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I have a question.  I haven't learned to knit yet, but some of the things I wanted to knit once I learn was dishcloths and washcloths.  I bought a knit dishcloth to see how I liked it, and it cleans well, but it takes forever to dry and sometimes sours.  I rinse it well in clean water between uses and hang it to dry.  I live in a humid climate, however.  Is this a problem for anyone else?

I've considered some of the older kitchen items (non-electric).  I have some - a box grater, sifter, slicer/cutter, can openers, bottle openers and grinder, the kind you clamp on a table edge and force meat or vegetables through as you turn the handle.  I've looked at rotary beaters but every one I've seen that is vintage is off-kilter or the gear is worn.  I've looked at an Oxo beater online - it has a lot of plastic parts, so I've hesitated.  

I am close now to retirement and I think this will make my experiment with living at least closer to living in the 40's style a lot easier.  It will be much easier to line dry clothes when I'm not confined to a weekend, and I swear, it only seems to rain on weekends around here.

I agree with home canning being a very satisfying activity.  I love to pull a jar of meat, fruit or vegetables out of the canned goods to use for a meal. 

I have somehow wound up in 1943/1944. I might transition to 1944, as this year was 1943 for me. I have been slowly moving through the times that way. Some part of me wants to study the Victorian era, but I dont think that will become a full study. More like, informing my 1944 study. I can't throw myself into these studies as much as some, because I do live in a household of other people who are not joining in. However I love to read the newspapers, and see what I can get up to in the kitchen.
Oh to have a pressure canner! It would make my canning a year around activity, an exciting, yet terrifying thought...
Can we trade weather? Over here the past week has been in the -20s (C) and today it went down to -31 :(  (that is -4 to -23 F)  The 'highs' have been a breezy -12. (10 F) It's always the windchill! We have strong cold winds that drag the temperature down a good 10 degrees or more.
It's definitely the weather for wool and a heavy coat. 

I am reading along.  I have many of those old kitchen tools that I have picked up at thrift stores over the years and really prefer them.  I started canning my stew with boneless pork loin because of the high price of beef and you really can't tell the difference. Canned meats on our shelves have saved the day so many times.

That pound cake looks wonderful! Reminds me of when mom made pound cakes. One of her favorites I think. I really should make one.

Due to family obligations I can't participate in the study 100% but I will read and try to incorporate the ideas where I can.

I love that you have the chair seats & backs covered to protect from wear. That too reminds me of mom. 

I am thoroughly enjoying reading along. I have many of the items necessary to do it but I’ve been sick for a while and I haven’t been doing much of anything. 
My hats off to all of you that are taking these steps. I know it’s a lot harder to do until you learn the new ways. I honestly believe that everything was better back then and there’s so much less waste. 
Being born in a different time I have a great appreciation for value. I practice that anyway.  And I taught my son to do the same. He like myself, can see a greater appreciation of this. It saddens both of us how in today’s world so much is taken for granted. I believe that we will be forced to do that in the near future. Reading this is helping me to learn more of what we will need to know and learn. 
i rarely use anything electric, so I’m at least a little ahead of the curve. 
I find all of this useful and valuable. I can’t wait for each article to come out. And I’m interested in learning more about this new canning method and tool. 
Keep up the great job. 

I love the way you have furniture arranged around the fireplace, I do also because it not only warms you but it is also very calming to watch the flames. I like the fire pit in the warmer months for the same reason.   

I love my pressure canner for making meals in a jar! I love canned pork heated with BBQ sauce and eaten on a sandwich.

Today I ground up the last of the Thanksgiving ham pulled from the freezer and ground half frozen.....made ham salad for myself and family. I do not like to keep ham too long in the freezer.

The hambone is simmering on the wood stove for broth either for soup or beans.

To keep a dish cloth from souring either rinse in vinegar or baking soda water.....I remember my granny soaking the tea towels and dishcloths in soda water after evening clean up.....she then wrung them out and had this little swing out metal rack below the sink to hang them to dry over night.

Very cold and nasty weather here, dreary and overcast a lot of the time, I have been using more lights in the daytime because I cannot work in the dark dreary light.

I am following the study and doing as much as I can.  

I have heard the leaves of the daikon radish are a bit like horseradish, it that true?

I've never grown daikon but have done regular red radishes. I love the young leaves in stir fries. I understand the radish seed pods are edible. 

Hello

 I just wanted to say how much im enjoying your post,

And what our grand parents would think of todays way of life regarding all the kitchen draws full of the latest tools/kit that never see's the light of day,

You just have to visit the boot sales / etc to see these tools to make life easier "but ended up on these boot sales,

I like nothing better than to learn something new every day if poss and just by reading todays offering by this forum I now know what the egg seperator you have shown looks like & Ive seen one only this last week in my local Red Cross shop, (I'll be making a U turn back tomorrow, 

Thank you once again.

I love going to the food storage room and getting home canned food. I used to do quite a bit of canning while our children were growing up. Now, I don't do much at all. My health and energy are obstacles on some days.

I have several of my grandmother's kitchen items and dishes. I have purchased hand cooking and baking items over the years and I use them frequently. 

Donna, your home is lovely. The warmth and coziness exudes through the computer screen.

Thank you for another intriguing post. I was just thinking yesterday about my grandparents and what they did during the depression. 

As I mentioned on the last post, we will be living in what I call our “timeless” season, incorporating good ideas, inventions, and technology from every decade.  As a good friend often points out, even books as we know they today were new technology in the past.  I do think that overall, the simpler living of the past was better for human health on a day to day basis, but of course modern medicine is far superior when faced with cancer, congenital heart issues, or autoimmune disorders.

We are nearly at retirement, everything is wrapping up.  It feels like we are hitting the “stop” button on our lives, in terms of our home and possessions.  I don’t see this as a bad thing at all, just the reality of moving to a fixed income, which in all honesty, is quite a bit more modest than what we were living on a few years ago.  When things break — and they will — we will have to decide between repair, replacement, and doing without, and in truth, for most things that require electricity, we will likely to choose to do without if the repair doesn’t make sense.

I have that same egg strainer, it came to me from my grandmother, and works better than others I’ve had.

We’ve talked about about gardening, not because we have a strong interest in doing it but because we think it would be prudent to grow some food.  We will put ourselves on the list for a community garden plot, because the annual fee includes water usage and will be far less than if we had to pay for watering at home in a hot, dry climate.  We also want to try canning, most likely water bath canning at first.  We have many ideas about our first year of retirement, many of which revolve around keeping home.

Our house is 100 years old, that puts us in the 1920s.  Some of my cast iron and Pyrex is from the 1930s, and some is new.  We have furniture from the 1940s and forward, most of it from before 1980.  My sterling flatware is from 1941, and my china is of the same vintage.  The 1940s and 1950s provide our radios, and luckily we live where radio is still broadcast and have a choice of stations.  Our record player console is from the 1960s, but has also been updated to allow streaming from a smartphone.  The 1970s provide more vintage housewares, books, and sewing/craft supplies.  We married in the 1980s, and still use some of our wedding gifts on a regular basis.  My KitchenAid mixer is from the 1990s, as are our knives and many other of our home goods.  All of our large appliances are from the last 10 years — we experienced many of them breaking at the same time.  I have a bin full of antique and vintage linens.  We have record albums from all decades.

As I said, it feels like we are pressing a stop button.  While it’s not exactly the same as rationing, it has a similar feel as we won’t be replacing most things that break and are unrepairable — it will be as if we couldn’t buy them.  Every bit of clothing we have will be worn until it is no longer able to be mended, and then replaced with the minimum necessary — much like rationing.  We don’t care about fashion in the slightest, my husband wears the same thrifted collared shirts to church that he wore a decade ago.  My dress shoes are 6 years old and in still excellent shape.  We are budgeting for one new pair of everyday shoes per person per year.  Our grocery budget is quite low, I am now at $600 for 3 adults and hoping to bring it lower — this is also similar to rationing, as the budget acts as the ration coupons would

I hadn’t realized when reading the last post about changing the study year how much our lives will already look like 1942.  But because I live with others who have no interest in doing a deep dive into 1942, I will stick with my timeless season instead.  Luckily, the finances will significantly slow any forward movement in terms of electronics and technology.

I'm reading along but love every single minute of it!  My dh would never embrace any of it.  (Thought I was nuts with the no tech month). However, I do what I can. I've made the Queen cakes (love) and the crackers.  I can't get those crackers right though; always too salty, or too thick. lol. I'll keep trying. I'm learning to master that rolling pin.  I just ate the last one and no matter how they come out, I love them. I'm cooking more than I used to - biscuits, bread, etc., which is good since I need the practice.  I absolutely adore that radio. What I wouldn't give to have an old radio like that. (And a fireplace.)  I was just at a vintage mall and had a great time.  I take into consideration a lot of what you do and store it in memory for our power outages which can be often.  At least annually.  The latest was a week ago for 15 hours! I have a Kitchenaid mixer but only use it for cookies.  It's getting pretty heavy to move to the island, and is quite a space hog for just that, plus the shredder is cracked on it, so I need to think about keeping it. Something about baking by hand is just more enjoyable to me.  With the mixer, I add one thing and leave it to find the next since it does the work for you.  Nice, but it misses the joy.  Your home looks so clean and comfortably cozy. I just love it and love moving stuff around (which I don't because it annoys Mr. Grumpy).  I think I could live pretty cheaply. I need to go check out that book.  :)

Grandma Donna Wrote,

Joan S, I have not had the issue with the knitted dish cloth souring.  I have seen some dish cloths that are knitted a bit too thick and take and they do take a long time to dry.  We are humid in our are as well.  I have a small metal swing out rack that holds mine over the sink.  I use 100% cotton to knit the ones I make.  I think that the vinegar or baking soda rinse that Joyce C mentioned could help. The vinegar smell goes away.    I have had a crochet dish cloth that would not dry because it was so thick.  I ended up using that one for a hot pad for setting something hot on.  

Joyce C, the daikon radish leaves do have a slight horseradish taste and between horseradish and turnip leaf taste.  We sauté them or put them in with the cut up root.

Joan S, we at time have had issues with the hand knit dish cloths souring.  We have done several things to combat this.  One is that my husband washes out the dish cloth each night with very hot water and a drop of Dawn before squeezing it out well and hanging it to dry.  I also started using larger knitting needles for my dish cloths, which makes them dry faster.  Once we started line drying we noticed less souring which makes me think the UV rays from the sun have more disinfecting power than the heat of a clothes dryer, or maybe our dish cloths weren’t getting 100% dry in the dryer since they were thicker than some of the other towels in the load and I didn’t like to run it until they were bone dry.  Finally, as an experiment to use up some perle cotton, I held three strands together and crocheted a dish cloth using the half double stitch (I think it’s just called double in the UK).  Not only does this dish cloth dry faster, but it also scrubs better.

I’m not planning to purchase vintage kitchen tools to replace anything I have now.  I had a vintage rotary beater but it didn’t work all that well (I think the gears were worn because it would slip) and I was always fighting rust spots on it — many of the tools from my grandmother and mother had rust.

I love this post, because I think the things you have were made in the prime ... and from thereon out, didn't get better. Just cheap.  I find myself purchasing the older things and dumping the new.  I've embraced stainless steel (actually found a complete replica of the ss bowl I grew up using and purchased it) & cast iron. But I think I'd die if I could ever find some Revereware prior to 1960. LOL.  I've kept my 1980 electric hand beaters (b-day gift then) since they're strong!!! I haven't bought jeans in 10 years.  But you have vintage linens and albums... all bestill my heart.  Just turned 65 last week and frankly, stuff they made then was so much better.  I've been so sorry I've replaced some things with what I thought was better and it was junk.  I think timeless season is a good way to put it.

With many of us in retirement or on the cusp of retirement, I find Grandma Donna’s focus on doing things without electricity very helpful!  When I was growing up we had an electric hand mixer but often mixed things by hand — brownies were always mixed with a wooden spoon in a big mixing bowl.  I use a blender to mix my eggs for scrambled eggs, but growing up we just used a fork and I should go back to that

It makes me think of the different kinds of breads various cultures make.  Biscuits take less electricity to make than yeasted or sourdough breads loaves because they cook in less time.  Baguettes take less time to bake.  Tortillas cook very quickly.  English muffins use less electricity.  I am finding the home oven to be very inefficient — no wonder people use to take bread loaves to the village oven!

I am so aware of electricity usage now, far more than before we put in our solar panels.  Right now my house is using 200 watts, which means either the refrigerator or freezer compressor is on, as there are no lights on in the house right now and I’m not cooking yet.  This time of year cooking is the main use of electricity other than the basics of keeping the house running (refrigerator, WiFi, etc.).  I used the oven to make dinner yesterday and that took 3 kWh!  Tonight I’ll use the little rice maker and the induction cooktop, and will use less than half of that.

Ann E, I’m younger than you are but have inherited many things and thrifted others.  Most of our albums came from my grandfather, and the linens from my grandmother, which had herself inherited many of them.  And I went anti-plastic long before it was mainstream again — my children drank from small real glass cups and my friends used to be so worried that their children would break a cup but it never happened.

I use the same big stainless steel mixing bowl I bought in the late 1980s, and I have two matching smaller bowls that I thrifted.  In all truth, I grab that bowl more than any other, and I honestly regret the stoneware bowls I bought this year because they are just too heavy.  I can rotate my stainless bowl as I mix foods in, making it so easy to scrape the sides.  My other favorite mixing bowl is the largest size Pyrex bowl (not the one with pour spouts).  It’s also vintage, from my grandmother.  It wasn’t her favorite though, so she never put it in the dishwasher like the rest of her bowls.  I love looking at photos from my childhood and seeing it on her counter, when it was used on holidays.  That’s the bowl I use for biscuit dough or for anything I don’t want to react with metal.  My husband also uses it about 5 nights per week as a salad bowl, even though it’s never full, lol.

Most things were made better in the past!  People expected things to last and would be upset if they didn’t.  Now most people see broken things as an “opportunity” to shop.  I still use an Farberware electric skillet that was given to me used (a perfectly acceptable wedding gift to me).  I have a 1960s waffle iron from my stepmother that is so much better than the nonstick waffle iron I was gifted.  I also use a Farberware electric griddle for pancakes.  Everyone was worried about aluminum for awhile there, but I think it was really pushed in the media to get people to buy nonstick, and we all know how that turned out.  These vintage appliances work great, but I’ve never had an Instant Pot last longer than 4 years.  I’ve decided when my current Instant Pots stop working (I have an 8 quart and a 4 quart) I will replace them with a stovetop model — and I kick myself for having gotten rid of a stove top model back in the mid 1990s when I bought my first electric pressure cooker.  If I had kept that and not moved to the electric models, I would have saved a lot of money over the past 30 years!

This is our current living room radio — we had an older console floor radio but we really didn’t have room for it.  This one is from the 1950s.  My husband learned how to repair tube radios so we have a few.  Where it says “BC” that is what AM was referred to, and then this radio also has FM and short wave.  It’s rather large for a tabletop radio, so I have it atop a china cabinet

We also arrange our living room furniture around the fireplace!  We don’t often light a fire because it pulls the warm air right out of the house and as such only warms us if we are right near it — it’s a drafty old house.  The fireplace also doesn’t have a flue, which would probably be a problem in a colder climate  But we still considered it the heart of our living room.  We keep the TV in our son’s bedroom (largest bedroom in the house and he’s happy to share it) so the living room is more old fashioned and focused on connecting with each other.

One thing I wish our house still had was the wood cookstove in the kitchen!  We have the ash can in the ground outside so we know it had one — our fireplace ash drops to another place and is accessed on the side of the house.

I was looking at the rationing in 1942 US, and gasoline got rationed in January, but sugar and things didn't get rationed until May. It looks like rationing will be implemented fairly slowly during the year. I already grow a victory garden, so I wasn't sure what else there is to do to change to 1942. I know people are more prosperous in the 1940s, but I don't know a lot about this decade. I suppose we could send our husbands away for the year to pretend they were stationed overseas, but that's probably not practical. :) We haven't got an airplane plant for me to get a job at, so I'm very interested to see how others are planning their 1942 lives. :) Grandma Donna and Charles are obviously retired in 1942. What do you do if you're not retired and live in the US?

Donna, your home is so cozy.  It reminds me of my grandparents' home, which I adored.

Joyce, everyone beat me to the vinegar idea with sour dishcloths.  I change them every day. I soak them in hot water for an hour before running them through the shortest wash and use vinegar in the rinse cycle.  Works well.

Kimberly F. , we're heading for retirement in a few years, too.  We're looking to replace big things before then.  Our fence will be needing replacement in the next couple of years so that's on the list.  It was $7000 20+ years ago cuz our property is large.  Rather than paying for it, we'll be replacing it a section at a time ourselves.  Sadly, it's probably gonna cost $7000 again!!  But we have a list of things that we'll need to tend to.  I tell my husband that the bright side is that it's probably gonna be the LAST time lol.  I know we'll have to pay for a mowing service and one to shovel snow so that's another cost to consider.  Moving isn't even optional, not that I want to, because smaller homes are nearly twice the price of our current one.  Crazy expensive!!  Tiny.  Crammed together.  I really don't want to hear or smell my neighbors tooting, if you don't mind me saying so!!!

Debby B, we will be retired before Christmas :)  We had the solar installed, but most of what we want to do around the house we are going to attempt ourselves, other than the painting that involves very high ceilings.  I think we have a section of fence that needs replacing, or maybe two sections.  We have new neighbors behind us, so we’ll have to coordinate with them — the people who lived there before said they didn’t care if there was a fence and they wouldn’t pay for it.  We had that section done more than 15 years ago, and unfortunately the slats weren’t good quality.  Along the side it also needs fencing in the next couple of years, but that house is for sale, so we’ll want to wait and coordinate with those neighbors, as the fence line might get moved (that house’s yard currently borrows about 3 feet from our property).  We’ll probably do the fencing ourselves, we did that last time and it worked out well and is better than what we paid to have done.  Honestly, 15 years ago I wish we had done cinder block wall fencing for the whole property rather than cedar.  My parents bought a house with cinder block wall fencing and it was still standing 40+ years later, even though it wasn’t new when they bought the house.  Now it would seem like buying a fence for someone in the future.

My husband is going to start mowing the yard and doing the yard work, and then we plan over the next decade to change it all to xeriscaping and native plants so it needs less water and is easier to care for.  The water rates go up every year and we’re now paying about $50 - $75 more per month than 10 years ago, so I expect the trend will continue.  We don’t need the grass, we just need to make sure the big trees are getting watered.

Another interesting topic and I'm enjoying it immensely.  Sadly, can't move furniture around in this house, it just isn't built for it - lots of windows and doors in awkward places so what has been there forever has to stay there in place.  However we're looking at more cooling than warming in this climate and we don't have a fireplace at all, no need.

As far as I am aware the push down mayonnaise makers only made a type of runny mayonnaise not the very thick kind. I love finding non electric gadgets of yesteryear also,  all of them in constant use in my kitchen and way more robust than most items made now, plus the physical activity involved keeps arm muscles in good condition :) I also have an egg white separator but it was presented to me as an implement for drizzling melted chocolate.... I have found it equally useful to stir newly topped up sourdough mixture.
One item I have is a kind of pasta cutter  with a handle and a row of four wheels in front and four wheels directly behind/ inline, am guessing their is trick to using it that I've not mastered yet nor the purpose of the extra wheels, to date the front row cuts ok but then the back row sticks to the dough previously cut, causing a right mess ;)

I plan to read the local newspaper (online), and/or the Australian Women's Weekly.

What I'd really like is to get hold of a diary and find out how the women managed to continue running households while also taking on paid work and doing all the mens' yard work, while the men were away.

Grandma Donna, I was thrilled to see your wooden clothes rack! I remember Mum using one the same as that when I was little :)