Finally September!

August was a struggle for me and I am glad to reach a time to be hopeful that there will be cooler weather soon.  We have had off and on cooler temperatures but nothing to put a sweater on.  

I want to talk about the 1930s study.  Charles and I truly enjoy doing these history studies, there is no way that we can fully share everything we do or the books we read, or how we apply the study to our everyday. This is why I wanted to not just show the study but have you all do the study so you can learn researching about the time and applying some of the things to your home to help reduce spending. 

To do a history study, and to have an outcome that to the best of our ability we have a better understanding of what it was like to live during this time. It takes dedication and hard work to try to simulate how things were done.

Our 1940s study Charles and I actually lost weight during the rationing part of those studies and those blog posts are on my blog.

The more we do the studies the more uncomfortable we feel living in this modern year of 2025.  We prefer the old way now and wish to live this way because it has taught us how much we were wasting and also it has saved us a lot of money.

Many people are unwilling to give up today's modern conveniences, but when we truly do a study like this, there comes a time when we realize that today's conveniences are robbing us of many things.  The main thing I find is our ability to focus, and our ability to not rush doing the many things we do.  

The most obvious is that we are living in a terribly distracted world due to cell phones, computers, televisions, electronic games and one serious issue is scrolling. 

I am doing my best to refocus.  I am cleaning out my antique secretary desk and figuring out how to condense down from 2025 to 1932.   The more simple we become the more we realize that the older items in a home have a better purpose. The electronics are becoming annoying to us. 

I want to start back doing hand work such as knitting, crochet or hand sew in the evenings.  The treadle sewing I will do earlier in the day. 

I am working on meals and desserts with less ingredients such as this small carrot cake.  I still have to adjust the ingredients in this cake and when I get it just right I will post the recipe. It has no sugar, no flour and no egg. It consists of carrots, dates, pecans, a small amount of milk and fresh squeezed orange juice.  It is good like this but I will be making it better (I hope). 

We really like making our soaked whole wheat pancakes, we made these last weekend and I have posts about how we make these in other posts.  I probably need to move that post under cooking from scratch when I have the time. 

Our green beans are at the end of their production and we once again had the potatoes with bacon, butter and onion. We boiled and then sautéed the beans.

We have a new menu now that rotates every two weeks with alternates / substitutes.  Many of the meals you see on my blog we eat often. 

We are doing good with our grocery budget as we stayed under budget for the month of August and a savings of $33.56. We were under budget for the month of July as well so I started a grocery savings with the extra money left over to have extra for the holidays. 

I want to let you know about my plans for October.  

I have been wanting to take time off from my blog and forum so Charles and I can experience no electronics.  I cannot get the feel of this study while being on the computer and my cell phone.

I remember the days of pre electronics very well and I feel that it will be healing to do this.  Those of you that are doing the study probably feel that as well.  I want to take notes of the changes that we go through pulling ourselves away from being on our electronics.  We will read books and do hand work and basically live as we did long ago before these things existed.

If some of you want to do this along with Charles and I, we can come back at the end of the month and use the forum to discuss how we felt and what we learned.  It would be a wonderful study.  

Many of you that are here do not do the studies but read along and just a reminder I have years of blog posts on my blog including the other studies if you care to read them.

I need this break to help me see if I can get us more like 1930s here in our home and then find a place for my computer so it will be more out of the way as now it is like the elephant in the room and always there.

I will  continue to post during this month of September, also the forum is still open during September so if there is anything you want to discuss in the forum before we do this, please do so. The forum will be closed for the month of October but the blog will still be up and running. 

If you are interested in trying to be more like the 1930s for a short time or all month lets talk about it up in the forum.  If you have anything to add to what you have learned so far, I would be very interested in knowing about it. 

Some of you that have lived before electronics and cannot do the study, we would love to read your comments about your memories.  

Grandma Donna