Living a vintage life feels like going home.
My husband and I already live more simple than most but It feels better and more settled as we remove clutter and get back closer to that era that we remember was less complicated. It is taking a lot of time to find our way back because we have collected gadgets and technology that only waste our money. These items rob us of valuable time that should be spent doing repairs, cleaning or visiting with one another. This new technology seems to clutter our lives and strangely we are finding it difficult to rid ourselves of things that we have become accustomed to using but once lived perfectly fine without.
We lived before computers, big screen televisions, cell phones or dvd players and it seems that it was so much better in those days.
To us technology is becoming more of a distraction and it seems that skills are being lost and people are becoming distant because they are constantly looking at some type of device. Communicating with others does not seem right and if feels that not many are listening or more like they are not hearing what you say because they are trying to multitask with electronics.
The home we are living in now was built in 1960 and our few closets are very small but in 1960 we did not have many clothes to fill the closets and the top shelf held a few hat boxes and special items just fine. The house where I lived in the 1950's had even less closet space. Our bathroom is very small and does not have any cabinetry because toiletries were very simple and there were not as many choices during that time. My mother would keep her make up and hair care items in her dresser. I remember how I enjoyed plundering through her top dresser drawer because that is where she kept her lipstick.
You might think that the 1940's,1950's and 1960's were boring but it was far from being boring and I would actually go as far as saying that we have now reached a boring era because people have become less social, distracted and rude. Many things on television are indecent and I wonder how much worse can it get?
I don't know if I will find out because I am at the point of disconnecting from everything except a connection that will allow me to write these articles and receive emails from people that visit this website.
People were very social and we knew our neighbors. We helped each other and our doors were always unlocked. On Saturday you would commonly see women and girls with curlers in their hair and we wore scarves covering the curlers because it takes time for rolled hair to air dry. Some would be going out on a Saturday night date or rolling our hair so it would look nice for Sunday. Children played outside and used their imaginations to make their own forts with sticks and stones or anything they could find.
We listened to music on record players or we would go somewhere to listen to someone in person. Music was very different. People sat on porches and talked and laughed or visited each other and back then it was comfortable to just sit and watch the clouds in the sky or a bug carrying something into a hole in the ground. When is the last time you laid on a blanket on the ground or the hood of a car and stared at the sky to see a cloud shaped like a dog or a rabbit?
Wouldn't it be nice if everyone would suddenly agree that we need to reverse back to this era?
Families were not as distracted before computers and electronics. When children would speak a parent most always listened. When a parent spoke the children would listen.
Monthly household expenses were very different. There was rent or house payment, utility bill, grocery budget which included the milk man, possibly a car payment, a small newspaper bill because the paper only came once a week. The telephone bill would be very small and it would be a party line which you had to share with other people. If you picked up the one phone you had in your house you would have to listen to see if someone else was talking. Your insurance needs were taken care of by a real agent and he normally came to your house. Insurance was different back then and for what I can remember if people had health insurance it was actually hospital insurance. Most people paid the doctor by cash and hospital insurance was for something really bad.
If we lived like we did then there would be no way that we could take on the extra bills that we have today and this is where there is such a problem. The most important thing for a family is food, shelter and clothing. You can live perfectly fine without a television, without a cellphone, without a computer and depending on where you live without a car if you have bus transportation. In the past we did not have these things and so there were no bills that go along with these things. There was no internet bill and for sure money would not have been spent for a computer because there were none. Money would have never flowed out as it does today because first we would not have purchased the item and then we would never get a monthly or yearly bill to pay for using the item that we did purchase. That kind of cost would have been extreme and non affordable as it really is today.
There would be none of the other technology bills, there would be no cable bills, those that did have a television and many did not, they would watch it free off of an antenna. Utility bills were much smaller and not because electricity cost less but because there were no large appliances to pull as much current. In today??™s world most of the wall plugs are filled with cords and back then few things were plugged in.
Heating and cooling bills were small because if it was cold we mostly dressed warm and a floor furnace or something that heated a small part of the house was used in the winter and if you wanted to get warm you had to go to the source of heat and back up to it for a brief period to get warm. I remember straddling the floor furnace to get warm in our house in the fifties (and I remember burning my foot) and in the summer, fans were used when it was hot.
So to live a vintage life we must unplug and remove the items that constantly pull current. Go back to reading books and writing letters.
The bills do not stop with just unplugging because each way you turn there seems to be something that cost. Now appliances come with parts and filters that need to be replaced. This is the way they keep the money rolling in to them but rolling out of your household budget. We have been almost brainwashed into thinking that we must have all the new inventions since the fifties and probably the real truth is they are most likely bad for our health in some way. Today??™s technology and appliances are addictive and we really need to do something to curb this addiction. I am very worried what all of this is doing to our children and it would really be nice if we could just go back to basics and not purchase anything without really thinking it through. Ask the question, do I really need this? Is this something that I must have or should I put the money I would spend in savings? Is this item going to cost me a monthly or yearly fee?
If I did not have a computer I would not be able to write this article and I am truly on the fence about continuing. However, I feel that somehow it is helping people because there is so much junk and made up things on the internet and it seems those looking for this kind of information are finding their way to my website. In the meantime I will continue my journey backwards while I am going forward. Take care, Grandma Donna
The pictures I post on my website are of my family and myself so please do not copy my photos. I am simply trying to share my memories of my past and the things I do to benefit others that are trying to live a more simple life. Grandma Donna
.JPG "Living Like The Past With The Help Of The Present")