Living Like the Past

We cannot live in the past, but we can resemble them. This is what I believe because it seems to make more sense.This past week I have been tinkering around through things trying to make this study stick. I am taking my time sorting out the items that were not in the 1930s and thinking about the things that might be actually better for us today. Such as my stick blender, this is what I use to make mayonnaise. I have one of the old crank ones but the mayonnaise is always thin and I am guessing that homemade mayonnaise was probably more like a salad dressing consistency. I feel that we (the we is all of us, Charles and I and those of you doing the study) nee ......

Elizabeth is at her look out window and she says that everything looks the same out there.Inside the house is looking more like the past.The handles on the spatula and the egg skillet were different in the 1930s, these would have been Bakelite, a synthetic plastic. In 1933 polyethylene was accidentally invented and the start of the plastic revolution begun.I cannot remove everything from our home that was not yet on the market so I put things away and doing my best to simulate the 1930s, mostly concentrating on 1932 at this time because this is where we left off in the last study. It is a good place to transplant ourselves to learn how to live a very simple life.I encou ......

I am making a quick post today just to discuss some questions and comments this past week about clotheslines. Several people commented that where they live, they are not allowed to dry their laundry outside on a clothesline.Others questioned why and sadly, the answer is this is true in different states or HOA's in our country of the United States.However, please know that people have been fighting back for quite awhile and now we have a Right to Dry law and different states have changed the laws so that you can dry your laundry on a clothesline. There has been progress made.Check your state laws to see about the Right to Dry Law in your state. My daughter lives i ......

This is the last day of Peek Week and I will go over a few things we learned this week.In the past many people were very routine. We see that in the vintage kitchen towels with cute embroidery of the days of the week and the schedule of the week.Monday was wash day. Of course it can be any day we need it to be but it helps when we have some kind of a routine, especially with so many things to do in a home. But why is Monday wash day? So I did some research.An article in 1924 said that it was because Monday is the most miserable day of the week and washing is the most miserable thing in the world. By combining these inflictions into one, the rest o ......

Today is Saturday baking day, and we crank up the fire and bake our breads, pies, crackers, doughnuts and a cake. Sarah from my 1932 diary was always baking each Saturday. She would bake bread and Kuche, (something like a breakfast bread). She baked items for the upcoming week. My Aunt Leona baked many loaves of sweet bread each Saturday. Sarah would make her bread sponge the night before and baked bread and sweet Bread, her Kuche which is most likely a sweet breakfast bread. Sarah also made doughnuts.We can make our crackers for the upcoming week.Saltines are easy to make. I do not have the time to post recipes today but you can easily find recipe ......

It is peek week Friday and this means it is cleaning day. There are many years of blog posts on my blog and there are topics never read because they are far back in the post. Sometimes I will touch back on certain topics, sometimes I need reminders to help me get back on track. Today I am writing a new post on a old subject.In the past many women kept to schedules during the week. It was known that Monday was wash day and women would be hanging out their laundry to dry on Monday. It was a day to talk to one another across the fences and if someone did not have out their wash that day, others would take notice and someone would go to see if something ......

This is my brother born soon after ww2 ended in the 1940s. I was born only 14 months later and so my father must have been very happy to be back home.This was our first house that we lived in, we were too young to remember this house shown above.There I am at the first part of the 1950s standing by my brother. My father had this picture colorized. I lived in the city and my father worked in the furniture store. My brother was perfectly made for city life. Me.... not so much.I preferred the country, and that was obvious to me that when I was born, they messed up and I went home with the wrong family. Not really but I felt this way.When I was a child I did not know ......

I cherish the memories of when I was a child. So much was different then and in a very good way. Many of my family members such as my Grandmother, my Aunts and Uncles homes, would have flowers growing all over their yards. Much about their homes were different and each one was different. One reason is that many things were homemade. This photo above is one of my gladiolas, it grew against a small tree that is behind it in the photo. This gladiolas shown was last year for they have not yet bloomed this year and I am very excited because early this year I added many new gladiolas bulbs to our yard.I am looking forward to the new colors and these flowers remind me of home ......

I have decided to make this Peek Week as I have done off and on here on my blog a few times through the years. I do a post each day for week to get caught up on things.Since this is Tuesday (when making this post) here in the U.S., I will start off with Monday and Tuesday today. I have been away for awhile because frankly, I have lost my motivation to post anything with the constant upsets in our country. Charles and I have had to stay to ourselves to sort through our feelings of what is going on. I have been pouring myself into gardening, Charles has been helping me with all the changes to make gardening easier due to our age. This seems to be an ......

It is time to change the formula. This world has become very difficult and it is easy to lose our perspective with so much turmoil. I have to find a way to navigate through this time safely and keep our little space that we live protected. In the past I would go home to my older family members to get filled up with love and wisdom and my get my perspective back on track. Now that I am older, all of those elders are gone and I can no longer ask them for advice. Fortunately there is one thing that I can do and that is to pull from my life experiences to help navigate my way through as my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles did. Those experiences sho ......

We are living in a very different time, that is for certain. Whenever I get overwhelmed, I think about my grandmother and all of the challenging times that she lived through, and yet she managed to raise her children and keep on pushing through. She was born at the beginning of the year 1900, she went through serious wars, recessions, a great depression, and throughout those years they had not yet connected to electricity or running water. Because of my knowledge of her life and the history we have studied, I realize that we are looking at many possibilities that could throw us into deep trouble and challenge us because most of us are dependent ......

When I was young, I did not know how many life experiences I would draw upon as I got older. I wish we all could understand this while we are young so we could pay more attention and ask our elders more questions.I have always been a curious thinker, I like to know how things work and why and I do better if I can see it and learn visually. A mentor is even better but there are not as many mentors today as we once had. We have now gone several generations without them as many of the old skills of the past have been replaced by machines that do it for you but this comes with a cost.I try to be a mentor here on my blog with words and pictures since I cannot be in person, but it is n ......

I am having a difficult time writing lately with the unrest in our country. I like to do comfortable and sensible posts but my energy is sucked out of me right now with so much instability. I have written and deleted post before ever sent because I fear someone will go off on me about something I say. I really should not care but I do. I will say that I love all of you wherever in the world that you live. I feel somehow, we are going to be ripped apart from one another. I feel that by now I should not have to explain what is happening for me to say this. We are supposed to love one another and care for one another and it seems that many have forgotte ......

We never expected to have a deep snow weather event all the way down here in Southeast Alabama. We have had light snow before but not often and many years apart. We have never had a snow storm like this. It has been very cold!Our daughter lives in Pensacola Florida and this was even a bigger shock! They have never had anything like this. Here in the south we are not equipped for this kind of cold. Our cities do not have road equipment to clear snow, it brings us to a standstill.Many people wear flip flops and very little cold weather clothing so it is difficult to stay warm for something unknown as this.Another picture from our daughters house.This is a four ......

It has been a fairly cold winter so far here in the deep southeast part of Alabama. The sage has a heavy frost sitting on it's leaves. It rarely snows here where we live but some of the meteorologists are starting to talk about a polar vortex coming to the deep south. The possibility of very low temperatures in the range they are talking about is quite concerning to have ice and snow is even more concerning because we do not have the equipment for such as this down here. The rare occasions normally bring things to a standstill and can easily cause power outages. I craved a woolen skirt this year for some reason and now I know why. Wool anything i ......

We are moving into another New Year full of the unknown. Charles and I try to follow our intuition to do the things that we do, we study where we have come from and plan for where we are going. What is important to us to live within our means and that requires us to live a simple life that feels comfortable but capped.We have saved what we could for retirement but life threw us some challenges along the way, paying for big repairs and unexpected expenses and it chewed away at some of our savings. We are not alone with this, many of you have challenges as well. We are looking at this new year as a new start, and anyone can do this. For many years starting New Years ......

Are we using our homes as they did in the past? If I take a trip down memory lane, it is full of memories of warm meals, blankets on the beds, robes and bedroom shoes during the winter. We ate many bowls of stew or Chili , soup, greens such as collards and corn bread, hot chocolate and warm pudding. In the summer curtains were blowing from the windows being open and pies sitting on the window seal. We had to open the windows because there was no air conditioning. The sound of children playing and occasionally a trip to the first aid kit to locate a bandage for a skinned knee. There were board games and laughter, When we embrace our home ......

Long ago, we did not have all of these different ways of communication that we have today, especially instant communication. Our way of communication was writing a letter. I have been thinking a lot lately about the way we lived in the past before electronics. The electronics have become intrusive and it feels like a burden to me. I feel concerned about our young people that have grown up in this era of instant everything and all these electronics and wires and chargers and constant everything. They have never experienced the freedom of living without it and that is sad to me.I have old letters that are very personal and full of memories from long ago when ......

It has been three weeks since our little dog Katie passed away and we all have grieved for her. Our little dog Elizabeth and also Bernadette have grieved in their own way. Elizabeth became anxious and Bernadette kept sitting at the gate thinking that she would come back home through the gate. She would sniff the areas of the yard that Katie would go potty and back to the gate. Then she gave up and has since started something new and has been putting her toys at the lookout window. She will take them away and play with them and then put them back and we feel she wants them to look out for Katie. Animals do remember. We are giving them extra hugs and we ......

Our sweet girl Maggie many years ago saying, What is going on? We were always moving things about the house and still do today.Charles and I have been studying our Generations before us for over twenty years. I have been sharing what we know from how it was when we were growing up and what we have learned from our Generations before us that lived without running water and electricity and those that never had all of This that we have today. Hurricane Helene has caused horrible destruction and this is an historic event that will take years to recover from. Our Granddaughter is 7 months pregnant right now and she and her husband had to leave their home and com ......