I have been thinking that perhaps more structure would be good for my blog. I find with all I have to do that writing a long researched post every day is hard to do with all the homemaking and house repairs/decorating and gardening. Yet, I like that we keep in touch, so I think we should make Tuesdays, “Talking Point Tuesdays”. I can list a few ideas or some ads that have caught my attention and we can discuss them. You, the reader, if you are out there, could address or mention vintage ideas or home/garden things that you want to share or discuss. What say you? Good or bad idea?I was also considering Thursdays might be a good day for me to show various ads from my vintage magazines. There are so many good and interesting ideas and points from these, and some of them get earmarked and then never make it to the blog, so that could be delegated to Thursdays. These ads often illicit ideas and are great windows into the past. They show what we wanted to be and what we hoped we could achieve.
So, really, both Tuesdays and Thursdays would be about posting things and discussing them in comments. And, of course, M W F would still be the more involved posts I am apt to do. Do you like this idea? I could also try and start giving links to items that are of vintage interest.
So, I thought to get the ball rolling today, our talking point today could be “Living Green, Vintage or Modern?”
I have found, through the study of this year, that many things we could do today or need to start doing to be ‘Green’ were naturally done in the past. The concept that we need to move away from the past to make a green tomorrow, seems to be only true if we look to the increase in consumption and packaging etc starting somewhere in the end of the 1970s early 1980s.
It is a fact that in the 1920s-1940s we had less garbage. There was not as much pre-packaged food and many things were using recyclable containers, such as your milk and cream. It was brought to your door in bottles that you left out when empty that got sterilized and reused. Certainly this process, even with the use of electricity and water to clean and refill, is nothing compared to the energy it takes to recycle all the plastic and glass we don’t reuse.
During the Depression and the lean War Years, things as dear as jam jars an such were most likely used as glasses or again to fill with your own jam. I think even if you were to purchase a premade item of jam, you would think to save the jar for your own re-filling (something I have started doing!)
I found this entire section on solar heating and capturing the sun for heat in my 1943 House Beautiful. It seems during the war time when we had to conserve and be cautious such things were of interest to the average person. Yet, after the war, we really just fell into the concept of over-production and the idea to live as if it would never leave us (in the USA at least and I think that concept has leaked into the rest of the western world where consuming and being entertained are of the utmost importance.) As if somehow we had inherited a land of plenty that would never run out of things to use.So, being green, vintage living, looking to the past, how are they connected and what can we do?
I will be interested to hear your response or, for that matter, to see if there is any response. Until later, then…
