Home Economics: The Modern Day Joys of Old School Homemaking

Filed under: Storage & Cleaning, Storage & Organization, Cleaning

Author Jennifer Trontz flipped through dozens of old home economics textbooks looking for vintage advice on everything from cleaning to entertaining, and she was charmed by the timeless lessons she found.

I have a Firefox bookmark for how to set a table. A bookmark for homemade cleaning products. And, good at this time of year, a bookmark for how to carve a turkey.

While I know how to write and have mastered Photoshop, I'm a little behind on the home front, and I'm kind of ashamed by it. Why did I need to rely on the web to tell me how to get out rust stains or preserve vegetables? Shouldn't I just know these things? Huh, mom? Huh?


I did take Home Ec in high school like my mother did, but it must have been only one semester and I don't remember a thing except how to make fried wontons. If Home Ec hadn't gone out of style, I'd probably know how to cook more appealing foods, hem a pair of pants, plant a vegetable garden.

But I'm obsessed with old Home Economics textbooks. I've been hoarding them for awhile, finding them on eBay and dragging my family to antique flea markets whenever we were on a road trip. I now have stacks of these books in various places in the house, despite the fact that many of these books admonish against clutter and hoarding.

These textbooks, many from the first half of the twentieth century, are jammed with useful information. I've learned the changes in different cuts of meat, how to can fruits, how to sew and hem, how to patch. One book from the 1960s, Your Home and You, instructs how to choose a fish at the supermarket: "flesh firm and elastic, eyes bright not sunken, odor fishy but not disagreeable." If you've ever wondered what to do with stale bread, the same title instructs you to save it (Throw it out? Not a chance), and the many uses of bread crumbs: "scalloped dishes using moist food."


I learned the causes of "cake failure," like "Hard, grainy crust = too much sugar." How to make all kinds of cream soups and the different ways to cut a sandwich. "A well-made sandwich is not dry and curling at the edges." So true, but I'd never thought of it that way. I did not, however, find corroboration for my belief that a diagonally-cut ham sandwich tastes better than a center-divided one. But it does!

Then there is the stuff that I didn't even know I didn't know: When looking for a new home, don't just seek good light, but also good air circulation, with windows at opposite ends of a space. When sweeping, Household Science and Arts says to use short strokes, keeping the broom close to the floor to prevent raising dust.

Some information was just too wacky to include, like advice about different ways to kill roaches, including trapping them and then plunging them in boiling water. I prefer my husband's size 12 shoe, wielded by my husband.

Still, some of the advice that I collected was timeless and seemed like things that everyone should know, so I decided to pull the best of it together into a book, Home Economics: Vintage Advice and Practical Science for the 21st-Century Household.

Photo: Courtesy of Jennifer Trontz / Quirk Books

Here are my favorite household tips I learned in my research:

1. Convertible furniture that serves more than one function is perfect for the apartment or small space. My coffee table serves as a coffee table, activity table for my 3-year-old and ottoman for my 13-year-old.

2. Homemade candy made with molasses, milk, butter, or nuts may not be as attractive as some of the bought candies, but the food value is much greater. I tried coated pecans with sugar and browning them in oven, and they were delicious.

3. In measuring dry ingredients, such as flour, baking powder, baking soda, powdered sugar or spices, sift or shake up lightly before measuring, and do not dip cup into material, which packs it, but fill with a spoon. I now scoop my flour into the measuring cup.

4. Do not talk about disagreeable things during a meal. No politics or religion, especially with relatives. I have to remind my parents of this frequently.

5. Watch the little items because they run up expenses in an astonishing way. Small wastes make big inroads into expenses -- I've been trying to limit visits to the bakery down the street.

6. Avoid accumulating unnecessary articles that require constant dusting. I've learned to resist the tchotchkes at my flea market.

8. If a room is gloomy and poorly lighted because it has few windows, a light color of yellow or cream will produce a very bright effect. I just painted all the walls in a my house variations of cream, and it worked.

 

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