The Home Front meets Covid-19

basketcase

Hi!

  I don’t know about you, but I’d like to try and find some sort of positive way of dealing with The Great Shutdown.  I hope there are a few people out there who’ll join me.  I mentioned it on the Wartime Substitutions thread and was told it might be a runner.  If I don’t get a response I’ll know it wasn’t!

  DS is high risk, so I’m likely to ‘distancing’ for another 11 weeks or so.  I’d like to make it, if not fun, at least more interesting by setting myself some sort of challenge.  The situation we’re in doesn’t compare to WWII (except for fighting the virus), but in many ways it’s similar. 

  The difficulties in getting to the shops and lack of choice isn’t unlike being on rations.  The shortage and limited use of anti bacs etc means falling back on older remedies - which often seem to be more effective anyway (soap and bleach break down the lipids surrounding the virus and stop it reproducing).  Not being able to get things fixed or buy a new item (eg my fan oven's stopped heating) means finding ways around the problems.  If non-essential shops stay closed, we might need to find alternatives to hand cream, shampoo, antiperspirant, make-up, baby wipes etc. 

  Even if/when ‘the curve is flattened’ it’s going to take a while to get back to anything like normal.  We’re going to have to get creative and having a Make Do and Mend lifestyle will help.  So I thought, why not try living a wartime lifestyle for, say, a month.  More, if we like it! 

 There are lots of threads already that would help with this – but I don’t know how to do links to them!  Wartime Recipes and Substitutions, Fashion on the Ration, Make Do and Mend to name 3.  (I have a great book called Everything Within – A Library of Information for the Home published in 1933.  It’s fascinated me since I was a child and it has tips which are often useful, sometimes amusing and occasionally (I suspect) quite possibly lethal.  I’d copy some of those, if they weren’t considered boring.)

  How far each person takes it would be up to them.  If living on a strict 1940s ration, switching off the TV and painting your legs with gravy browning sounds like a fun challenge go for it!  (I’ve got a list of what was rationed I can post).  If asking for ideas for a food plan based on what’s in the freezer, repairing your trousers instead of buying new ones because the shop’s shut and asking for/sharing tips is more useful hopefully there’d be someone who knew how or knew how to find out.

  I think we can use this knowledge from the Home Front or adapt it to modern times to deal with the situation we’re in and are going to be in afterwards.  I actually find it quite disturbing when I read of The Great Shutdown being called "the new normal".  It's nothing of the sort.  And I don't think that, during the war, people thought of their situation as "normal".  My impression is that they thought of it as necessary and something they needed to accept and adapt to.  But it wasn't normal and it was going to end.

  It’ll be interesting (well, I think it will!) there’s time for it and it’s very MSE.  Who knows, we might even decide to keep it up.

jinny

Hi Im in a great idea for a thread
My Grannie used to tell us  a popular wartime joke that a rumour the grocer  Walter Wilsons had sugar.  Oh! was the reply,  I thought he had a bad look.
Agree we aren't being asked to fight in a war.  Just being asked to stay in if possible but the home front spirit is similar.
stay safe everyone x

jinny

My washer packed in its 20 years old next month.  Been a goodun No chance of a delivery/installation.  So its a back aching chore with a plunger in the bath.  Im mostly wearing pyjamas but due for bed sheets to be changed.  I live in a flat so wet laundry dripping over the bath is depressing. Any hints appreciated.  Saving on leccy suppose.

[Deleted User]

Fabulous idea for a practical thread that should be packed with relevant and useful information that will be useful to all of us over the next 'however long' until life becomes 'life after covid-19' and that at this point in time is a complete unknown isn't it? Thanks Basketcase for coming up with such a good idea and setting up the thread.

JINNY if your back hurts using the plunger in the bath a really old fashioned way of agitating the washing is to take off your shoes and socks and roll up those trouser legs and get in the bath and use your feet to squish the clothes, it's how they used to tread grapes for wine and works very well on washing, particularly the bigger items like towels and bedding.  You still have to wring them but using your feet as the 'washing machine' saves your hands and arms and makes wringing out less tiring.

Blue_Doggy

Sorry about your washer, mine’s on it’s last legs, although at 16 years old younger than yours! So I’m looking at being back to laundering in the bath (I’ve done it when I young, renting, and had no machine, and also more recently washing duvets). If you are agile and safe enough, you can save your back by mixing the water and soap or detergent in the bath*, putting in your items to be washed, then stepping into the bath and treading them. 

 

If you have things you would normally pre-wash in the machine, you can soak them overnight in a bucket of warm soapy/detergenty water to loosen the dirt.
 

*add your soap or detergent to the water first before putting in the items to be washed, and you’ll find they mix much better. HTH
 
@MrsLurcherwalker : Snap! 

monnagran

WoW, basket case.  Are you really going to live like a 1940's housewife?
I'm sure everyone is bored to tears with my war stories, but I did live  through it and have many memories.  If any of them are helpful I'm happy to share.  Your problem will be shutting me up.
The trouble is, that being brought up in a time like that, it forms the person that you are.  You are right to say that this is not normal, and neither was the war, but if you had never known anything else it truly was normal to you.
I often read hints and tips that are just my normal way of doing things.  I don't regard them as useful tips and am amazed that people think they are, to me it is just living, so I may not be very useful to you if that is what you are looking for.
However, I will follow this with interest, and probably chip in now and again.

More immediately, jinny, I have recently had 2 years without a washing machine, (long story) and it's hell, isn't it?  I found the washing bit OK but the rinsing, wringing out and drying wears you to a frazzle.  I used to think that even in the 40s we had a mangle with the huge wooden rollers, that lived in its own shed.  Clothes aren't so bad, but sheets and towels are something else.  Do you not have anyone living close by who would just put those through their machine for you?  You could put the stuff on their doorstep and collect it from there when done?  Sorry, no other ideas.

ToastLady

I usually make my own spreadable butter, but am adding more sunflower oil at the moment to stretch it out a bit, so 200g butter and 200 ml sunflower oil. Allow the butter to soften, cut into smallish pieces, place in a bowl with oil and blitz with electric whisk until smooth. Pour into tub and stick in fridge. It will be really runny, but firms up in fridge, it's a bit softer than normal, but better than having no butter.

monnagran

Boring reminiscence No.1.

During the war, and for sometime after, butter and margarine were in very short supply.  Mixing it with oil wasn't an option.  The only oil available was olive oil that came in tiny vials from the chemist and used for getting rid of earwax.
My mother picked up a hint from somewhere about making a spread to go on bread.  She melted some margarine, mixed it with a bit of cornflour and some milk, boiled it up, set it in a basin to cool and that was our butter substitute.  DO NOT TRY IT.  It was called Extender, I called it Revolting.  I suppose it was a sort of thick white sauce and I vowed that if and when butter came off ration I would never eat anything else but pure butter.  By and large I have stuck to that.

jinny

Thanks all first joined in 2005 so good to see all you lovely people still here its been a while. Thanks for all your hints on washing yes its the wringing out thats the problem.  My neighbour kindly offered to spin my laundry but I'm a bit worried about that. It would be fine I'm sure. My poor mam had me n twin  bro just after the war. No washer just a dolly or posse stick in a tin tub in Winter as well.  Cloth nappies then and woollen clothes.  She could use the wash house as well with help to get there n back. Toast lady thanks for the brilliant butter hint will be doing that.  Do we still have stickies for a list instead of going thro hints. Although i am jotting the down in my diary
stay safe all x 

Helebore

For a long time I had no washing machine, I think I got my first automatic some time like 1995/6 or so. I too washed by hand, things like sheets towels duvet covers in bath, left overnight to soak. BUT I had a spin dryer that I had found downstairs that had belonged to a neighbour and that saved a lot, obviously got rid of all the water thankfully. Prior to that I did have a more modern looking mangle although not electric. It wasn't particularly good though. Had no money so had to use what I could! There had been a launderette in village but that closed. I too lived in a flat but I had a washing line on my 'balcony'. Sounds nice but unfortunately wasn't! 

basketcase

Hello and welcome jinny, Mrs LW, Blue_Doggy, monnagran and ToastLady! Thanks for joining me.  I'm glad it's not just me.

  It was late last night and I've been thinking a bit more about what I hope we can get from it.  I've set it up, but it's everybody's thread.  What are your ideas?  I've listed mine in a separate post if you want to skip the philosophising...

  Firstly, monnagran, I've read some of your contributions on other thread and they aren't boring at all.  Please keep them coming.  I have to say, my tea nearly went on the laptop screen when I read "Are you really going to live like a 1940's housewife?"  Not exactly - I don't have enough gravy browning for a start... I was thinking more along the lines of adopting the approach to life encouraged at the time.  1940s thinking for the lockdown.  (Probably a better title for the thread, actually!)  A lot of the tips and 'old ways' are not only useful at the moment, they're actually better.  eg reaching for the antibacterial wipe isn't as effective as filling the sink/a bowl with hot soapy water and washing things down.  (Which is why soap was on the list of Things to Panic Buy.  When the anti-bac wipes and hand gel ran out!).  That's what the Old Style Money Saving Board is about.  I just think that we need to save more than money at the moment.  In fact, MSE isn't just about cutting back, although many of us have/had to do that first, it's about living well on what you have.

  When you read the leaflets issued in the 40s, you find the same thing.  They knew that practical advice was good, but it wasn't enough.  They needed to boost morale.  For instance, the mending wasn't just about teaching how to mend clothing to make it last longer.  Yes, people who couldn't, say, darn could learn how to do it.  It was about remaining well-turned out and creating your own style using what you already had and could no longer go to the shop to get.  I've decided to look at some of these leaflets, use what they did straight if possible and adapt if necessary.  So, joking about gravy browning (and painting a 'seam' up the back of your leg with an eyebrow pencil) apart, the bigger message being pushed at the time (even by Vogue) was yes, we have less but that's no excuse for not being as smart and glamorous as possible. 

  We're all looking for the end of the lockdown, but things are going to be pretty rocky for a while.  Getting into the right mindset now will help us cope both now and later, I think.