Living Like the Past

Here we are in a concerning time with all the flu virus, coronavirus, elections, stock market declinning. We are being told different things each day.I am human and get concerned about these things but I go into Grandma mindset and start doing something about it early.Charles and I are all about studying the past and learning what our generations before us did. They went through some very tough times. If ever there was a time to do our best to resemble them now is the time.Common sense, that is what we need and leads us back to the past before items became disposable. I have always felt that it is important to keep a pantry or larder. To keep food put back for normal meals a ......

I skipped a week of posting to get some things done. I sewed a dress, then I made a new bobbin lace pillow to make lace on. I canned some chicken and beef and I made sure our medical cabinet was stocked and made a dress form.I did a lot of pondering....The last few days I have been back to researching and the flu virus being so bad right now has brought me back to my roots again. My Grandfather died from the 1918 flu and so I have done quite a bit of research about this time long ago.One of our Grandson's just had the flu and our daughter jumped into gear literally and quarantined him to his room as soon as he got the symptoms. She donned him and her in a face mask and to ......

A long while back I wrote about having a feeling of homesick even when we are home. For me, I learned that was a mixture of grief and fond memories of long ago. Now that I embraced our home to make it more warm and cozy and have little parts of the past in vintage pieces I feel more settled. I like to rescue old linens from long ago. This embroidered table runner is one of them. The edging is completely falling apart. The cloth has only two tiny holes that I can repair. Many years ago, someone sat with needle and embroidery thread and stitched every bit of these beautiful flowers and leaves and then laced an edge on the side. It ended up in a thr ......

I thought I would update on my One Room Proper cleaning that I started awhile back. I must say this has been the best discipline for me to clean this way. Even when I have been sick I still can keep up to a certain point. On good days I can make up for a day I did not clean.I will explain a bit more on how I am cleaning. This is just my way but hope that it encourages you to think about your own personality and way you do things and try and figure out a cleaning plan that helps you.First of all the photo above is our china cabinet I call walton because it is so tall. It looks quite different now because in December I did a major purge of dishes. It wa ......

I am going to ask you a question. Are you doing the necessary? It is interesting the things that are unfolding as we study more history and what is going on in the world today. The picture above is a finger cover/bandage I made today by taking a white sock and cutting it into small pieces to make a soft finger bandage for my little finger. I can use that one sock and make many finger bandages for when I need something that has a little stretch of give. I made a simple blanket stitch around the bandage.Sometimes we need a custom bandage.Bandages are expensive now and after purchasing what I needed to take care of my finger it was quite expensive to buy gauze ......

One thing for sure is we never know from one day to the next what will change. I was slicing ginger two days ago and my finger became part of the ginger. I am normally very careful but accidents do happen and I had a fairly serious laceration. I have learned my lesson to not get to comfortable in the kitchen with knives. It is difficult to type so I will get to the point.Charles and I woke up early this morning of Wednesday,January 2020 and shortly after we were out of bed Charles declared, We should be in 1920 !!! NOT the 1930's because 1920 would be 100 years ago since this is 2020. I have been preparing to stay in the year 1932. However Charles was excited ab ......

To live a vintage life is not so simple when we live in a modern time as we do. It is something we have to learn and practice if we truly want to live vintage. We have to change our ways to undo bad habits that come with living modern.To live a simple life is not as difficult but to live more like the past takes continuous adjusting of things to get there. It is not a quick fix as there is a lot of decluttering of the home and the mind.But it is contagious because we are always looking for that one thing that would make this living like the past vintage life feel more real.The strange part is now that we have been researching about the past and living somewhat like they did in the past, now ......

Each year for many years now, Charles and I have been doing history projects here in our home. We pick a year we want to study and to resemble, we started in the 1940's during ww2 and when we finished with that we moved to the 1930's. This year we have been studying 1932. We have been slowly setting our home to a more simple time, not knowing for sure what that time is but to resemble somewhat the times we have studied. This new year of 2020 we are staying put in the 1930's as we feel there is so much more to learn. All my life I have heard about the Great depression and how awful it was, and yes it was a terrible time for many and very serious as some people lost their lives ......

I like to challenge myself to learn more and to do this as long as I can. We learn best by doing and by our failures and success. I learn best by getting my failures out of the way.We can challenge ourselves in many ways, learning to cook or bake, sew or knit, learn a new language a new trade. Learning to develop a routine. Here at our home I try to think ahead of where Charles is going each day and his needs. This day he was going to be busy and he had to leave early so I made an egg sandwich for him to take to work.I knew he would be rushed this day and may not get lunch until late.I cut his breakfast sandwich in half... (There is waxed paper under this sandwich) I always p ......

As the weather cools we change the type of clothing we wear and often the food we eat. In the past they certainly ate seasonal. Today we can purchase the same food all year around, at least in most places. But is that how we are suppose to eat?Charles and I had a quiet Thanksgiving this year. Everyone was spread out and many in our family work right up to Thanksgiving day and then the day after making it difficult for travel. This year Charles and I broke tradition and started a new tradition. We ate Potato Cabbage soup for our Thanksgiving meal and I cannot tell you how many times we stated how much better we felt.I did make one special food item for Charles.I made a pie... ......

Each day is different, we have 24 hours to fit in all that needs to be done and get our needed sleep. There are certain chores that are daily and some that are three times a week or twice a week or weekly. It helps if we get into a routine of some kind so we do not get overwhelmed with too much to do at one time.This is our life, each of us should arrange our schedule where we are not rushed. Some laugh and say well that is not going to happen. But why not? We do not have to do what everyone else is doing. If we take a room that is 12x12 and we are given a certain amount of items to go into that room but there are more items that will fit comfortably we must ......

As some of you that follow my blog you will know that the first day of January 2019 we started a new history project and chose to live this year as if it were the year 1932. When we study a certain year, we normally start off the first part of the year with much research material that I post about and we slowly fade off as we get busy living the year we are studying. This record book is being used daily thanks to Charles steady routine of each morning doing his readings and recording how much water we have used and electricity, the temperature and humidity and notations of changes.Often I feel that I fail the years study as my post do not always reflect this year in the past.  ......

We all live in different locations and countries and some of us are going into winter soon and some in summer. At this time, after a very hot summer I feel that I would rather bundle up with layers and layers of warm clothes than to try and get cool when it is triple digits and high humidity. I am so happy that I could wear a sweater and coat the last several days. It is once again fall cleaning time at our house and this has kept us very busy. Each season is a good opportunity to give the house that extra special clean up. We remove our window screens and wash our windows at least spring and fall. I have posted several times about cleaning windows since this blog ......

I posted a question from T about mold. Here was her question,This is from T that lives in a corner of Michigan that gets lots of lake effect rain. Question; I was hoping you or your readers might have some tips on dealing with indoor humidity, without running an air conditioner or electric dehumidifier. The dehumidifier is my biggest user of electricity and I would really like toeliminate it, but don't want to risk the resulting mold problems.Things like moisture absorption packets don't really seem like awhole-house solution, considering the dehumidifier is removing aboutsix gallons of water a day.Opening windows for ventilation is rarely helpful where I live because the air outside is ......

I wanted so badly to be able to put the quilt on the bed once again. This was the long hot summer that would not end. Finally we have reached a temperature that I can ease the quilt over the bed. The Chrysanthemums knew it was fall but the thermometer did not agree. But they held true and bloomed anyway.I had pampered them and a few times put them in intensive care with the drought and heat. They needed IV fluids a few times as I thought they were not going to make it. I believe that we would have lost every one of them had they not had special care due to the drought.We have a hawk that has been hanging around for a few months now. I respect our birds of prey an ......

Sometimes it seems that everyone is tense or bothered by something but actually it is not true that everyone is like this. There is happiness, maybe we do not see it at the moment because of turmoil in our lives. Life keeps going all around us no matter what we are doing. Each one of us on a different journey and we often worry about things that never happen. It makes more sense to put our efforts into preparing for the things that could happen and then go on with life.Elizabeth is our, let us say, delicate child. She startles easily and absolutely does not like baths. But, she has a special sensitive side and is empathetic and always knows if we do not feel well or if something i ......

To live a vintage life today we have to make it happen. What is vintage anyway? Vintage has many descriptions. It can be considered something having quality. A fine wine sometimes is a vintage wine, sometimes vintage is something of importance. Some may think of it as being old but some think of it as being classic.I feel it is the best parts of the past.This is Muriah, she reads and follows my blog and sent me this picture of her beautiful vintage treadle sewing machine. Muriah enjoys living a more simple vintage life. She is a beautiful young lady and this picture makes my heart happy. I asked her permission if I could share this with all of you and she said yes ......

The long Hot Summer... It started before Spring this year, it was hot early. Everything came early so I thought fall would come early and then winter and set things straight.But that did not happen. So many things just burned up and I decided to take what I could and concentrate them in small beds. My big plans of the container garden did not work out. I learn my biggest lessons from things that did not work out so this year I had big lessons.It caused me to do more research and I discovered that lavender does not like it wet. So I started over once again. To me life has a lot of starting over, isn't that we are suppose to do? We cannot just go within and just give up. I have tried tha ......

No, that is not a glass of wine on top of that stove. This post is to answer the cloth question from Julia. We are trying to find a better way to stop having so many wash cloths, dish cloths and drying towels that we accumulate each day. As I said in the previous post I had to ask myself the same question as it seemed I had done better in the past because I cannot remember using a lot of cloths in a days time. We have some very good responses.*********************************************************************Hi Donna,This is for Julia's email question. My kitchen is not as vintage as gDonna's, but what I normally use is one dish cloth a day. At the end of the day I wil ......

Charles and I have been on an adventure into the past for several years now. We have been going by memory of what we considered better times then going back further than what we had any memory of by history projects, much research and by doing.We started many years ago going to the library and reading books and looking through microfilms. Then we dove in further and started reading journals and real diaries and invested in purchasing some of them. We have read old newspapers and trying to find what was happening in the home, the home front. We were most interested in the home, not as much about the wars or the great depression because we have read about these all along. We ......