I want to answer a few questions with this post and talk about where we are and why we are living like 1942. 
Yesterday my husband and I went back to the library to clip more newspaper information for our notebook. We go back and forth to the library to the reference room to use their microfilms to find the information we are looking for. When I say clip, the computer has a snip thing to click on and it will send it to a printer so we can take home the information we want for our notebooks that I have been making for the last three years.
This was the front page of yesterdays 1942 paper. I have to enlarge it when we get it home but to us it is worth the time for the information and history.
Also an update on weather, at the very bottom of this newspaper on the bottom right hand corner, they did have a weather forecast so I learned something new yesterday. All the papers I have looked at I have not seen this and my husband was the one that discovered it yesterday.
This is how we have our sewing room now, it is more of the extra room. It is just off the kitchen and can be a napping room, sewing or reading or extra space for family staying over room. We call it the middle room and it has been many things.
The middle room is also my gdonna space, everything got moved to get ready for 1942. This is the official gdonna headquarters Lol, where it is all happening. Tucked away are the electronics we would not have had in 1942 and I am mixed in this closet with my embroidery threads, shelves of sewing fabric and sewing notions.
So why are we doing this living like 1942? We did the year living like 1943 the year before last. Besides the fact that we love history we are using this era to get our home organized and ourselves to a time when life was more simple and proper.
We know there was a lot of heartache in 1942 with the war and all the losses and sacrifices, my father was enlisted during the war and away from home. Thankfully he did not lose his life. There is much history and information about ww2 but there is not a lot about the home front.
Some of our old books.
Just like last time with 1943 and learning about the rationing that went on during the war, we realized there really is a lot to learn from this. It is teaching us how wasteful we have been. It is a lesson in morals, manners, and less greed.
I knew these people that lived before and during the great depression and ww2. They were my family, my grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles. They were good people, they were generations that were grounded and made more sense than anyone I have ever known in my life! When they departed this world, they took with them valuable information and knowledge and skills. Oh if only I had paid more attention, asked more questions when they were still with us. We cannot lose the valuable skills they once had because we never know how things will be in our future.
The more we learn the more stunned we are of the things we never knew.
By living like 1942 we can feel more of what this time was about. The ads in the paper speak volumes. The home life had to go on during the war. Families still had to eat and continue on with things. Everyone was trying to help in their own ways. Those that could went to work in factories and others went around gathering scrap metals to recycle for the use of building tanks and bombs and many goods to fight the war. Women saved grease because the government needed it to make weapons/explosives.
I have been taking the ads and the cookbooks we have to find a way to plan menus. Menu planning was important in 1942 and is important today.
Running a household was important work in 1942 and is important now. We can ignore this fact and go through life spending money without giving it any thought, wasting our money and not realizing the consequences until our debt is out of control.
We can eat out and live a fast pace until our health starts to suffer and then we have that epiphany "I should have been taking better care of my body" moment or we can make good homemade meals, budget and plan and roll up our sleeves and keep our homes maintained to so we can live a life free from debt and worry.
Several people that follow my blog are changing their ways, not a lot but some. I am not blogging to change you but to give encouragement to find a more simple way to live if you desire that way of life.
They email me to tell me they are changing and organizing and some are giving the 1942 life a try and are telling me how it calms them and even brings joy to their life. I am hearing that it is motivating them to organize and some are realizing how wasteful they have been like many of us have been.
There is an empowerment that comes from putting our home in order and it is a wonderful feeling because life has many gullies and a lot of people are rude and when we have a place to come to to restore ourselves and nourish our body, this is a good thing.
To answer a few more questions, In 1942 people hung their laundry outside on nice days or inside when the weather was bad to dry because there were no clothes dryers or they were just in the beginning of making them. Many new inventions that were just beginning to be manufactured were put on hold during the war due to the need for materials to be used for the war needs.
Tires and automobiles were some of the first things banned or rationed when the USA became involved in the war after the attack on pearl harbor.
There were washing machines and refrigerators but many people did not have a refrigerator yet, they had a icebox that was similar to a refrigerator that had a place to put ice in to keep food cold. Surprisingly they did have dishwashers but many people did not have one yet.
They had ice houses and Ice trucks that delivered big blocks of ice to go in the iceboxes. Many people in the city and rural had only iceboxes. I remember the ice trucks and big blocks of ice still in the 1950s.
Just recently I was talking with my brother in law and we discussed this. They did not have electricity or running water in their home. They had an icebox and would walk down the road to meet the ice truck to get their ice. He remembers the day that the men came to ask his mother was she going to buy a stove for their house. He said he knows now that they were trying to find out what kind of wiring they needed for the wiring that was coming to put in electricity for the first time. His mother cooked on a wood burning stove. They had to go out to hand pump their water from the well.
In those days It all depended on if you lived in a city or rural area if you had electricity and running water. Electricity was something that eased into rural areas, some people that lived in the 1950s and even 1960s still lived without electricity as they were just getting power lines pulled to those areas.
How did people store their food? Well many people had a larder, a room or cupboard, that all depended in the house one lived.
Many things were canned and glass, tin and paper and cloth were used to store things in. There was wax paper sold in the stores but not plastic wrap. People sealed things in grease or wax and I have many stories about that but I will close for now until next time.
Grandma Donna
