My last post I ended with saying that moving Windsor (our 1920's icebox) back in the house caused more shifting of furniture and such and how it taught me some lessons.
During this year of this awful pandemic I have had my ups and downs just like many of you. Often I found it difficult to focus and at times I was not keeping up in the home and then I would get back on track and then the decline again. I feel this is perfectly normal to react to stress.
When we had a lot of unexpected issues on Thanksgiving week with the laundry room flooding and the freezer dying we rallied with it all and took care of things, including moving Windsor back into the kitchen
When I had to move my mothers old white metal rolling cart everything started shifting to replace another thing until I could find balance once again in the house.
I do this a lot and could not understand why I move things around so much in this house. I took an entire day to ponder on why, what am I really after? I called my daughter and we talked about her growing up and she reminded me that I never moved furniture back then and that most everything stayed in the same place and she talked about her happy childhood. She was born before the electronic/technical world over took all common sense.
I even cried that day, actually quite a few tears and then I felt better because I figured out that I was sad because I wanted to go home. I wanted to ask my mother and Grandmother and Aunts and Great Aunts and Great Grandmothers all the questions I never asked and do not have answers for.
I thought about if we took someone living in the 1930s and put them right here in 2020 what they would see, think and feel. That answer is in my head as certain as I am my name.
Windsor is almost full now.
I started thinking about my childhood home and tried so very hard to remember details of how my mother placed our furniture and I realized that most things were in sets and not as eclectic as today. I realized by trying to live like the past and to rid our home of the modern furnishings and items that were poorly made and just did not feel right to us anymore that we have become vintage eclectic.
We are parts of the past but still have some of the present and I can tell you, anything in our home that is not from the past does not feel right.
Many years now, Charles and I started our at home history projects. Charles, being a history buff understood much more than I and he could quote facts and dates but I wanted to know more about the home front and to me there was a lot missing that was not found in history books or old films.
I wanted to know and understand what went on in the home during long ago before me. I felt that many history books are focused on the great people and the great wars and the great depression.
There is a void of ordinary I wanted the ordinary, the aprons and dishes and cooking and cleaning. I wanted to know about out houses and chamber pots. What did they eat and how did they cook it? How did they do things without electricity and running water and all of these gadgets we have today.
I knew some about this because I lived in a time when some of my family did not have electricity and running water and I was born before television and computers and phones that did not require a switchboard operator or a party line.
A friend and I were talking one day and we were tossing around how would it have been during the years of food rationing during ww2 and this started us off doing a year, rationing food as they did in 1943.
As we were learning new things, I kept feeling a pull back further in time, it was a homesick feeling and like there was something missing but and exciting time too because I felt there is so much more to learn.
So first we did a few years of world war 2 and then we moved backward to the 1920s but It did not take long for me to know, it was the years of the great depression that I was interested in. All this while I was studying from about 1880 to the mid to late 1940s. I did not need to know more than that because I have memories of the years after that.
As I studied the 1920s, it just did not feel right, it was too loose, I could feel it was not going in the right direction, too much of everything, things moving faster, more people getting electricity, people going to the movies, a big change in fashion and people were taking on more debt. Then I found it not surprising what happened, the Great Depression.
Oh there were practical people during the 1920s and as I have been researching behind the scenes about the home front, and those practical people faired a lot better during the Great Depression.
These were the people I wanted to know more about.
Saying all of this, I have found that I am searching for the good parts of the past to make our home comfortable. The home front, where the people that made good choices lived.
We are in a world saturated with information about the bad and I choose to focus on what makes our home a refuge from all that other.
Simple Baked Butternut Squash. Slice and remove seeds, flip over, inside down, pour 2 cups water and bake in the oven 350 for about one and half hours until done.
Right now I feel more energy in our home, I have a better understand where I am going with the knowledge I have found so far. I understand the reason I am moving furniture so much is that I have vintage eclectic items that came about in search of more living like the past and trying to put it in a modern 1959 home.
I am most happy with ordinary.
To me the most important part of wanting or trying to live a more simple life, a more vintage life, a more old fashioned life or to live more like the past is, "we need to understand Simple".
Last week it was cold enough to pull out the flannel sheets. We had to purchase a new set because unfortunately this is one thing that requires updating.
If you go on a quest to find an old fashioned style, using my method is not a great way. Ours got a bit jumbled because we have been skipping around in time. Learn all you can about what era you like. It is okay to have something from 1880 and something from 1905. It is okay to have something from 1920s and 1930s but give it thought of how it will all go together. Nothing is wrong with eclectic, it can be quite charming. I am trying to save you from a life of shifting furniture. :)
Now that I figured out about how much of the furniture in the home, in the past, was in sets, and same colors or wood, do not be surprised if you start seeing a few items that have been painted or stained. Remember, I am a vintarian, I made up that word long ago to merge this current time with the past.
I realize that many of you are perfectly happy with your life and many people are not curious about the past, many are happy with this modern world as it is and there is nothing wrong with that. I am just sharing our adventures about learning more about the past and in doing so we have come to find that we are very happy that we have done this because it has changed our lives.
We are happier, we always have something to look forward to, it has helped us to save money, we are living a more purposeful life and it makes sense.
Grandma Donna
Some older posts of when we started living more like the past
When we started living like the past at home
http://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/hooray-it-i...
When I started using the word Vintarian
http://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/the-lighter...
Simple Vintarian Summer
https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/simple-vin...
1940s naval museum
http://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/1940s-ww2-h...
1943 ratioining
http://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/1940s-ratio...
July 2015 start date of 1943
.jpg "Thanksgiving week flood and Windsor is Back")