and boost cleaning power at the start of the cycle.

Shake in a screw top jar and use a dessertspoon or less per dishwasher load.  Make sure it's shaken well before use - you may find the bi-carb clouds your glasses a little, and always clean your filters regularly of course.

For those who are using older appliances, that's great - I have some myself - just be aware that they do use a lot more energy/power than the newer appliances.  Of course, things are not made to last these days, I'm told five years is what is expected so having appliances older than that, you're doing very well.  I have a drinks fridge/freezer which is about fifteen years old, a Kelvinator, and going strong - but even on testing, it does use a lot more power than the more modern refrigerators.  you win some, you lose some - it's all roundabouts and swings - older appliances are more reliable and last longer but they are more expensive to run.

Personally I always preferred my old twin tub washers where I could control the cycle and rinse/spin as I pleased but can't buy one any longer - I have an LG top-loader these days, and at least I can control the water levels in it - I don't like front loaders so avoid them.  I rarely use the oven, not reliable and chews a lot of power, so I tend to use a small bench top oven plus my air-fryer when needed.  The big oven is downstairs away from the kitchen (very small), so I just have a ceramic hot plate which is used frequently - and they don't last long either.

I always use home-made cleaners and the like so trying to live a more user-friendly with less chemicals and preservatives than the bought products.

Pam C -- Thank you so much! I already use a cleanser for my sinks and bathroom made from 1/4 c. baking soda, 2 T. salt, and 2 T. washing soda. I think it cleans better than the commercial products. I could probably use the dishwasher powder for those tasks too since the ingredients are so similar. I've got a tight-sealing, large enough tin not in use right now, and I could use one of the wooden scoops that comes with the detergent I use now. All I need is some citric acid. I really appreciate you sharing your formula. :)  

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I bought a couple of graniteware basins yesterday that were advertised for washing dishes when camping. I bought them for washing dishes during power outages. Since my water bill is going to quadruple in the next few years due to rate hikes, I'd thought I'd experiment with them for saving water in the kitchen while I wait for an outage. :)

My bathroom faucets take forever to get hot. I bought a small pitcher and basin for the en suite, and when I make coffee in the morning, I heat extra water to put in a Thermos to use during the day for bathroom handwashing. I put hot water from the Thermos and enough cold water from the bathroom faucet in the basin to make it comfortable. That way I don't waste water waiting for it to heat up. I came back to add that the Thermos was invented in the late 1800s, so it's okay to use in 1932. 

My dishwasher is not very reliable. I have to pre-soak some pans. Some things don’t get washed and some need rewashing, which is annoying when you want to use them. It needs a mild detergent, one with an eco label for sensitivities, we bought the last lot on offer in heavy 5L containers, which I use to refill the smaller bottles, or too much gets used, frothing everywhere. It is rather large and gets in the way in the kitchen. It has broken a nice mug and another Denby teapot lid this week.

I can’t complain as it has been going strong for over 45 years, 40 in this house.  

Grandma Donna, please do a blog post about your menus and grocery shopping; how you manage it all. The photos of your various meals always look so delicious and creative.

Thank you!

Grandma Donna wrote

Elizabeth M_2, I read your request and will post on this coming up in the next couple of posts. :)