Catch-up Time

It's high time for one of those lil' bit of everything kinda posts - a catch-up post. The Great Housekeeping Experiment has left me curious about lots of things along the way, and I wanted to report on some of the things I've discovered.

First of all, my decision to straighten up the living room just before going to bed at night seems to work really well for me right now. I haven't forgotten to do it in quite some time, and having that extra few minutes in the morning for bedmaking has come in handy. For now, it works nicely. I'm not sure that'll be the case as I add more chores to my housekeeping schedule. The evenings may become a little more busy. Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Remember that article on "eating to reduce" in a vintage copy of Good Housekeeping? I was curious about the portions I've been eating and how they compare to 1945 diet advice. According to the magazine, a standard size portion of cereal (suitable only for the men and teenaged boys in your family) was 2/3 cup. Women, teenaged girls and children should have a slightly smaller portion. A few days ago, Malt-O-Meal was on the menu at breakfast, and I prepared one serving according to the instructions on the package. When the cereal was finished cooking, it turned out to be 3/4 cup. Larger than even the serving size recommended for men and growing boys! I think I'll try cutting the size of the portions I'm making by just a smidge and see if I can get the finished servings of cereal down at least to 2/3 cup. I'd love a vintage waistline!

Speaking of cereal, this morning's menu was perfect for a chilly day:

Oatmeal with Prunes

The description is ever-so-slightly different than a similar meal I had a few weeks ago:

Stewed Prunes

Oatmeal

So instead of serving the Prunes on the side, I cut them in pieces and dropped 'em into the pot of oatmeal while it was bubbling away. A subtle twist on words here, but I think the author of the cookbook meant for these to be two different meals. In a vintage magazine article on bringing your family back to the breakfast table, I read that you might make cooked cereals more tempting to Jim or little Patty by adding dried dates, raisins, figs, prunes, or apricots. No doubt.

One of the questions I took up about a month ago was the wardrobe appropriate for a 1940s housewife during the early hours of the morning. Should I be fully dressed and ready for company by the time I start breakfast? Would a housecoat be suitable for morning housework? How 'bout a robe and slippers? Since I head off for work after breakfast, I've been getting dressed before getting things started in the kitchen - but hadn't given up my comfy slippers until yesterday. Let's face it, though. If a '40s housewife went to the trouble of getting fully dressed before breakfast, she probably didn't dumb down her outfit with slippers! So shoes it is. And though I love wearing a pinafore-style apron while I'm working at the stove, it doesn't seem quite right once I'm sitting down to eat. It's funny --- there's nobody here to see what I'm wearing - or not wearing - at the breakfast table, but wardrobe can really have an impact on your state of mind. Breakfast should be a festive meal.

In the homes of workers breakfast always comes at the all-too-brief period between waking and dashing off for the train to the city. It is the unusual commuter who rises early enough to spend much time at table in the morning... Set your table in the sun, if possible. Look out on a garden if you can do so, or, in winter, on a birds' feeding station. It's fun to have breakfast in company with the juncos and blue jays. It's also nice to pull a small table close up to the open fire on chilly mornings, or to set out breakfast on the terrace in summer. Flowers or fruit on the table. Place mats, or a gay peasant cloth. Napkins at left. People should wake up cheerful and breakfast should be serene and gay. Try to manage your household so that your husband enjoys his breakfast and wishes he could stay longer, even as you push him out the door with a kiss on his way to the eight-fourteen.

Lily Haxworth Wallace, ed., The New American Etiquette
(New York: Books, 1941)

Here's my last bit of catch-up for the day. A glimpse of my favorite vintage tablecloth, which probably dates to the WWII years. It makes my table so bright and cheery. Even on days with a menu like the infamous Tomato Juice and Waffles with Butterscotch Sauce.

Bran Bread Reflections

My 1945 breakfast menu for tomorrow includes Toasted Bran Bread, so I was poking around today looking for recipes - figuring it would be just a quick bread. Well, there is a recipe in my cookbook for Date Bran Bread, but it calls for the bread to be steamed for three hours! I have never steamed anything before, but I'm giving this a try. My largest pot isn't big enough for more than one of the small loaf pans, and I don't have any used coffee cans or other metal cans hanging about, so, after doing some research online, I bought one of those aluminum foil roasters, placed water in the bottom with some stones to raise the loaf pans above the water. Covered the filled loaf pans tightly with foil and slid the whole affair inside a 350-degree oven. I have no idea if this is going to work.

This is another of those instances where the author of the cookbook seems to take for granted that her readers have some basic skills most of us no longer learn from our mothers and grandmothers. Steaming bread. Making jam from dried fruit.

It will be six weeks tomorrow since I set forth on The Great Housekeeping Experiment. Six very interesting weeks. I realized the other day that I have a much healthier-looking, better stocked fridge than I've had in years. There are grapefruits and oranges inside, together with some dried apricots and prunes in sealed containers. A couple varieties of juice - and milk and eggs that are still fresh! (That used to be a rarity.) My cupboards are better stocked than they've been in a long time: Shredded Wheat, Malt-O-Meal, rolled oats, cornmeal, Wheatena, flour, wheat bran... These were the building blocks of a '40s wintertime breakfast. If a housewife kept these items on hand, she'd be able to put a variety of breakfasts on the table.

And speaking of breakfast - these vintage menus are just as carb-heavy as I anticipated, but it's easy to adapt them to be a little friendlier to the waistline. What I've been finding - much to my surprise - is that I've come to feel a real sense of pride in making a pot of non-gummy oatmeal, lump-free cornmeal mush, and farina with just the right amount of water. I've also been getting to know my stovetop better. Just where the heat needs to be set to get the water to boil quickly, how far to lower it to keep a good simmer going. It's funny to feel so accomplished when it comes to things most of my friends wouldn't get very excited about.

Good news! I just checked my oven and the batter I left inside those loaf pans actually appears to be turning into bread!!! I'd say they're just about done. Maybe five more minutes.

Something else I've learned in the last six weeks: when I pick up the things in my bedroom and living room everyday, the job is fairly easy each time. The same goes when it comes to the breakfast dishes. Tidy begets tidy, so when my bedroom is picked up, I don't want to set something down where it doesn't belong. It's kind of nice to keep these rooms picked up by putting things back where they belong in the first place. My living room also seems a whole lot more spacious, and, boy, is it nice to come home to a dark apartment and not have to worry about stumbling over something as I'm looking for the light switch.

I've also discovered that my sleeping habits stink. In the American Home article I mentioned several days ago, the author writes that she wakes every day at 6:30 - no matter what the day of the week. This has got to be a whole lot easier on the body than my own habit of burning the midnight oil and sleeping in as late as possible, getting up at a different time nearly every day. I've got a long road to go, so this will be something I'll try and fold into my routine over time.

As I finish writing this, I'm enjoying a slice of my own Bran Bread, fresh from the oven. I can't believe I pulled this off! It's nice and moist, too. I ended up baking it for about 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees F. I'm definitely freezing one of these loaves so I don't have to go through this again for quite some time...

Kitchen Mathematics + Ash Tray Etiquette

Does my oven run a little hot or is it just better insulated than ovens were 60 years ago?

Grapefruit Juice
Corn-meal Muffins, Jelly

I made Corn-meal Muffins for breakfast this morning, and they were well done several minutes early. Tough and dry in such a short time. Maybe it's not my oven. Maybe it's just a sign how radically our tastes have changed in 60 years. Of course, it could also be that I'm not a good cook - but I've been trying very hard to stick carefully to the directions. None of the baked goods I've made so far have been light or fluffy or flavorful. Did people in the '40s just not know how lovely pancakes or muffins could taste, or have we developed greater expectations of our food? Have our recipes for pancakes and muffins evolved? Just a little something to mull over the next time I have some baking to do for breakfast.

It's kinda tricky to work baking into your morning routine. In fact, the whole process in making breakfast still feels very mathematical. "Let's see, if the Stewed Prunes are going to take 45-50 minutes, but the Oatmeal only 5 minutes plus another 5 minutes to bring the water to boil..." You get the idea.

Moving my chores in the living room to the evenings instead of the mornings has worked out pretty well for now. I may have to move 'em on back to the mornings once I'm ready to start doing some heavy-duty housework at night, but I'll take this one week at a time.

Gather up on tray to take out: used ash trays, articles belonging in other rooms, plants or flowers to be tended.

Now here's one item I don't have to worry about when I'm straightening up the living room. There aren't any ash trays to take up and bring into the kitchen for cleaning. That's got to be a messy job. Smoking was h.o.t. during the WWII era. Especially cigarettes. Lily Haxworth Wallace dedicates an entire chapter to chewing gum and smoking in New American Etiquette (1941). In this passage, she firmly explains how important it is that houseguests use ash trays:

You should be very careful of ashes from cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. Do not let them carelessly fall on the floor or table in your own or your hostess' home. If there is no ash tray close by, ask for one and use it frequently. Do not forget the length of ashes on your cigarette. Never flick ashes into a plate at the dinner table and never let them drop into a wastebasket.

Bit-O-Honey

My crazy, no good, very bad, horrible work week continues, but - despite it all - I was able to get myself out of bed this morning at a reputable hour and make it through almost every bit of my new early morning housekeeping routine. Today's 1945 menu:

Orange Slices
Griddlecakes, Honey

I was determined that this batch of Griddlecakes would turn out better than the last, and they were definitely a step in the right direction! I followed the recipe's instructions to a tee, but the batter was still very thick. So added a little more milk and called it a day. Griddlecakes with Honey are very tasty --- though I should probably have heated the Honey to get it to just the right consistency. All in all, a yummy, but slightly heavy breakfast. At least I'm not dreading the leftovers this time!

I think I am going to go ahead and adopt the 1947 Good Housekeeping manual's recommendation to straighten up the living room before going to bed at night instead of doing it in the evening and again in the morning. As a household-of-one, I don't have to worry about anybody else making a mess of my living room after I've set it to rights. It should be pristine when I get up in the morning. Now if there's ever a Mister Jitterbug about the place, I may have to make a change, but for now...

The living room is tidied, the sink is empty, and the dishwasher has plenty of room for tomorrow's breakfast dishes. Time for some well-deserved rest.

Competing Visions

Since I still had a Grapefruit Half left over from yesterday, today's breakfast was more of the same. Once again, I ended up with citrus juice on my tablecloth. I've decided that I'm either going to have to loosen each of the segments at the kitchen countertop before bringing my grapefruit to the table or take the tablecloth off the table when grapefruits or oranges are on the menu! Maybe I'll have pick up some non-vintage table linens for just these kinds of mornings...

I came across an article in a July 1944 issue of The American Home with one woman's routine in keeping house. "I Run My Career Like a Star" was written by Celia Mattox, a mother of three. Here's the bit on her morning schedule:

Whatever day it is, it begins at 6:30. To wash, I slip into a becoming dressing gown - watch the shade, for a strong color gives a pasty look to a face without any make-up. Then I change into my blue denim outfit to prepare breakfast. [She explains earlier that while at home during the day she likes to wear a "becoming cotton blouse" with a blue denim skirt and "gay apron."] That over, the dishes are stacked, the house is aired, and I snatch a few minutes to do my exercises.

There's one woman who opted for a "dressing gown" while she spent some time in the bathroom washing up, but she was fully dressed before hitting the kitchen. I notice that she mentions stacking the dishes (maybe she doesn't wash her breakfast dishes right away either) and airing her house (fresh air is given lots of emphasis in the 1945 housekeeping manual). It sounds like Mrs. Mattox wouldn't have much to argue about with the authors of the manual - at least when it comes to her early morning routine. Heck, maybe she even owned a copy herself!



The Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Book (1947), edited by Helen W. Kendall, also contains a schedule for housework, though it's not quite as detailed as the one in the 1945 manual. Each member of the household is instructed to "hang up night clothes and put away slippers" before finishing up in their bedrooms in the morning. As soon as breakfast is over, "the dishes should be washed and the kitchen straightened up before you go about other household work."

• Remove dishes from the table, scrape, and rinse under the faucet if they need it. Stack them neatly at one side of the sink.
  
• Put away foods that belong in the refrigerator.
  
• Clear away waste food. Get rid of grounds from coffee or tea pot and empty cooking utensils which have been soaking during the meal.
  
• Clean sink so that it will be ready for dishwashing.
  
• Prepare dishwater and wash, dry, and put away dishes.

Kendall suggests that the living room be tidied up just before going to bed at night. "To start each day with the room neat, take a few minutes before going to bed to pick up newspapers and magazines, empty the ash trays, and take glasses into the kitchen." While the 1945 manual advises every member of the family to do their part in straightening up the living room at bedtime, they seem to have built this step into the post-breakfast routine just in case others hadn't done their part after Mother retired for the evening. Those crazy teenagers and their record players! As a one-woman household, I have more control over this situation, so tidying up the living room at bedtime rather than in the morning is certainly an option.

Kendall recommends that pots and pans be soaked during the meal so they're ready for dishwashing as soon as you are. A great concept, but what if your family's interested in a second serving? This would probably work out fine for me unless I had any leftovers that needed to be dispatched with beforehand. The biggest way in which Kendall's routine differs from my 1945 housekeeping manual is dishwashing. She is adamant that the breakfast dishes must be washed before doing anything else. This is not a bad idea, but the fact that I have a dishwasher which only gets filled up a couple times a week makes it kind of a moot point. I might give some thought to getting the pots and pans washed up and put away right after breakfast. If I straightened up the living room at bedtime, that'd free up some time for dishwashing in the a.m.

What do you think? Have you come across any vintage housekeeping schedules that offer advice for these early morning chores?

Week Four: The Mission

This week's mission will be the last step in building my early morning housekeeping routine.

Put living room in order.

• Open windows top and bottom for free circulation of air.
  
• Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room, such as books, magazines, music, games, victrola records, cards, etc.
  
• Gather up on tray to be taken out: used ash trays, articles belonging in other rooms, plants or flowers to be tended. Collect trash in waste basket.
  
• Carry out tray.

Why does the living room come first? Why not get the breakfast dishes washed before embarking on the day's work? Why not get started cleaning one of the other rooms? The authors of the manual explain the method to their madness as they describe why each member of the family should help straighten up the living room before going to bed at night:

The living room belongs to the whole family. To each person it is a place for quiet recreation, relaxation, study or rest. Surely those who enjoy the living room should share the responsibility for seeing to it that clutter and confusion do not mar its restful air of hospitality.

This does not mean that the room should not have the charm of livability. It does mean that each person should be thoughtful enough to put away school books and papers, playing cards, sewing or the stamp collection, as the case may be, when work or play is over. If every one helps by picking up newspapers, returning magazines to table or rack, and emptying ash trays just before bedtime each evening, the homemaker will have just that much less to do during the busy hours of the next morning. And the living room will present a serene face to the earliest caller.

Pop ins! Getting everybody fed and off to school or work was top priority, but being prepared for pop-in visitors was the very next item on the agenda. Even if you were busily working away in another room when a salesman came by or a neighbor popped in for a cup of sugar, you'd have a tidy living room in which to receive them. Our homes today are so much more private than they were once upon a time. We expect visitors and guests only when they've been invited. And rarely do any salespeople knock on our doors these days. Imagine what it must have been like knowing that you might have a caller at any time between breakfast and bedtime...

Circle the Wagons!

Clear breakfast dishes from table to tray or tea wagon.

Before we turn from the dining room or breakfast nook to the kitchen sink, I just want to mention the tea wagon suggested for aiding the housewife in clearing the table. Here's an alternative to the all-purpose tray - and, boy, I bet you could fit a whole lot more on one of these babies! While I was looking about online for pictures of vintage tea wagons, I realized that they've been called all kinds of things over the years: tea trolleys, tea carts, cocktail trolleys, bar carts. They always make me think of the beverage carts that stewardesses push up and down the airplane aisle. "Coffee? Soda? Snack?"

According to one antique dealer in London, Ontario, tea wagons were all the rage from the 1920s to the '40s. A tea wagon in the dining room could also be used as a sort of sideboard during the meal. Here are some of the most fetching '40s tea wagons I've seen in my travels today, from the traditional...

to high Art Deco...

Tabula Rasa

Now that the leftovers are eaten and the nightmare behind me, I must spill about the atrocious breakfast menu I prepared yesterday morning:

Tomato Juice

Waffles

Butterscotch Sauce

Adaptations:

I don't own a waffle iron, so the waffles were frozen. This certainly made the menu a whole lot easier to prepare and clean up after than it would have been for a 1940s housewife. Of course, my Homestyle Eggos weren't as tasty as they would have been fresh from a waffle iron either!

There were way too many strong flavors going on with this breakfast menu. The tomato juice would have been tastier with an omelet or scrambled eggs and toast. With a sticky, sweet mess like Waffles and Butterscotch Sauce - not so much. The Butterscotch Sauce was a recipe inside the cookbook, made in a saucepan from brown sugar, butter, lemon juice, and nutmeats. My biggest mistake was probably using margarine for something with the word "butter" actually in its name! And none of the ingredients tasted like they melded together. All I could taste as I ate the Waffles was brown sugar, lemon juice, and walnuts. And the fact that it may have been slightly overcooked certainly didn't do it any favors. Nevertheless, I forced myself to reheat the sauce and choke it down again this morning. It was just as gag-inducing as I remembered it. I'm not sure I'll try this one again. The only real good to come of this menu is that I found out my Air-O-Hood does a great job at whisking "cooking odors" away! Here's to better breakfasts tomorrow morning...

Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room. Gather up to take out: articles belonging in other rooms, plants or flowers to be tended; place on tray or tea wagon.

So what kinds of things - besides dirty dishes - would my '40s counterpart have been picking up and restoring to their proper places when breakfast was finished? The morning newspaper, I suppose. Small electrical appliances like toasters were often used right on the breakfast table, so they would have to have been unplugged and returned to the cupboard where they belonged. Salt and pepper shakers, pots of jam, and the sugar bowl - all these items might have been returned to the refrigerator or a special shelf in the kitchen. Maybe a child left a small book or toy at the table by accident. These, too, would need to be removed. Cloth napkins would need to be laundered, though the tablecloth could probably just be brushed clean as long as there hadn't been any spills.

The authors of America's Housekeeping Book are so detailed, they even remember the plants or flowers that might serve as a centerpiece in the dining room or the breakfast nook. My impression from the vintage magazines I've looked through is that potted flowers, like small geraniums, and bowls of fruit were the most popular centerpieces for these informal table settings. And if a potted plant needs watering or pruning, it'd definitely be a lot neater to do that kind of thing in the kitchen sink than at the table. The only flowers at my kitchen table are in the design on the tablecloth, so they never need much in the way of tending!

Here's a salute to some tidy breakfast tables of the '40s - and their owners:

Week Three: The Mission

This week's mission may sound kind of lengthy, but it shouldn't take more than ten minutes a day. Just a general straightening up of the dining area, scraping and rinsing the dishes so they'll be more easily washed later on, and putting away the ingredients used in making breakfast.

Clear away dishes and misplaced articles from dining room, after breakfast.

• Open dining room windows top and bottom for free circulation of air.
• Clear breakfast dishes from table to tray or tea wagon. Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room.
• Gather up to take out: articles belonging in other rooms, plants or flowers to be tended; place on tray or tea wagon. Collect trash in waste basket.
• Carry out tray or tea wagon.

Rinse and stack dishes, pots and pans in kitchen.

• Open kitchen windows top and bottom for free circulation of air, or open kitchen ventilator.
• Rinse and stack dishes, pots and pans.

Put away food.

• Check and reorganize foods; put away.

A Morning with the Ambergs

A few more pictures of Mrs. Amberg hard at work at home in September 1941. It's interesting that the shoes she's wearing are not the pumps we usually see in vintage ads of women at work; they're just oxfords. And she's wearing cotton socks. So she's dressed for comfort, with her hair tied up in a simple ribbon. Before preparing lunch, she's changed into a striped dress - maybe because Gilbert was coming home. Looks like it's toasted sandwiches and soup on the menu at the Amberg house. Stay tuned tomorrow to see how this 1941 housewife spent the afternoon...


Jane Amberg, housewife & mother, busy straightening up before launching into some heavy cleaning w. dust mop & carpet sweeper in her living room at home.


Jane Amberg scrubbing the bathtub in bathroom at home.


Jane Amberg using pop-up toaster w. slices of bread as she makes sandwiches for her three children at lunchtime in kitchen at home.

Jane Amberg, serving lunch to her husband Gilbert who has come home fr. the office a few minutes away & her ever-present kids at the kitchen table at home.

Clean, Sweet and Fresh

The rooms where we sleep should be kept immaculately clean, sweet and fresh at all times.

Here again, a well-trained family can help with the care. If each one... puts away personal possessions... the sum total of saved time really amounts to something for the homemaker or servant.

See the problem here is that I do more than sleep in my bedroom. As one of only three rooms in my apartment, it gets a ton of use! If I had a whole house to live in, my possessions might end up a little more evenly spread around. What I've been noticing in the last few days is that when the room is neat to begin with and I put one thing down out of place, it's jarring - keeps on jumping out at me, so to speak. I just have to pick it up and dispose of it and send it along to its proper home.

Even the most immaculate '40s housewife who only slept in her bedroom would have had to do some straightening up in the morning. There would have been books and magazines, ashtrays or pipes, empty water glasses - the kinds of things people typically leave on their nightstands as they turn out the lamp and settle in for a good night's sleep. If a woman had to spend the next couple of hours making breakfast and getting the family off to school and work, she would have appreciated being able to leave her bedroom in decent shape until she could return to it with her full attention...

Now, my 1945 manual instructs me to do that very thing. Each and every morning after cleaning up after breakfast and cleaning the living room, the '40s housekeeper was supposed to give every one of the bedrooms its daily once over. And then on Thursdays - in the late morning or early afternoon - she was scheduled to give the bedrooms a thorough weekly cleaning. That scenario's obviously a fantasy for this working girl, so I'm going to give the bedroom just a thorough weekly cleaning on Thursday evenings. I'll have to be sure that the daily work assigned for bedrooms is being covered on those Thursday evenings, too.