Daylight Discoveries

Last Saturday was the last time I did any real housekeeping, and I got a lot done - despite the fact that I was beginning to feel icky and my stomach turned over at the thought of eating the dinner I spend so much time preparing. Nevertheless, it was an interesting day and one I've been wanting to share some thoughts about ever since.

My sister was back in town, my babysitting duties were over for the time being, and I had shifted Thursday's cleaning-of-the-bedroom forward to Saturday morning. What a difference there is in housekeeping by day! It's amazing how much grime you can actually see when you're cleaning a room in broad daylight. I have a painted wooden nightstand in my bedroom and was startled to discover these rings of grime around the knobs. Where my fingers actually come in contact with the wood every time I pull a drawer open, I guess. It only took a damp cloth to clean them up, but *gasp* what other horrors must be sharing this apartment with me!

I've been trying to add a little something new to my routine in the bedroom each week. Here are the new steps added last week:

Dust high mouldings, door and window frames, window shades and Venetian blinds when necessary.

Dust high objects if necessary (mantels, high shelves, window sills, tops of bookcases, etc.).

Because I've been such a crummy housekeeper, I'm just going to take it for granted that these chores are always necessary. Better to be safe than sorry. Besides, my spartan living arrangements haven't left me very many of these kinds of things to dust as it is. No high mouldings, no window shades, no mantels, high shelves, or tops of bookcases. I do have some Venetian blinds that just attract dust like magnets. And my window sills were super grimy. Oh, yeah - here's another discovery I couldn't see when housekeeping at night: there were rusty colored stains on the wall beneath my window. Obviously water that had come in through the screen in the window at some point and dripped down the wall. I'd never seen them before cleaning the bedroom last Saturday! Just a wipe of the cloth and they were gone, but what a scary surprise.

One of the nicer surprises when cleaning during the day last weekend was hearing the sounds of cleaning coming from other apartments which look out on my courtyard. While I was unwinding the cord to my own vacuum, I could hear other people vacuuming their apartments. There was a kind of kinship in the fact that we were all spending this Saturday morning indoors making our homes a little happier. We tend to think of '40s housewives as leading isolated lives when they were at home day in and day out, but I'll bet they felt a kind of camaraderie as they watched their neighbors hanging the laundry out to dry or heard somebody in the building running a vacuum cleaner.

I did find a little clarification on the mattress turning question when I was reading the manual's tips on the care of innerspring mattresses:

Turn the mattress top to bottom one week, and end to end the next week.

Now if I could only think of a way to remember which direction I've turned the mattress the week before...

Perception v. Reality

Feeling under the weather is so dreary. I guess colds and viruses have their way with us all every once in awhile, but I can't wait to feel better again! I looked at my blog today and couldn't believe how many days have gone by since I felt like posting - or eating - or, well, doing much of anything. What a week!

The chores I do these days are done out of pure desperation. Run out of clothes (well, good clothes)? Guess I'd better haul myself down to the laundromat. No time or energy for sorting or turning out pockets or mulling over modern fabrics. I made my bed once a few days ago when I couldn't stand not having the bedcovers tucked in all tidily. I have no appetite still, so I'm eating catch as catch can. My housekeeping routine flew a white flag to illness several days ago.

So I'll make this a brief post. I noticed that my one-month mission in analyzing my food dollar ran its course a couple days ago. Here is how America's Housekeeping Book (1945) recommends that housewives spend their "food dollar":

It helps also occasionally to keep a detailed food record for a couple of weeks or a month with separate totals for cost of cereal foods; fruits and vegetables; meats, fish and eggs; milk and cheese; and in a final class, fats, sugar and miscellaneous items. On a modest income, in order to get a balanced diet, not far from 1/5 of the food money should go for each of these five groups.

As embarrassing as it's been to bare how my own food dollar breaks down, I guess things can only improve from here!

Fats, Sugar and Miscellaneous Items = $247.04 (66%)

Fruits and Vegetables = $40.40 (11%)

Cereal Foods = $37.95 (10%)

Milk and Cheese = $30.64 (8%)

Eggs, Beans, and Soy = $19.64 (5%)

Part of the reason the first category is so large is because I eat many more frozen, prepared foods than is good for my pocketbook or my waistline. When you have a deathly fear of doing dishes or dirtying up a kitchen you don't want to clean, reheating frozen foods is a heck of a lot easier than cooking a meal from scratch. Using multiple pots and pans. Spilling things on the stovetop.

I am very surprised by the total I'm spending on food. In one month, I spent $375.67. What I thought I was spending on food was about $250-275 per month. Quite a difference between perception and reality! I'm sure that as I reform my dinner habits - slowly, but surely - there will be some changes here. So I'll try this mini-mission again in several months and plan on seeing some improvements.

The Care and Feeding of Invalids

I've got lots to dish about my experience in making my first 1945 dinner menu, but I've been been sick - and pretty queasy all day long - so food is not exactly on the top of my list right now! I'll save that for tomorrow.

I consulted the manual this morning to see if its authors had any advice for the '40s housewife on caring for invalids. Nada - but I did find some words of advice in my cookbook on feeding invalids:

When possible, remove all bottles and suggestions of medicine from the room.

Meals should be served at regular intervals...

Before serving the meal, be sure that the patient is ready for it, with hands and face washed; and that provision has been made for placing the tray where it will be convenient for him or his attendant to reach it. [It's too bad the housewife can't put that attendant to work on all these preparations!]

The tray should be covered with a clean napkin or tray cover, and the dishes and serving should be very dainty. A flower or sprig of green will often take an invalid's mind from the food, and the attractiveness of the whole will tempt him to eat what would otherwise remain untouched.

Serving the meal in courses will add to the interest.

Invalids will often take liquid diet through a straw...

Remove the tray and dishes as soon as the patient has finished eating. In contagious diseases, sterilize everything used in the sick-room by boiling in water for ten minutes.

They then go on to describe all kinds of horrific dishes, from a milk/yeast-cake/sugar beverage to cold molded barley gruel. Blech! My stomach is doing somersaults just at the thought...

Sun and Air

My sister is home at last, so my niece is in good hands again - and I'm sick. I think I caught whatever virus Kitten was coping with, so I'm glad it held off until I could be sick on my own time. My routine took a hit on Thursday evening (I didn't get home until 1 a.m.) and again on Friday morning (just barely made it to work), but I'm taking it very easy this weekend. Trying to get lots of rest, but moving slowly through my accustomed chores. Did a little bit of Wednesday's marketing last night and this morning have just begun Thursday's weekly cleaning-of-the-bedroom.

Cleaning the bedroom isn't exactly a fast-paced chore. After stripping the beds and hanging the covers out to air, you tote your bric-a-brac out to wherever you're going to dust or polish it and bring your cleaning equipment and fresh linens into the bedroom. Then it's just a matter of waiting for fresh air to do its part of the job. You see, the mattress and pillows need to be aired, too. Now, if you were cleaning several bedrooms, you could probably work the timing out so that you were getting things started in each of your other rooms while you were waiting for the first room to be properly aired. Here are some guidelines from the manual for putting that fresh air to work:

Mattresses

Innerspring:

Sun and air once a week (strip off the bedding and open the windows wide for at least an hour).

Pillows

Air pillows at least once a month by placing them on chairs near an open window.

Bedding

Bedding should be aired at least once a week. Spread it over two chairs near an open window and leave it there for at least an hour. An occasional airing out of doors over a line is good for it. Choose a day when the weather is fair to warm.

My bedroom window is open and the blinds have been pulled so the mattress and pillows are getting as much fresh air as possible. I've hung my quilt and blanket over the railing outside on my landing, and I'll give them a good shake before bringing them inside. Get all the dust out. Apartment Land is not an ideal place for doing these kinds of chores - what I wouldn't give for an outdoor clothesline!!! - and I live in a city with a lot of crime, so I'm always a little worried my bed covers will disappear while they're airing!

Unless my appetite takes a nosedive, I'm going to try the first of my 1945 dinner menus this evening:

Steamed Rice

Buttered Carrots

Celery Cabbage Salad

Steamed Molasses Pudding

This is a weekday (Monday-Saturday) dinner with a few alterations. I'm omitting the meat course. 1940s home economists believed that each dinner should contain both a starchy vegetable or grain (potatoes, rice, etc.) and a bread. That's way too many carbs for me, so I'm going to have one or the other. Since my dessert is a bready-type dish, I'm going to opt for the Steamed Rice over the Enriched Bread this 'time round. The recommended beverages are Milk and Coffee. Do you drink a full glass of milk with your meals? It's been years since I did so, and though I'm not sure this is a good thing (am I really getting enough calcium?), the thought kind of icks me out after all this time. Coffee at breakfast is more than enough for me, so I think I'll just go with a glass of ice water at dinner. This time, anyway.

My hour is up and it's time to get to work making up the bed. Hey, if I'm going to be feeling under the weather all weekend, there's no place for recuperating like a fresh, clean bed!

Sunday Dinner

Kitten is f.i.n.a.l.l.y asleep after a long tug-of-war with bedtime. I picked her up at her grandmother's after work and she was in the middle of what would become several meltdowns. From what I hear, she didn't have a nap today so I'm not surprised the evening was such a trial. The good news is that her tummy hasn't been upset in four days now. Her throat is still sore, her nose is still runny, and she misses her mother and baby sister terribly. I tried to clean things up a bit after she feel asleep. Housekeeping in the dark - with just a very dim light in the kitchen - is not a treat. Just 24 more hours...

I was showing a friend my 1945 cookbook yesterday and she noticed right away that the menus in the back are different on Sundays than they are on every other day of the week. Sunday is the one day where the menus shift from a Breakfast-Lunch-Dinner pattern to Breakfast-Dinner-Supper. A telling glimpse into the rhythms of yesterday. When Sundays for most Americans meant a morning church service, a dinner at mid-day that was more elaborate than any other meal of the week, and a light supper in the evening. These were the Sundays I knew as a child in the 1970s and '80s. When we got home from church, my mother would hurry off to the kitchen and bustle about as we played indoors. We were still in our church clothes - my mom looking fancier than she had all week - and we'd sit down to the table at 1 or 2:00.

There's something to be said for sharing these kinds of feasts as a family on a regular basis. Not just once or twice during the holidays, but pausing once a week to express your gratitude for the good things on your table and the people 'round it. A chance to teach little ones about table manners and fine dining. A chance for mom (or whomever the cook in the family might be) to show off some new recipes. A chance for the family to regularly use their finest dishes and glassware. Society as a whole pausing for a day of rest is something we've lost in 2009 and not for the better, I think. I don't have a husband or children to treat to an elaborate dinner, but I'd love to bring back some of that ritual to my Sundays...

For now, I'm sticking to the Monday-Saturday dinner menus. And I'll probably do 'em up on Saturday evenings. That gives me plenty of time to prepare them and clean up afterwards. I'm going to need to get my sea legs before I try doing any of these on a weeknight!

A Room with a View

Better Homes and Gardens extended the idea of an all-efficient kitchen right on into the dooryard in this February 1947 article about the help that a great view could be for the housewife:

What Does Your Wife See From the Kitchen?

Why ignore the kitchen window when planning your garden? Other windows will frame special views, each carefully planned. Yet women spend more than one-third of all their daylight hours in the kitchen, more if they iron there, too. Tho moments to look out are few, even fleeting glances can restore energy and lift spirits. Gay flower colors and graceful foliage of choice plants can offer their cheer. Or yours can be a tiny garden, quiet and peaceful - a place for shadows to play.

Alas, the little kitchen in my little apartment hasn't any windows or views. (I'm so jealous of you homeowners!) I wouldn't say I'm spending one-third of all my daylight hours in the kitchen yet, but I'll soon be adding a vintage dinner to my routine once a week. And when my sister gets home and my niece is happily under her mother's care again, I'll be adding a weekly cleaning o' the kitchen to my routine. Is it time to add some flowering plants or a pot of ivy to my windowless workspace? Any ideas for some houseplants with a '40s flair that'll thrive in the kitchen?

Dinner Plans

Last Wednesday, I began preparing for my first 1945 dinner menu by doing some marketing with the first of the menus in mind. Looking ahead, I noticed there are lots of steamed puddings to look forward to. Steaming is something we pretty much reserve these days for rice, veggies, and other main dish kinds of things - but dessert? It's very vintage. I wonder why it went out of style...

So I decided this morning that it was time to invest in some steaming equipment. As best I can tell, there are four basic things you need to have on hand: a big kettle-type pot, a rack that can be set on the bottom of the pot above some boiling water, a pudding mold (recycled cans from coffee, vegetables, etc. can be used as can ceramic or other baking dishes), and some wax paper or aluminum foil for covering the mold(s) tightly. I have a new chiffon cake pan that'd be perfect for a pudding mold, but I needed to find a kettle big enough - and tall enough - to hold it!

After spending about an hour in the kitchen aisles at Target, I settled on a 12-quart aluminum tamale steamer. (Luckily, tamales and other Mexican cookery are very important locally, so there were lots of pots available that looked like they would be suitable for steaming small and medium-sized puddings.) The pot has a ledge a few inches from the bottom and comes with a steaming insert that sits right inside that ledge. And luckiest of all, when I brought it home, the chiffon cake pan slid right on in. It's going to be perfect. I'm not yet sure which night I'll put this "new" dinner on the table but there'll be a Steamed Molasses Pudding on the menu for dessert!

I'm sticking with the vintage breakfasts, too - though I'm going to take it very easy with the Griddle Cakes, French Toast, etc. I'm going back through the menus a second time now, but I'm going to try and mix things up a bit by taking advantage of some of the suggested alternatives that pop up every so often. And once the weather really warms up, I'm going to shift from the winter menus to the summer menus. I'll be posting my breakfast menus by the week in the sidebar.

Speaking of breakfast, I left the house this morning with a lemon on my grocery list (see Tuesday's menu). What a wonderful surprise to get to work and find that a coworker had brought in a big carton of lemons from the tree in his yard to share with everybody! You gotta love citrus season. Another coworker asked me if I was a "grapefruit kinda person." Heck, yeah. That should slim down the grocery list!

Housework and Childcare

The last few days have been frazzled ones. My niece (I'll call her Kitten) has been sick with a virus since the day her mother left. Poor thing! My brother-in-law and I took her to the emergency room last night as we were getting really worried about dehydration, but the doctor told us she was in good shape and the virus would just have to run its course. We just have to keep finding creative ways to get her to drink, drink, drink. And with a toddler - even with a low energy level - the last thing they want to do is be in the dreaded bed, so she's still up and about. I've been trying to find lots of quiet things we can do indoors. Just this morning, I'm starting to feel a little peaked, so I'm afraid I've caught the virus myself and won't be of much help in a day or two.

The first evening I was there, Kitten was still feeling pretty good. As I tried to wash up the dinner dishes while she was playing in the living room, I couldn't help thinking about housework as it relates to childcare. Mothers of small children really have to be quite creative and flexible in order to get anything done. It seems to be all about corraling them where you can watch them long enough to do a few dishes here, a load of laundry there. Naptime or bedtime seems like it would be a great time to get things done, but Kitten's nursery is on the same floor as the kitchen and living room, so I don't want to make too much noise until she's sound asleep. (It'll sound too much like there's some party she's missing!) Besides, I found myself taking a nap at naptime yesterday.

The manual mentions children frequently. The authors recognized how important it was in designing or redesigning work spaces that mothers be able to keep an eye on their children at all times. "One end of the kitchen, away from dangerous areas near the range, can sometimes be reserved for play space." Here, a "low cupboard" could be set aside for toys or "cooking equipment" with which children might safely play. They encouraged mothers to find housekeeping tasks that children could help with even when it made the job a bit longer:

Small children are always intrigued by the work that is done in the kitchen. Almost invariably they want to "help," and if this urge is understood and valued, the children will find tremendous satisfaction in cooperative work, besides feeling "wanted," which is important to happy family relationships. Then, too, the educational value of guided cooperative work is an important factor in child training.

The laundry room is also a space where mothers had to spend a significant amount of time before the process was better automated. An "enclosed play space" was recommended for this room so that babies and toddlers could amuse themselves under Mother's watchful eye. Older children could play outdoors, but a window should look out on the yard so that Mother could keep an eye on them, too.

A whole chapter is dedicated to furnishing rooms for children - from nurseries for infants to rooms for adolescents. The authors of the manual advise their readers, though, that children should spend most of their time with the family. By the 1940s, the age of nannies and governesses was long gone in the U. S., and mothers were expected to be the primary caregivers for their youngest children. Living rooms should also contain "child centers":

"A table, chairs, and shelves for toys and games can be assembled inexpensively..."

Here, on my own child-less home front, I've been getting along pretty smoothly. I moved Thursday's cleaning-of-the-bedroom to Friday evening. It occurred to me while dusting that it's no coincidence the manual instructs the housewife to dust everything before vacuuming. All that dust that's been building up on surfaces high and low should be lightly settled on the carpet before it's vacuumed. I also realized that my dust rag didn't get near as dirty this week as it did last week. If you're dusting your bedrooms every week, your cleaning materials will be easier to wash themselves.

I didn't plan my morning very wisely yesterday and ran out of time before making my bed. When I got home from the hospital, I was feeling so blue I skipped the evening routine entirely, but I wasn't too blue to notice how much it crapped to be climbing into an unmade bed. It's amazing how quickly I've become accustomed to that little luxury!

and Jimmy F. . . .

We thought Mr. F. had it bad! Listen in as Better Homes and Gardens delivers the scoop on the unfortunate son of these breakfast-spurning parents. Can his morning habits be reformed?

and Jimmy F. . . .

Jimmy F., 12, has more A's on his absence record than on his report card. His teacher thinks he's dull, but his real trouble is mineral and vitamin deficiency. Underweight and small for his age, he doesn't pay attention.

At fault is Jimmy's habit of getting up too late to eat breakfast. His stomach has been empty more than 10 hours, since average meal leaves in 4. No wonder he can't concentrate on decimals...

In school, Jimmy can't see the blackboard well, his vision is dim from deficiency of B2. By 10 o'clock he feels drowsy, thinks history is the dullest subject he takes.

During gym period, no one wants Jimmy on soccer team. [Twisting the screws of guilt into that lackadaisical Mrs. F.!] He's weak, bruises easily (Vitamin C deficiency). Vitamin C isn't stored in the body, must be provided daily...

Overhungry at noon, Jimmy eats lunch so fast that his digestion is upset for the rest of the day, trying to care for this sudden heavy load of food improperly chewed.

Boy, 12, 58 inches tall, weighing 85 pounds needs about 2,900 calories a day.

Suggested breakfast
Large orange
2/3 cup flaked wheat
1/4 cup top milk
1 cup whole milk
2 slices toast (whole-wheat raisin bread)
1 tablespoon butter
1 soft-cooked egg
2 tablespoons jam

I guess home economists of the time assumed that kids would like food best that they could pick apart for themselves - oranges, soft-cooked eggs. I ate a modified version of this breakfast myself yesterday morning: orange slices, raisin bread toast with butter and jam, and a hard-cooked egg.

A Wash and a Trim

Today was Marketing Day and for the first time in two weeks, I've brought some vegetables home - a bag of organic carrots, two bunches of celery hearts, and a bag of pre-shredded cabbage. (I'd have bought this by the head, but went to a smallish grocery store this evening and they didn't have any heads of cabbage.)

Those of you who've been following my blog may have noticed that the breakdown I've been keeping for "My Food Dollar" isn't exactly heavy in the fruits and veggies. Part of the reason is that I eat a lot of prepared or frozen foods and decided to clump these into the Fats, Sugar, and Miscellaneous Items category - unless they quite obviously belonged to another category.

The reason I brought home so much fresh produce today? I'm planning on preparing the first of the 1945 dinner menus in a few days. Friday, at the earliest. The difference between my usual groceries and today's groceries is pretty striking.

At any rate, one of the recommendations in The Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Book (1947) is that the housewife wash and trim the fresh vegetables she brings home on Marketing Day before putting them away. That way they'll be ready to go whenever she's preparing a meal. Makes lots of sense for some veggies, I think. I puzzled a bit over what to do with the carrots. I could definitely wash them, but should I scrape and trim them now or wait until just before using them? Wouldn't the carrots get all dried out? As I was washing them, I suddenly realized something that should have been obvious. Most 1940s housewives would have brought carrots home with the leaves still attached! Trimming that bit off would have made storing carrots much easier even if you didn't do anything else. The carrots I buy these days haven't any leaves, so some of the prep has already been done for me.

When it came to the celery, I cut off the base and cleaned out all the soft yellow stalks on the inside before washing the celery. The clean veggies are drying now on a clean towel. I haven't yet decided what kind of container I'll store them in... Should I be storing them lose in the crisper? I'm embarrassed to feel so unsure of myself about such basic things. It forces me to face just how little my meals resemble whole, natural foods (breakfasts now excluded!)...

Okay, I just took a look in the fridge. The crispers are going to need a thorough cleaning before I store anything inside 'em!

Case of Mr. F. . . .

We met Mrs. F. a two days ago and got to know why even a dieting housewife needs a good day's breakfast. Alas, her disinterest in breakfast has led her to prepare boring meals for Mr. F. every morning, and now he can't be bothered with breakfast any longer. Can Better Homes and Gardens save the day?

Case of Mr. F. . . .

Mr. F. has no appetite for breakfast, often goes to the office without eating anything, getting coffee and rolls later on. He feels midmorning hunger pangs, yawns at his desk. His hands aren't steady as he lights a cigarette (B1 shortage) [I'm betting that's just the nicotine!] and he's losing his hair prematurely (B2 deficiency).

Breakfasts served were so monotonous that Mr. F. lost interest in eating...

Mineral and vitamin defects lead to his lowered mental activity. Diminishing glycogen reserves (form in which sugar, starches are stored in the tissues) hasten fatigue, important factor in accidents. Most industrial injuries occur before noon.

In evening, at home, Mr. F. is tuckered out, irritable; doesn't want to romp with the children...

Calculated energy expenditure for man weighing 154 pounds, in sedentary job, is about 2,400 calories a day.

Suggested breakfast

1/2 medium grapefruit

1/2 shredded wheat biscuit

Fried egg

2 crisp bacon strips

2 slices toast (whole wheat)

1 tablespoon butter

1/4 cup top milk

5/8 cup whole milk

2 teaspoons sugar

Coffee

I sampled Mr. F.'s suggested breakfast menu this morning - without the bacon, of course. I skipped the shredded wheat as I was already eating toast with the egg. A filling meal, though frying isn't my favorite way to prepare eggs. It's tough to keep them from browning and get that yolk fully cooked. I've got half a grapefruit left over, so I'll give that another try tomorrow morning.

Today is Ironing Day, and I think I'm making some headway with this new craft o' mine. The only one of those Top Ten tips that is still eluding me: "Iron with straight strokes, with the thread of the fabric." You quilters out there must be able to recognize the "thread" right away, but this is still so mysterious to me. And in some of these synthetic blends, I can barely even discern a weave to the fabric. I think I must have learned to iron by puddling the iron about in semi-circles, so straight strokes feel very awkward. Did the '40s housewife have to maneuver the iron about in this way because the irons weren't as smooth and light as today's irons, or are "straight strokes" actually easier on the fabric?

Well, I've just finished ironing my first sheet. I tried it this first time using the "four thickness at once" method, and it didn't take too, too long. It's neatly folded and stacked up with two freshly ironed pillowcases. (They haven't looked this good since they came out of the package!) But what to do with the fitted sheet? The manual gives me no help on this topic as fitted sheets hadn't yet been invented. I'm going to have to do some additional research and leave the fitted sheet wrinkly this time 'round.

Scarf Mania

There's a wind whipping up what looks like it's going to be a lovely rainstorm this evening. I've been folding the laundry I washed this morning and thinking that if I were living 60 years ago I'd probably be rushing out to the line as we speak to bring in my clean, dry clothes before they got rained on!

While I sorted the laundry last night in preparation for today's wash, I realized just how interrelated some of these missions are going to be. Cleaning the bedroom on Thursday evenings means I'm going to have additional laundry to wash on Mondays and - because the manual takes for granted that my sheets will be ironed when they're tucked away in the linen closet - additional ironing on Tuesdays. Yep! I'm going to iron my sheets. That's a definite first here in the Jitterbug household. I suppose that means I should iron my pillowcases, too. Apparently there are two ways you can iron your sheets. One method, termed "especially careful" by the authors of the manual, also applies to tablecloths:

Fold selvedge to selvedge, right side out. Iron first on one side, then on the other. Fold again, lengthwise. Iron again on both sides. Fold to put away.

This second method must be what we'd call "quick and dirty":

Iron 4 thicknesses at once: fold hem to hem, then fold in half, bringing hem side to fold. Iron first on plain side, then on hem side.

Such a decision! Thank goodness I have 24 hours to think this one over...

The manual gives us a charming reminder of 1940s bedroom decor when they recommend that the housewife be sure to remove "dresser scarves" for laundering as she gives each bedroom its weekly cleaning. I'm guessing that a '40s housewife must have had at least twice as many dresser scarves as she had dressers if she didn't want to leave her dressers bare after cleaning the bedrooms. (Wash Day being still several days away.) I used to think that dresser scarves were all about the same shape and size, but it turns out that there are several different types of dresser scarves. According to Lily Haxworth Wallace in The New American Etiquette (1941), every bride should be equipped with the following for each bedroom of her new home:

Two bureau scarfs

Two dresser scarfs

Two vanity scarfs

Two night-stand scarfs

Multiply that by several bedrooms, and that's one hefty addition to the Monday wash! Whether your scarves were doilies or embroidered flatwork, they had to be ironed as well. What's with all the scarves, for goodness' sake? Was the look of a simple wooden surface so abhorrent?

Case of Mrs. F. . . .

I started off the day with a breakfast menu straight from the pages of the February 1947 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. It's one of three menus in an article called "Why Don't You Eat a Good Breakfast?" The author presents profiles of three fictional Americans - the reasons they don't eat breakfast and some purportedly practical and tasty solutions. Here's an excerpt from the first profile:

Case of Mrs. F. . . .

Mrs. F. is overweight, yet has many colds. Her usual breakfast of coffee, frosted sweet rolls (350 calories each) is short of proteins, vitamins, minerals...

While hanging wash, Mrs. F. feels chilled, starts sneezing. Her resistance is low (studies show possible relation between resistance to tuberculosis and foods rich in protein, Vitamins A and C). [Way to scare the skirts off your readers!] A breakfast of fruit, enriched cereal, and egg would have given her food essentials for morning tasks.

Interested in a dieting fad, she decides to skip breakfast entirely, has to draw on her reserves of fat for heat and energy every morning. In a short time she suffers from a fat shortage, marked by constant hunger, lack of pep, vague discomfort...

Woman weighing 130 pounds, keeping house, has a daily energy requirement of about 2,300 calories. Milk is a must.

Suggested breakfast
1 slice canned pineapple with sirup
2/3 cup oatmeal
1 cup whole milk for cereal
1/4 cup coffee cream
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon butter
2 slices toast (enriched white bread)
Coffee

I did make a couple adaptations. Used 1% instead of whole milk with my oatmeal and coffee. Skipped the buttered toast entirely. But then I'm not yet doing the kinds of hard physical labor Mrs. F. was doing in 1947. After my morning chores, I was free today 'til this evening. Stay tuned for Mr. F.'s breakfast issues in an upcoming post...

My routine is going to see a few adaptations of its own during the next two weeks. My sister is taking her youngest home on Wednesday to spend several days with our parents, so I'm going to be playing substitute mom for my older niece. On weeknights, I'll be picking her up at her grandmother's when I get out of work and staying at her house until my brother-in-law gets home from work around 10:30. And because of the way his work schedule falls, I'll have her both days next weekend from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. It's going to be lovely to spend so much one-on-one time with her, but I am going to be one tired chickadee by the time I crawl into bed each night. (She's only two years old and a ball of energy!) As for housework --- my goal is just to keep things running at the level they have been while all this extra work is afoot. No more new missions until my sister is home and I've had a day or two to recover. If I can keep everything running "as is" for the next two weeks, I'll be very proud.

I may have to shift some of my daily chores around a bit, though. Which is something I need to be able to do with any routine. I want to be sure that I still have some empty-ish time slots left over in every week so that I can make some adjustments when something social comes up or when family calls. As comforting as it is to have an appointed day and time for every chore - and as critical as that is while I'm trying to make habits of these chores - I need to build some flexibility into my schedule so that unexpected things don't trip me up. I think that's going to be key to getting through the next two weeks and getting through life, period. A 1940s housewife would have needed some flexibility herself for that monthly club meeting or when her spouse or child was sick at home and needed extra tending. The daily stuff needs to get done no matter what, but the weekly stuff needs to be more portable. What do you think?

Freshly Roasted. Ground to Order.

Did you see Consumer Reports in the headlines the other day? They did an investigation to see which brand of Columbian coffee was The Best. They tested nineteen brands - everything from Folgers and Maxwell House to Starbucks and Gloria Jean's - and the winner... Eight O'Clock Coffee!

The judges - who tasted all the coffees black - called the coffee a "complex blend of earthy and fruity, with a bright, pleasing sourness."

I guess there's a reason it's been around for 150 years. Eight O'Clock Coffee was once the house brand of the old A&P. They finally gave the brand a name in 1919, after learning from a survey that the two most popular times of day for drinking coffee were 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. By the 1930s, 25% of all coffee consumed in the United States was Eight O'Clock. It was the #1 brand through the 1950s.

Eight O'Clock sells for about $6 per pound. From what I can understand, you can still buy the coffee in whole bean variety, but it's also been available as grounds since 2003.

Isn't it great that a popular 1940s breakfast item is still wowing people today? A coworker told me that her parents used to drink nothing but Eight O'Clock Coffee. It was their house blend, so to speak. I'm going to pick up a bag of Eight O'Clock next time I need some coffee and taste test it for myself. It would make my vintage breakfast table complete.

The Rewards of Minimalism

My breakfast menus for the last two days were published in November 1943 by Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. in a booklet titled Meal Planning Guide. It was probably one of those giveaway-type things you send for with a self-addressed stamped envelope and a dime. Thursday's menu was super simple:

Tomato Juice

Ready-prepared Whole Grain Cereal

I tried the Weetabix again that I bought last month when I was looking for a whole-grain cereal I could serve hot. It's much, much better cold! Today's menu:

Applesauce

Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

Syrup

The Griddle Cakes were a little tricky. It was a very leisurely kind of recipe, with lots of stop and go. After boiling water, you poured it over a bowl of Corn Meal and set that to one side to wait for it to "swell." Then you added milk to the mixture and waited for it to cool down. Finally, it was time to add your dry goods, and - just before pouring it onto the griddle - fold a beaten egg into the batter. Corn Meal Griddle Cakes also took a bit longer on the griddle than did your plain ol' everyday Griddle Cakes. Like I said, a leisurely recipe. By the time my first batch was finished, it was almost time to leave for work. I think I must have inhaled my breakfast... I hardly remember what they tasted like! Well, I've got plenty of leftovers, so I'll take my time to enjoy them tomorrow morning.

Cleaning the bedroom last night was surprisingly easy. Yep, you heard it here first --- easy! I followed the steps recommended by the manual to a tee. You can kind of break the routine down into five parts. 1) Emptying the room out - hanging the bed covers outside to air, removing the sheets, bringing all the bric-a-brac out to the kitchen for dusting. 2) Bringing equipment into the room - vacuum cleaner, cleaning basket, clean linens. 3) Doing up the bed. 4) Dusting and vacumming. 5) Bringing the bric-a-brac back into the room and giving things a final straightening.

Not so bad. Of course it helps that I don't have very many things in the way of furnishings to clean. I moved cross-country two years ago and didn't bring anything that I couldn't fit in my car. So my apartment isn't exactly overstuffed these days. The manual attends to all kinds of items I didn't have to dust or brush or polish last night: no lamps, no dresser scarves, no draperies, no woodwork, no radiators, no baseboard, no upholstered furniture, no glass table tops, no shades, no curtains, no ash trays. That certainly made things easier. (And to think how much time I've spent wishing I could afford to have my stuff shipped out here!)

My bedroom doesn't feel all that much cleaner than normal, but the sheets have been changed, the carpet's been vacuumed, and the dust has been shooed back into the corners. And just doing that much every week - week in and week out - will be a big improvement. I think I'm going to add one or two of those "if necessarys" next Thursday, though, and step this up a notch.

Making a Schedule

I've just taken the linens off my bed and I'm getting ready to launch my new mission. So in lieu of a post of my own tonight, I thought I'd share an interesting bit on creating a housekeeping schedule from America's Housekeeping Book (1945). It strikes me that the 1940s housewife was probably not quite as overachieving as the housewife we envision during the '50s (or the Super Moms of the '80s, for that matter). She didn't expect to be able to do it all herself and to have a perfect home at every phase of her life.

How to go about making a schedule? First write down the jobs that need to be done every day. Next write down the tasks that need to be done on a particular day of the week. Then make a simple chart, and write down each job at the day and hour when it is most convenient to work it in...

No two homes are exactly alike, and different conditions affect the work schedule. If there is a small baby, the whole household schedule must be built around the schedule which the doctor prescribes for the baby, and more often than not there is very little time left for housework, particularly if household help is not employed. A recent study showed that the care of a new baby takes 5 hours and 41 minutes every day. But after all, baby's well-being is of far more importance than any other phase of housekeeping, and if some other work has to be neglected or done less thoroughly, this state of affairs should be accepted philosophically.

Young children, children of school age, an invalid or elderly person to be cared for all necessitate special adjustments in work schedules. If one or more household helpers are employed, their work schedules must dovetail with the homemaker's.

Investing in the Home

The serving of fruit in my 1944 breakfast menu this morning was a berry-licious first!

Strawberries
Poached Eggs on Toast

Tomorrow, I'm heading one more year back in time to a menu published in 1943...

It's Wednesday - which here in the Jitterbug household means I did a little marketing. I made a couple stops on the way home from work. Picked up a few groceries, and started collecting some of the items I'll need to build my cleaning basket: a large cellulose sponge, a flannel polishing cloth, and a new pair of scissors (so I don't have to keep using the scissors from my mending basket on household jobs!). These "light" marketing trips on Wednesdays haven't done much yet to make my pantry more organized, and I suspect they're not going to make a real difference until I've added a longer trip to the supermarket on Saturdays. For now, I'm just content to try and make a shopping on Wednesday evenings a matter of routine.



As I was taking another look at the bedroom cleaning routine today, I realized that the manual recommends using either a carpet sweeper or vacuum cleaner when giving each room in the house its daily once-over, but when you clean each room more thoroughly once a week only a vac will do. Boy, do they make good use of the attachments. Mine can go untouched for a year, but the authors of the manual advise using your attachments every time you turn around! The vacuum is used to brush fabrics, dust in all those tall or hard-to-reach places - and of course to clean the carpet. Housewives in the '40s who were able to invest in a vacuum cleaner must have felt as if the appliance replaced several hours of work per week that hired help might have provided their mothers a generation before. Vacuum cleaners were a hefty investment. The $48.50 price tag on the Hoover above (plus trade) would be equivalent to more than $700 today!

Irons in the Fire

No sooner did I get home from work this evening and it's almost time for bed! I don't know how the time away from work slips by so quickly on these weekday evenings... It's going to make some of my weekday housecleaning missions loom large. (Can you tell I'm getting the jitters about the mission ahead on Thursday evening?)

On the other side of the equation, I've noticed that ironing my laundry in one fell swoop has actually created some time in my mornings. How cool is that? I pick out my clothes for the day and just pluck them from their hangers. Ready to go. No lugging out the ironing board. No heating the iron for one or two items. One of the reasons I never used to iron everything at once is because I thought the clothes would be wrinkled again by the time I went to wear them. That they'd get wrinkled while they were hanging in the closet. That's actually not the case - which has been a wonderful surprise. It's been a couple weeks, but it's nice to see some payoff from the ironing mission.

And speaking of ironing, I'm getting ready to do just that tonight. The manual advises me to arrange my ironing area with an eye toward moving the clothes from left to right: "Place the clothesbasket at your left, a clothes rack at your right, and be sure there are coat hangers near at hand." Here are a few of the Top Ten tips I'm still striving to be mindful about:

2. When you straighten material on the ironing board or roll of a rotary ironer, use the palms of your hands and smooth from the center out. Your fingers are apt to stretch the fabrics and pull them out of shape.

3. Iron with straight strokes, with the thread of the fabric.

5. Collars, cuffs, sleeves, belts and trimmings are ironed first, then the flat sections of the garment.

My breakfast menu for the last two days has been another of the trio from the 1944 edition of the Good Housekeeping Cook Book:

Half of Grapefruit
Omelet
Toasted English Muffins

The secret I've discovered to making a lovely, golden omelet is keeping the heat at a steady medium. A shade hotter and the omelet starts to brown. At least that's how it works on my stovetop. They're all a little different!

A-Tisket, A-Tasket

One of the guiding principles of housecleaning in the 1940s seems to be that you make as few trips back and forth from one room to another. You carry about your tools and equipment, dirty dishes, or bric-a-brac on trays or in baskets. Whatever it takes to save you an extra step. And so one of the first steps in cleaning bedrooms on Thursdays is to tote your vacuum cleaner and basket of supplies into the bedroom. "With a cleaning basket, there will be no need for hurried trips back to the source of supply for forgotten items." This certainly saves some time with one bedroom, but it'd be an extra big help if you had several bedrooms and maybe a nursery to clean!

The authors of the manual suggest using a "small inexpensive open market basket with a handle." To fit all your supplies comfortably, it should be at least 12 inches in length, 10 1/2 inches wide, and 8 inches deep. Here's a list of recommended tools and supplies:

Whisk broom or upholstery brush (for brushing draperies and upholstery)
Small soft brush (for dusting carving, etc.)
1 treated dustcloth (for daily dusting)
2 cheesecloth squares (for washing and drying woodwork)
Cotton waste (for applying polishes and cleansers)
1 flannel polishing cloth (for rubbing or polishing)
1 cellulose sponge (for washing woodwork, walls, etc.)
Art-gum eraser (for removing soiled spots from walls or from lampshades)
Wallpaper cleanser (dough-type or pad)
Furniture polish or lemon oil or wax
Mild scouring powder or whiting
Paint cleaner
Carbon tetrachloride (4-ounce bottle)
Oil of peppermint
Scissors

Are you stocked up? I'm not sure if I even have a basket to my name, but I'll rummage about a bit and see what I can find. As for supplies, I've got a sponge, some scouring powder (Comet), and a pair of scissors. That's it. I'm clearly underprepared for housekeeping. Hey, maybe that's why it's so painful to me... Interested in making some of your own treated dustcloths? Here's a recipe:

Treated Dusters

1 pint hot water
1/4 cup lemon oil

Combine hot water and lemon oil. Dip 4-5 cheesecloth squares (20" by 20") in solution. Press solution through cloth thoroughly. Squeeze out all excess moisture. Dry thoroughly.

Confession Time

So it turns out that I'm a bit of a streaker.

I suppose it's natural when you live by yourself... You just stop bothering to put on a robe and slippers every time you leave the bedroom. And though it really isn't a problem if my blinds are closed, I don't think it's very vintage-minded of me to be running about with only my nightclothes on.

Every time I see a movie from these years, the heroine (or villainess) always seems to wake in the morning with her slippers on the floor by her bed and her bathrobe draped over the foot of the bed. Before she steps away from her bedside, she's gracefully attired in robe and slippers. Even in her own home, it's kind of improper that anybody see your nightgown but your mirror and your spouse.

Should I really be treating my home like it's one big bedroom?

Java Jive

My apron is on, my hair is pinned up, and it’s time to get breakfast started. This morning’s mini-mission? Use my Drip-O-lator for the first time. First, let me warm up the kitchen radio. Here’s my 1944 breakfast menu:

Orange Juice
Scramble Eggs with Cheese
Whole Wheat Toast
Coffee

The only Cheese I’ve got in the house is grated parmesan, so I'll use that. My 1945 cookbook does suggest a few more “adds” for scrambled eggs: onion-juice with parsley, sweet green peppers, or canned pimientos.

The Drip-O-lator (patented in 1921 with revisions in 1930) looks like it works very much like your typical drip coffee maker today, except that the water reservoir is fitted on top instead of behind the coffee pot. The biggest difference is that you have to heat up your water separately. The 1940s housewife probably used a tea kettle. I don’t have one, so I’m just going to run some water through my Mr. Coffee - without the grounds (sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it!).

Deep inside the aluminum fixture is a small well for the coffee grounds. My friend tells me that they didn’t use any coffee filters in the Drip-O-lator, but suggested I use a small filter in there if I didn’t want to end up with any stray grounds in my cup. A perforated metal cap with a tall rod for a handle fits down in there on top of the well. You fill the top of the fixture with hot water and it drips down through the well and into the coffee pot. My water’s heated, but I’m not sure how long I can expect the coffee in the Drip-O-lator to stay warm, so I’m going to start my Scramble Eggs with Cheese first…

The water has been added. It looks like it’s going to take some time for 5 cups’ worth to work its way through the well and down into the coffeepot. While we're waiting, here are a few early ‘40s pictures of the Drip-O-lator in action:

Okay, breakfast is ready, but the coffee’s not. The Drip-O-lator works nowhere near as quickly as my Mr. Coffee. Will the coffee be richer? I’m going to go ahead and eat. Coffee later…

It looks like coffee. It’s not as hot as the coffee I’d pour from my modern coffee maker. (And they didn’t have any microwaves for a quick re-heat!) I gather percolators cooled down real quickly, too. Tastes about the same as the coffee made in the modern coffee maker. It may be tinge richer. Can't quite put my finger on the difference. There must have been housewives trying to keep the coffee warm by putting the pot on a burner, because there's a warning stamped inside the pot. The pot will explode if you heat it on a burner or over an open flame.

I love coffee, I love tea.

I love the java jive and it loves me.

Coffee and tea and the java and me.

A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!