This is the first week of December and almost one year ago we started another one of our experiments that we like to do living "like" a different era. This year has been living like 1942. This link was the post I did the first day of January of this year. http://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/hooray-it-i...
This year we had a lot to learn and a lot to do. Some of you may remember about three years ago we lived like 1943 so we could learn about the home front during ww2 and learn about the rationing that went on during the war.
I feel we did not stick to 1942 as well as I wanted because there were many things that sidetracked us. Modern issues and living in the real world of 2017 but then there were medical issues. But we did our best to stay on track. We started realizing we do not want to live as most people do today and even wished we were further back in time. That is when I decided I would invent my own era and call it the Vintarian era. It is somewhere between 1900 and 1940s.
I did not do a lot of posting on living like 1942 after three or 4 months because once we settled in we were pretty repetitious.
Cooking has been very important and we did really well at first but then later on we were eating to much bread, eggs and dairy.
I think the problem is after living in the real world of super size me 2017 our portions gradually increased and that is not how it would have been in the past.
But after a serious skin issue for Charles we got in high gear, dug down to figuring out how to keep within our 1942 and heal Charles skin we left off the breads and eggs and dairy and ate meat, fruit and vegetables.
We could go into the moving business now, we ended last December moving furniture to get ready for 1942 but we didn't finish so we started off the New Year moving furniture trying to get more vintage. We continued all year restoring old furniture, moving furniture because we kept getting rid of our modern things because we discovered we like the vintage furniture better and when we would find more vintage furniture at the thrift store or yard sales we would purchase them and replace our modern furniture. But this normally caused a shift in the whole house.
I wasn't born in 1942 so I had to learn about it but my parents were just meeting each other and married as soon as ww2 was over and thus came along my brother and myself.
For us life really was like leave it to Beaver and Father knows best. Life was so very different than today but it doesn't have to be different. We can still be that family like it was in the 40s and 50s.
Please ponder on this photo above for a moment.
We make choices in our life, we choose how we want to raise our family, what items we give our children, how much noise pollution we add to our homes. The only reason life is different from when it was from this picture was taken is how we have let it change.
Some of you have no vintage life experience and why I try to show you with my personal photos so you can at least get a glimpse of a more simple life that really existed. I don't like to post my personal photos but I think it is important to do so.
After the white house that I posted at the beginning of this post Mom and Dad bought a new brick modern house and we now had an air conditioner in the living room. Those cars are not vintage cars, those are new cars. My father was doing well with his work, we lived in the city and at that time we lived more modern than most in our family.
My Father and his mother, my paternal grandmother.
Life was good, women wore dresses, when we left the house we normally put on dress gloves and a hat, including young girls. Children played outside, dinner was on the table at 5:00, bedtime was at 7:00.
We visited family often. My mothers family lived only a few hours south of where we lived.
Many of our family members lived rural and some lived with electricity and some did not. It was good for us to understand and experience life in all ways of living. This is how I learned how to wash clothes by hand, to tote water, to feed chickens and gather eggs, how to hoe a garden row and pick cotton. I learned to catch and clean a fish and to not put my finger in a clothes wringer.
These life experiences helped me when I grew up and got married and started keeping a home. At first we didn't have a television, telephone, washing machine, air conditioner or really anything but electricity and running water. There was not much to plug in other than lights and a iron. Our stove was gas.
My Grandmother and myself in the late 1980s. So long ago and yet I miss her as if she just left us yesterday. She taught me so very much she was so soft spoken, never proud and grounded. She was giving me one of her personal devotionals and had written in the back of the book, here in this photo.
This year has made me think about family and what our life was like in the past. How present people were back then. There were none of the distractions we have now. We would talk and tell stories and pay attention more to the things we did.
It has been good for us to live this vintage life that we are living now to remind ourselves how we can make life better by simply getting rid of clutter and noise and too many electronics.
We have enjoyed this year of living like 1942 and when we got off track we kept getting back on because it doesn't take much to make us want to get back into the 40s. 
My mother was a wonderful woman. She was always present, focused, listened and worked hard at everything she did. I never would have dreamed that when she became elderly I would be taking care of her like she did me. She too gone for many years now and I miss her every day.
Life is too short for us to waste one minute. We need to be more present in what we do. We should slow down and take in things going on around us. Turn the television off or throw it out, enjoy the chores we do as long as we can do them and be better listeners.
So what will we do for 2018? I don't know, we still have a little over three weeks to decide. I just might surprise you what I am thinking. :) Grandma Donna
Two of the 1942 posts
