Dear Kitchen Saints,
Ya know Jim and I raised six children. And it wasn't easy, either, as some of you know from raising your own large brood. Between Aunt Toot's family and mine, we represented thirteen children. She had seven. And we often traded recipes or told each other where the best buys were.
Often when I would go to the store with Jim, I would pray for good buys and the Lord would show me hidden produce or something marked down. But often Jim would show me something to buy and I would say or he would say, "Well, we don't need that -- we can make that at home." We would buy a lot of flour and yeast and things to make bread and biscuits and homemade pancakes. We would buy the old fashioned oatmeal for our family and make that instead of the expensive sugar cereals. But I would just pray silently, often alone in an aisle, and I would say to the Lord, "Lord, I am not goin' to buy anything I can make at home with my own hands." And I would think of the Mothers during the Depression era and ask the Lord what Wisdom would do about this or that need. I had an imaginary older Titus 2 Mother who I called Ruby that I would write to as I made out my grocery list. Ruby lived in a cabin in the woods and she had huge vegetable and herb gardens. And as I would go to the store, I would think of her and how brave she was to feed her family from what she could make with her hands. And I would pass up the paper towels and napkins as I thought I can make napkins and use cloth ones. Or I can use rags as paper towels.
If you have like six cloth napkins, just take a big safety pin and pin them together before you wash and dry them. This way they will all stay together. And you should have about three sets of them. They are super cheap at garage sales or just make some out of some scraps of material.
One thing the early mothers always had was a good set of rags. She had rags for dusting and some for cleaning the floor but never did she use her dust rag for anything but dusting. And her rag to scrub the floor was never used for anything else, either. Then the dishrag was just for dishes. And then she would have a little washcloth by the sink to wash Baby's face and hands after a meal. Because if you wash Baby up with a dishrag, he could get a rash. But Mothers were very clean and didn't use one rag for more than what it was to be used for. The world says to use disposables in order to just use it once and throw it away because of germs. But ya know Clorox bleach will get rid of germs -- just use it on all of your rags. They even say that scientists put down some AIDS virus on a table and put bleach on it and it killed it. But anyway, the old time Mothers had a lot of rags but they kept them in order.
Old T-shirts make good dusting rags. Just cut the back out in a square. And put your dust rag on a special rack inside the sink door. Then old flannel shirts make good rags, too. Any old used clothes that will absorb well. Anything that is all cotton will make a nice rag.
Then make your napkins out of a nice print material. You will only use them for the day, anyway, and they don't have to be real absorbent. I remember Aunt Toot telling about having some missionaries at her house and she didn't have any napkins and they asked her for one and the kids got them some toilet paper. And ya know when ya need toilet paper, ya need toilet paper. And we had to buy that but used this also for Kleenex.
Then you do need a little pile of rags you know you will be throwing away. Like if the dog throws up or something, you will want to just throw that away. And back in the old days, we used cloth diapers and rinsed them out in the toilet and also the washrags we used to clean Baby's bottom. You just soaked the diapers and rags, then washed them every few days. The stay at home mothers couldn't afford such luxuries as disposable diapers. You just used them when you went on vacation and couldn't wash diapers.
I have never bought expensive cleaning detergents. I just have Comet cleanser and bleach and vinegar to clean the house with. I use a wad of newspapers to clean the windows with a pail of water with vinegar in it. The old time Mothers used a lot of vinegar to clean with and cook with. Of course, they made their own vinegar.
But ya know we can always make it in this life, right? One way or the other? But we can't go by this world's system or "What will the neighbors think?" We have to have an imagination. And we can think "What would Ruby in her cabin do if she faced hard times?" We who stand here and read these writings are living proof that the Depression era Mothers made it and kept their families alive through many trials. And we have "that way" in us, too, as we are a product of the Rubies of yesteryear. Her love and prayers. We are stout hearted, too, and can spit into the wind and not have it smack us in the face.
As the times get darker and the Lord separates the girls from the women of God, we will be called upon to keep our homes. We will be called to some bulldog tenaciousness. Some Stay-at-Home grit! We won't leave the ship. And Nehemiah taught the believers to fight with weapons in one hand and a tool to build in the other hand, and we will do the same thing. They say the Depression era Mother helped win the war as she stayed in her kitchen. In 1940, I think, is when WW2 started. And the Mothers had to use Rations Stamps because of the food shortages. Plus they needed the food for the soldiers in the War. But these Mothers were up for it. And we will make it, too, in our world today as stay at home mothers.
Love,
Connie
