My blog is all about living a more simple life and more like the past. Not in the past but like the past.
Recently I have been responding to visitors to my blog and their questions. A few have asked me if I could post pictures of inside the houses during the 1940s and 1950s. I have a very limited amount of photos of inside due to most pictures were taken outside back during that time. One reason is the cameras were different back then and the flash required to take the photo. Most photos were taken of the family.
I have dug through my photos to see what I can do to give you at least a glimpse of the 1940s and 1950s inside the houses.
If any of you would like to share pictures that you have I could do a second page on inside the house from around the world as long as they are photos from the 1930s through the 1950s.
During these times things were more simple. When you remove the electronic clutter of today you end up with something like this. There were no televisions in most houses until the mid 1950s and many did not have them until much later depending on where one lived. There was not a tv station where we live until the mid 1950s. Televisions were sold before then but if you had no signal there was no reason to have one. Many rural people still did not even have electricity.
I had posted this photo on my last post and what triggered another request to see more inside photos and which made me decided to do a post on this.
Many of my photos are very old and some are too washed out to even post.
This was taken in the late 1940s. The china in those cabinets are sitting in my china cabinet today but in another cabinet as I do not live in this house anymore posted above.
Some houses had formal dinning rooms and some had eat in kitchens and some had both.
We do not have a formal dinning room in our house here today.
This is the late 1950s.
Here is another family kitchen in the 1950s.
What would be often found in a living room in the 1940s which is when this photo was taken would be a radio and books. Some of the radios were very large and some small. Many families had a large radio that was in a piece of furniture and they would sit around the radio in the evenings and listen to radio stories and radio shows.
Wallpaper was very common during these times.
Fireplaces, mantels, sheer curtains.... Evelyn do you recognize this mantel?
We would never find a computer desk or computer since there were none but they did have desks and typewriters. This photo was taken in 1943.
Here is a different tablecloth.
I ask you to not use my photos as these photos belong to me but I do like sharing photos of the past because it is important to know that there was a more simple time in which people lived.
Since my husband and I decided to live more like it was in earlier years because we did not like the direction we were going, we have become accustom to more quiet in our house. Well with the exception of much road noise outside, siren's, cars, trucks, our pets. But there is not television on and we would rather read than listen to the radio. When we do listen to the radio we listen to National Public Radio.
When I was growing up people did not lock their doors and children played outside, families and neighbors visited each other often and normally someone would drop by most any time. Just knock and walk in the back door. We kept our houses tidy most of the time because that is the way we lived.
But saying this our houses were not as tidy as what some may think. Today we have so many decorating shows on television, and magazines that make us think we must live perfect. People did not live perfect in the past. It was normal to have things tossed about because we lived there, toys were scattered because the children played with them. Of course there were not near as many toys as children have today. When we cook we mess up the kitchen, that is normal, then we clean it and set things in order but if someone walked in while it was a mess, that is ok. Nothing wrong with that. We simply cannot be perfect all the time.
We did keep our houses swept, mopped and dusted and the dishes washed. Making the beds was important to do back then and done right away in the morning. It was easier to straighten the house back then because there were less things.
We have been continuously ridding our house of many modern things because it just became too much. We are still working on this because we lived as others have and moved through time accumulating things as most people do but then since we knew life before many of these things we decided to put ourselves back to more basic.
And that is what it takes for those of you looking to live more "Like" (not in) the past. Just go back to basics. There are so many items and gadgets we have that we simply do not need. All these kitchen gadgets of today are not necessary. You would be surprised what you can do with just the basic kitchen items. I still have much work to do on my kitchen but my goal is being accomplished little by little and when I get there I will show you. If you are already there show me. :)
Again if you have photos of inside houses in the 1940s and 1950s that belong to you and would like to share them for others to see, just email them to me and I will put together a post when I get enough photos. Do not send me something copied from somewhere else but your own photos please.
I hope you have enjoyed this post, I wish I had more photos and I may have a few more and if so I will post them too.
Grandma Donna
