Ellie has been hopping around the house lately and she is now on the washstand. She seems to like the new location.
Since last posting we have gone through some very cold weather. We are doing our best to keep the heating bill down but it has been necessary to run it longer during the day. At night we bundle up with knitted caps and the electric blankets. Each pet has their own pet heating pad and they love snuggling up with the heat pads and blankets.
Most everything seems expensive today, Just these two items cost us $42.90 this week including the grocery tax. The olive oil is 50.7 ounces and the coffee is 30 ounces. We use these two items almost daily since the food we eat each day is cooked and prepared here at home.
We shopped at Walmart, we do not have an Aldi here yet. We do have Publix, Piggly Wiggly and grocery outlet stores too.
We do have an emergency food savings for situations when we must eat out but we still try to get that food from a grocery store. It costs less to buy a loaf of bread and some lunch meat or a spread. Sometimes something from the deli in the grocery store. If we think we will be away from home for a long time we pack some food to take with us.
When we keep the basics at home we can make many things with simple ingredients.
We can bake cookies instead of buying packaged food. These are going to a family member for her birthday.
This week our 1920s kitchen table has been getting some needed repairs. It is a dropleaf table that we bought many years ago. This table did not have the chairs to go with it when we bought it, and long ago table chairs were smaller. The non drop leaf side legs were too close together to allow a modern chair to slide under the table.
Charles took the table apart and borrowed some wood from the drop leaf and added it to the top to increase the width so that regular chairs can go under. The drop leaf is still off the table in this photo.
We are happy to have our table back together and out of the temporary location that it has been.
I enjoy dressing a table, I haven't been able to dress the table since Charles started the repairs and now it feels all put together again and just right.
I have been crocheting another hot water bottle cover. This one I am using a thicker yarn and I really like it. I have several projects going on at the moment. A knitted bandage, when I take a rest in my pink chair and I will knit a few rows and then get back to something else.
When I sit in the rocker by our bed, I will crochet for a while on the hot water bottle cover.
I have some mending and hemming that I am doing and I usually do that at the table if I am not using the treadle machine.
Another 1920 item in our house is this rolling medical cabinet. Charles added sides and a back to it and put a shelf inside and we use it to hold baking items.
I have many fond memories of this cabinet because it belonged to my mother. She lived in several different houses and when she moved to a new house, this little cabinet never got left behind. It has been here with us now for twenty years.
I keep our pasta tools in the drawer, rolling pin and baking tools inside the cabinet.
For our history study, I thought it would be good to see the house furnishings that were being sold in the year 1942. Most homes would have been furnished with items made long before 1942. However, the economy was getting better, and more people were employed due to the war.
Shown above and below are new items that were sold in the year 1942.
A chenille spread.
Mattress's had metal coils inside of the mattress during this time and sides were not as tall as they are today.
Floral rugs were popular during 1942.
A sample of a sugar rationing card from ww1 in 1918 was being shown to the public in February 1942 to explain to the people that sugar was going to be rationed and they would not be able to buy sugar without a ration card. As the government worked its way through the difficulties of rationing changes were made until they could find what was best to do. I read in this past weeks paper that they were holding rationing meetings and starting training sessions so they knew rationing is coming.
Sugar rationing began May 5th 1942 here in the U.S. Coffee was next but not until November. During 1943, rationing took a serious turn and many food items were rationed along with other goods for several years.
In the year of 2017 I did a study of 1942 here on my blog. The first part of February of that year I wrote about a Mending compact. I was showing the directions how to make it but I had not made the compact yet because I had to find yarn that would have been around during the 1940s which I did find on ebay.
I did show it later in a post, but I wanted to update about this little compact that I made nine years ago and I took photos of this morning.
This little crochet mending compact has been so special to me because it is so small and practical. I keep my measuring tape inside it as well as small sewing items.
It was simple to make and I was surprised at how often I have used it during the past nine years. I just realized this morning that what I have not done is to figure out what yarn to use that is sold today since I found and used an actual 1940s yarn. I will make another using a similar yarn to see what I can find out for you so we can update this project.
Here below is the link to that 1942 study page that I did February 2017.
https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/1942-life-one-month-update/
There are many projects that we can do during this history study if we research things being done in the home during 1942.
There is much information on the internet about this time in history, we can learn about how much electricity cost them, we can see the styles of clothing, hair, furnishings. We can learn about the changes they went through new products that came about due to the war and what products were in short supply. It helps us to understand and opens our mind to what if something like this happened again what would we do today?
Right now, Charles and I are mostly going through things that we no longer use or want. My electric hand mixer stopped working and so I did not buy another. My hair dryer curling iron stopped working. I have not purchased another. I have gone back to curlers. With the other studies we stopped replacing things as they stopped working. We no longer have a microwave, no dishwasher, no television, many appliances we no longer have. We simply hand wash dishes, we didn't have a microwave before they came out so that was easy to go back to not having one. The more simple the better. I cannot even remember what we don't have anymore because we got rid of so many items since we started doing history studies years ago.
When you keep basic and helpful items in the home we mostly think of food. But tools are needed to do repairs. Basic tools, thread, yarn, scissors, hammer, screwdriver, and so much more. We should think of how would I repair this, how would I cook that, how would I clean this, and most importantly how do I do this. We can make our home much more functional if we set our home to be functional.
Questions for the forum,
Is there anything that you have gotten rid of or stopped using to have a more simple home?
Have you added anything to have a more functional home?
Do you have any projects you are working on?
Have you found any new information about the year 1942 that has been helpful to you?
We can talk about most anything except politics in the forum. :)
More below....
I want to let you know that my dear friend Rhonda Hetzel has gone back to posting on her blog.
She started back this week and I am very happy to see her posting on her blog again. I know many of you are happy about this or will be happy since reading she is back to blogging. She has been staying in contact with her readers through Instagram, in her recent blog post she explains the change. I know some of you are not on Instagram, I was for a short while but got off.
Both Rhonda and I have been posting for many years. We found each other after we had been blogging for many years and realized that we had a lot in common. We connected by email and then eventually we started online talking face to face. This face to face talk didn't happen from my side because I have no techy side to me at all. I still get confused each time we face talk.
We both post about the simple home but in different ways and we are only one year apart in age. Neither of us will tell which one is older. :)
Our differences are one of us is modern, and one old fashioned. So we have you covered well from both sides as long as we can hang in there blogging.
Those of you that like your modern items, Rhonda teaches by showing and writing about the sensible modern home. She uses "practical" modern items. We both garden because that is part of the simple and sensible life.
We both became debt free using the envelope system and then learned how to stay out of debt and live within our means. Then we share it with others.
For those of you that may not have been to Rhonda's blog, I will post a link below. Also Rhonda has written and published three books, down to earth, the simple home, The simple life.
Here is a link to Rhonda's blog.
https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/
Grandma Donna
