To understand more I started researching around 1880 to 1900, then 1900 to 1920, then 1920 to 1940. These are some of what I found interesting.
I wanted to know more how our ancestors did day to day things. So I started researching basic day to day things we do in our homes most every day, for instance washing dishes.
This is already off track a bit because this is how my mind does normally. The more I study the more I feel the eras and some of the arrogance and some snootiness. The newspaper articles give me a sense about the time. Many things start off by complaining of the way someone does things wrong before they tell you how to do it the right way.
I wanted to know why women washed laundry on Mondays and found that it was almost a invisible rule that was set for women to "Abide by". Much gossip about people if they did things different than others. Some say it is due to the order of household cleaning. There is a Tuesday make up day if weather is bad. So what about if Tuesday is bad too? We have had a lot of rain lately and getting the laundry to dry has been a challenge.
The more I studied the more I realized that the upper class had quite a bit of this snootiness while the ordinary people had their own arrogance too. This must have something to do with why there are so many versions of how Pone Bread is made.
Even to this day, in my husbands family you will be "Chastised if you don't make it the same way "Mother made it". Ha! now I know why!
Ok, so now maybe you have a sense of the times because some things never change. By the way I am not like this honestly, I am just a simple person in search of knowledge of how to live simple.
We will get back to the darning of the sock later, I just didn't clip that part out. So I traveled into the archives of many many articles of how to wash dishes so let me set the stage so to speak.
Back then if you did not live in the city most likely there was no sewer and those who did would have been large cities. Many did not have running water so they are at their table with dishpans and buckets of water and a large pot of water on the wood burning or coal burning stove that looked nothing like what we have today.
This is where the shaker, the scraper, the slop, the sanitary strainer bucket comes in. I know about the slop jar but Oh now I am interested!
So let's phone Grandmother.
Ok, Wait a minute! What the heck are those dish washing tools? Every article I went on to read talked about tools I have never used, ok, a few but many I did not. I do have a soap shaker, that they called later on a soap saver but there was a real soap saver earlier on before the soap shaker became the soap saver so I had to know..... Well I could not rest.... until I knew.... I had already gotten into excitable mode.... If you only knew me you would know it more like an obsession and why I am good at reasearch.
Ok, wait.... I have to meditate and look at the laundry on the line from yesterday.... That will get my heart rate back down. If you only knew the articles and the clipping with the scissors I have done and the non stop reading and the...... Well, see there is so much in my brain and I want to tell and show you everything right now! The knowledge my post will be too long to put a lot on it at the same time but I want to. Ok, I am ok now.
Ok, you see it on the bottom right? The soap shaker first one from the left, the food scraper next, the three sided grater and another grater.
Yes, it did take a very long time to find these pictures so look good. The woman is using a dish scraper. Notice this is 1912, they were still selling these in 1942. I never had one.
This was very important in the past due to grease and also due to soap.
I do have a soap shaker and I have a post coming up about this as I learned new things I did not know.
Here is another soap shaker and some people made them out of baking soda cans and punched holes in them.
Their soap dishes made much more sense back then because it lets the soap dry out. Modern soap dishes are not practical.
And since the 1914 baby tub is in this picture I will get off track again to show you some different baby tubs since it has nothing to do with washing dishes but gets more stuff out of my head I want to show you.
1897 rubber tub on a stand.
1912 tub of all baby tubs I have ever seen. Now saying that, my mother moved into a large very old house with claw foot tubs and one of the smaller bathrooms had a child's claw foot tub. An adult could get in it with knees drawn up. It was a beautiful tub but I have never seen one of these tall baby tubs.
We jump to 1939 and there is still the rubber edged dish scraper being sold. I do want one of these and wish they still sold them, I have tried using today's spatula, the type we use to scrape a bowl of cake batter or something like that but it is not the right shape and did not do well for me. They do sell plastic dish scrapers today that are small squarish that I have not tried and things that probably don't work as well but...... Here is something...
Well, see there are so many pictures and they are scrambled like my brain I came across this one before I got to the but.....
Ok But.... Now this is thrifty! 1925
So...
I sat down and cut up some strips of cardboard and by the way this would be a good job for a elementary school age child to do if they are old enough to use scissors properly.
We had a cheerio box because they did sell cereal in 1932, and I got 74 pieces of the cardboard pieces different sizes.
Now they sit beside the sink.
There will be no grease going down my drain anymore...
So I crumpled up the junk mail sales paper with the scrapped goods and I thought this was the next thing to do until I read another article. Boy do we have a lot to learn.
Now this is going to go on with much more because we have to go to the other tools, word and topics which caused me to find more articles mentioning other tools and names of things I never heard which I had to research and every time I research I get on another trail. Could be an interesting year... I will send this so you can be reading it while I am typing another blog post tomorrow, or in the middle of the night so I can get this stuff out of my head because I am dreaming about it! You just won't believe where this is going. Really! I have been experimenting all the while..
Can you tell I am excited to tell you about all of this? Maybe my information in my brain will be filed by the next post, Grandma Donna
