The other day I was looking through the considerable stacks on our living room bookshelves trying to find a particular something. As is often the case with these things, I ended up coming upon something else entirely. What I found was an old three-ring binder that had belonged to my grandmother when she took high school home economics. On some level, I knew that it was there, but in all the packing, moving and unpacking that has gone on in our lives in the last few years, it has been mostly kept in a well-guarded box and I hadn't ever had the time to look through it properly. When I finally unpacked it onto a shelf in our house here in Vermont last summer, it was during such a busy flurry of settling in that I almost immediately forgot exactly where I put it.
The binder itself is full of page upon page of notes that my grandmother took on such widely varied subjects as what kind of dress to wear if you are really tall and how to hang pictures on your living room wall. Also covered: what to do with leftover meat (spaghetti sauce), how to choose drapes (beware of stripes!) and how often to wash your hair (every two weeks??). Unfortunately, none of the pages of notes are dated. If I were more attentive to details I would probably be able to put it all together with family birthdays and other important family facts, but I'll have to get back to you on that. My best guess is that this binder is from the mid to late 1920's.
I particularly enjoy this bit about the skillful homemaker being like someone who is really great at camping because of the need to "plan her feats." I had not previously thought of housework as an adventure of this kind and will have to remember this the next time that I am unloading the dishwasher and scrubbing mud out of Mariam's snow pants. This is likely to be this afternoon.
I won't lie though, I do find the page detailing tricks for working with meringue to be both intriguing and potentially useful. I do enjoy a good meringue here and there.
Apparently, laundry has never been well-loved among household chores. This task gets pretty comprehensive detailing in my grandmother's notes and I have to say, I kind of love it. Hanging out the wash is practically elevated to an art form here, with all sorts of vital rememberances such as making sure to hang brights at one end of the line in the shade as well as to hang dresses upside down by the hem. This attention to detail is the running theme throughout my grandmother's (very neatly) handwritten pages. Keeping the house is not something to be taken lightly; it is serious business and there is a system that should be used and respected while doing it. When I flip through these pages, I can just imagine the voice of the earnest high-school home ec. teacher as she conveys the absolute seriousness of making a proper jello-mold.
At some point during the years, the notes fell out of the binder and the pages are now somewhat of a mixed-up mess. Bits about the vitamin content of common vegetables are sitting next to pages about what kind of underwear to wear on Sundays. I need to spend an afternoon reorganizing the pages and putting the whole thing back together so that it will read like the comprehensive manual to mid-century small town life that it is. Who knows, in between the reasons why a person might put tar in their hair and descriptions of when to use gilded picture frames, I might find something really great, like the sound of my grandmother's teenage voice writing page upon page of plans for the family life she hopes to live.
Edit: Okay, after a bit more thought, I'm revising my guess about the date when these notes were written. Let's say around 1930 or so.
