Living Like the Past

This week Charles has been busy with his work and I have been at home doing some research, laundry, housework and cooking. Charles and I have put on weight this past year and his psoriasis has been acting up so we are back to our elimination diet. I have a lot of inflammation in my body, pain in my back and nerve endings etc. It is good for us to shake up our diet occasionally.At my last visit at the doctor we discussed that many people have gained weight since the covid virus and has made such a upset to our lives. He is seeing that patients have gained from 10 to 30 pounds. We can all understand why so if you have not gained weight from covid stress that is good.So we are ......

I want to share a bit more about how we do things with our history projects. My intentions with these studies is to learn about the strengths of our generations before us and what was home. What did home really look like and feel like. When I am reading the old newspapers I often fine offensive articles full of prejudice words against race and there are quite often articles that I can clearly see that are written for the purpose to direct people to live a certain way. But then there is evidence that many women do not pay any attention to these things that are written in the newspaper. There are not a lot of photos from long ago showing the inside the home because cameras ......

Through our studies of the past I have learned that many women were very routine with when they did their wash, when they did their ironing. Many of us have seen those pretty kitchen towels that have the days of the week.Monday is wash day, Tuesday is ironing, Wednesday is Sewing and Mending, Thursday is Market day, Friday is cleaning and Saturday is Baking. I have read old articles that mention that Friday is Baking day and Saturday is cleaning day. In our family it was Saturday. We have learned that shopping and calling on people were often done on Thursdays. When we read something such as, Mrs. Hammond called today. This does not necessarily mean telephoned ......

Who doesn't want to curl up in a soft fluffy bed and a favorite wooby blankie? I thought this was a good time to post a soft puppy picture. This is our little Dachshund Katherine. This morning where I live it is a very chilly and rainy day, I feel a mixture of emotions that I will keep inside and stay away from what so many people are talking about today in this real time of January 7, 2021. Yesterday, January 6th was a very difficult day in our country as if a covid pandemic is not bad enough.As we are studying History, and starting our new year of 1932 I decided to check the news to see what was going on on Wednesday January 6th 1932.Actually it was a very calm day in the news, ......

Happy New Year! It is 1932 again at our house!Charles and I have decided for our history project this year we have returned to 1932. Our past history project got hijacked by a pandemic.Even though we are still in the pandemic we are picking up our history project and are going to do our best by starting over. One thing we learned last year is boy do we need to study and live more like the past than ever before. Smack dab in a Great Depression seems like a good place to start and I will explain more about this statement.There is so much to learn about 1932. I have five diaries, many newspapers, some 1930s learn how to books as well as a montgomery ward catalog and endl ......

In the middle of the night our clocks strike twelve times and we call it midnight but it is the beginning of a new day. Many of us are sleeping.But then the sun starts to come over the horizon and dawn is breaking, it is time to start our day.Today we often do not notice the sky or ever see the sun emerging over the horizon as dawn breaks. Long ago the stars and the moon, the sun and the clouds were a very important part of our life.I have always enjoyed early morning. I feel I am not wasting my day if I get up at the crack of dawn or just before. I admit it is a bit more difficult as I get older but I still get up at this time.Long ago it was necessary to get up early to get out and feed th ......

When I do not feel like cooking, I bake a one pot meal. It is a very simple meal, one whole chicken, potatoes, carrots, onion and celery. I sometimes add lemon slices. I seasoned it and added a few sprigs of rosemary from the garden.The ingredients are so simple and very little prep work to do. Very easy to clean up.Bake it in the oven for a few hours. And while it is cooking in the oven the kitchen is clean.The other thing is it is a healthy meal.:)When we look at the home of long ago, people ate simple meals. Many times we enjoy cookbooks from long ago as well as current time and I do enjoy these books but often families ate traditional meals at home that did not require a ......

My last post I ended with saying that moving Windsor (our 1920's icebox) back in the house caused more shifting of furniture and such and how it taught me some lessons.During this year of this awful pandemic I have had my ups and downs just like many of you. Often I found it difficult to focus and at times I was not keeping up in the home and then I would get back on track and then the decline again. I feel this is perfectly normal to react to stress. When we had a lot of unexpected issues on Thanksgiving week with the laundry room flooding and the freezer dying we rallied with it all and took care of things, including moving Windsor back into the kitchenWhen I had to move my moth ......

Today is the first day of December. This cactus is a Thanksgiving cactus that blooms out during Thanksgiving week and continues to bloom for a good while during December. There are Christmas Cactus as well and I have no idea the difference other than when they bloom.The blooms are so beautiful. So here is how it all went down.... and then back up. :)You may have seen that some houses built long ago have a door on the side of the house that enters into a laundry/storage room that is built into the house but can only be entered through the outside door. That is what we have.I am not one to be brave in the dark. One night long ago I had gone out in the dark to get clothes ......

This is a satsuma and to me it is a cross between an orange and a tangerine. It is harvest time for our little tree. It did not make as many this year but we are going to harvest the ones that it did make.There are two clusters like this on the tree. I hope it will have better start next spring. This past spring it would set blooms then a cold spell would come and some of the blooms would die. We are in a zone that we can grow satsumas but a bit precarious with a cold snap.Even though it is still warm here, winter is near so we have pulled out all the snuggies. Warm beds, blankets and throws. Katherine likes this puffy bed.Elizabeth likes to sit in my chai ......

There is so much to learn while we are here on this earth. I like to live my life so that I always have something to look forward to. It is up to each of us to put this in motion so that we do have something to look forward to.We travel season to season and again season to season. As it comes around and then fades away it makes room for the next season. We can work towards and prepare for it to come back again.If we do our best to learn all we can to understand our seasons then there is always something to look forward to. I never get bored of learning about nature nor do I of keeping a house a home.I like to divide and transplant flowers in the garden so th ......

Sometimes life can be very confusing and as we travel from here to eternity we will experience many very different things.What is important is that we never settle for not knowing.I have heard many times, Well, I cannot do that, speaking of a simple skill such as cooking, sewing, crochet or knitting. But why not? If we think about all that is out there in this world that comes from the hands of someone that is skilled, they too started from not knowing how. We would never be bored for one minute if we made it our purpose to never stop learning. I love to learn new things and more so I learn to get better at the things that I do.If we just rely on what other ......

As I have been once again decluttering I have been questioning if I still needed to discard more than I already have. Living a more old fashioned life as we do requires more kitchen equipment to preserve food as do many of the things of long ago so it is sometimes difficult trying to live more like the past in this modern world.If we really lived in the past we would not have a computer or printers and such as this and this takes up space where something from the past would most likely be placed. My goal is for a looser feeling around the house where the drawers and cabinets are not so full and I have been working on this for quite awhile. Then the covid virus became a problem and ......

We are working toward a more simple life. It is early morning pictured above, the sun has not made its way to lighting our day.Charles is still in bed and I am preparing to make homemade tortillas for a breakfast meal. Living a more simple life does not mean laying around, it does not mean there is less work, it means life is calmer.Making tortillas is such a simple thing to do. Today we carry a lot of modern baggage that keeps us from doing the things that are important.I keep trying to improve what I can, our diet, clutter, fixing those things that we just tolerate because that is the way it has always been. With a little time and effort it can be more functional.I love t ......

The season of summer has ended and I am most happy to know that cooler weather is coming. It was time to remove the lightweight, soft chenille spread...We have made it back to the season of Fall and a few days ago I removed the summer chenille bedspread and brought out the hand stitched quilt. It marks that we are traveling through our yearly seasons.The chenille spread was washed and dried and put away to rest throughout the fall and winter.It is better for our health to focus on the seasons and what is important. It has been a distracting year and too much time has been wasted on worry. Nature and time are still going around us and we are missing it if we are not paying attention.It ......

As I am writing this post, we are experiencing the beginning of Hurricane Sally. Yesterday I did a good bit of washing because I needed to get all the laundry washed, dried and put away. I had clothes hanging all over the house because there was too much humidity outside to hang laundry. The hurricane southwest of us off shore barely moving forward.I have lived long enough now to know the routine. Get all the laundry done, fill every vessel that will hold water to use for drinking, cooking and bathing.I like to get things done before the storm and prepare for the power to go out or a water main break or anything that could happen that we can prepare for. There are ple ......

Recently I have been trying to organize, it seems that it never stays done as we truly live in our homes. What I mean by that is we are some of the many people that enjoy our home. We are not gone for long when we do leave home and being home a lot of the time we make our own messes or at least I do.This photo above is of a journal I found long ago and have posted about it before. It is the journal that put many things in motion for Charles to start keeping journals the old way. A record of home, yes, a Record of Home. What is spent and where it is spent.what did we purchase and what did we use. This journal starts in late 1800 and ends in early 1940's. A journal of a family and their ex ......

Here we are, the last three days of August 2020. Here at our home we are a mixture of 2020 and the old days. August, September and November we truly test our preparations for keeping ourselves comfortable and as ready as we hoped to be. We live close enough to the gulf coast to be caught in the inland storms that come with hurricanes. Sometimes the hurricanes are too close and some are far away but the feeder bands can be far out and away from the eye of the storm and cause us problems.Living the old way with our feet still in the current time keeps us more settled when the power goes out.I love early morning just before the sun rises. The candle light or oil lam ......

Charles and I started a new project here at our house. We have been doing these studies for years now of living more like the past. We knew that we needed to do more but how? Living in a city in modern times while trying to live more like the past is not always easy. We live in this world where everything flows to us.We have tried many ways to reduce the flow of water, to reduce the flow of electricity but we always fall short of our expectations and then go back to our lazy habits.One day Charles was at work and I was doing all I could to save water while cleaning and doing laundry. I had set a certain amount that I could use and only that but failed.So I thoug ......

Because we are in a worsening pandemic. Some of you have lost your job, some have lost loved ones and it may seem to you that no one cares. But I care.I thought about starting this post off with some history facts about pandemics and wars and such as that but I just want this post to be a simple common sense post.We can find patterns after events in history and if we learn from this we should have already learned enough to live a prepared life. But this is not what people normally do and I do not know why.I was very fortunate to live a time that I was able to be close to my Grandparents that had lived through two world wars, a very very bad pandemic and a great depression. ......