I don't have a living grandmother unfortunately, but my guess is most of the older houses have eat in kitchens. I bet kitchen tables were utilized quite a bit. One of my grandmothers houses had a kitchen on the back of the house that was so small it seemed like a closet that was converted. It was almost as if the builder forgot about a kitchen when building the house. Why she never knocked out the back wall and expanded was beyond me. I remember pots and pans being stacked vertically!

The simple answer is you make do with what you have.

Duane

Oh Sally, you would cringe if you saw my little kitchen. I've always had big kitchens with lots of counter space and lots of cupboard space. We bought a doublewide Mobile home last year and the livingroom and dining room are big open rooms and the two bedrooms are big too. But the kitchen is a little tiny galley kitchen with very little cupboard or counter space and NO DISHWASHER. I've never had a kitchen this small. And I'm cooking on a stove that is probably 24 years old. I did buy a new fridge though. And we will eventually renovate the kitchen. and get a new stove and add a dishwasher. But if I add a dishwasher now, I have to give up a bottom cupboard and I'm just not prepared to do that yet. Having a small kitchen hasn't changed anything in the way that I cook/bake. We still eat well. The only difference is that Moe is now the dishwasher. LOL!

Ann

Oh, I feel for you Ann!
I moved into my husbands older ranch home when we got married in 2000 and for the first time in my life I did not have a dishwasher. I found the most important thing to do was wash as I go. I would lay towels over the table - we only had one- and lay all the dishes to dry. My cooking style didn't change much other than labeling dinners as "1 pot, 2 pot, 3 pot meals"!
I still had Thanksgiving for 20 with all my china and glasses - and a bunch of folding tables.

We lived there for 5 years then moved to a trailer (with no oven and only one working burner) for a year while we built our house. Eight years later I am still grateful for a dishwasher and oven!

I grew up in a house that would now be 125 years old with the original kitchen. And yes the kitchen table was a main work surface. In my house which is just about 100 years we had the old kitchen for the 1st 15 years. I cursed the tiny narrow counters everytime I entertained or did a big project. I did put the frig in the breakfast nook to get room for a portable dishwasher that of course also gave me a nice wide counter. (But could only be run when I didn't need the sink!)

But one way our grandmothers survived in those kitchens is that they made pretty basic meals. Even my mother, who was pretty adventerous only had about 25-30 things that she made for dinners. So they got good at using their space efficiently. I remeber where certain things were done in that kitchen and they never varied!

I just celebrated Thanksgiving at the house of a friend who cooked a wonderful meal for us in a very small kitchen with precious little counterspace. I have another friend with whom I've enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving meal who had even less counterspace. (coincendence both of them had me over for thanksgiving, huh?)

Both times I've noticed that specific inadequacy of their kitchens and thought how lucky I am to have lots of space in my medium sized kitchen.

My mother cooked meals for a family of five (and we seldom ate out, she always cooked) in a kitchen which is probably 1/3 of the size of mine, and no dishwasher.

I'm with you, Sally, how DID/DO they do it? I guess the answer is, as Duane says, you make do with what you have. What it really says is how so much of what we have, the space, the fancy appliances, the specialized equipment, is all just extra. If you can cook, you can whip up a meal under the most dire circumstances, but if you can't cook, then all the counterspace and double boilers and asparagus peelers (shout out to Cathy there!) in the world won't help.

Ahhh. But rereading the OP, I see the question actually is... what are the tips & tricks? I'm going to take a stab at it:
1. A repertoire of uncomplicated meals that don't require a lot of fancy maneuvers to create.
2. Good organization
3. Knowing how to time the separate components of a meal so that they not only are ready at the same time, but also so that you can finish the main prep for any one component before beginning the next.

As a person who has lived with ''Kitchen As Pathway'', I know too much about this. Two more tip/tricks I would add to lowspark's about working in a small, older kitchen is:

l)Satellite storage. For cookware, pantry items, recipes, and dishes. Only the most used gets prime real estate. Everything else goes elsewhere - on the wall, around the corner, in another room, garage, basement or attic stairwell.

2) Things must have dual-purpose utility. Glasses become biscuit cutters, ovens may ''store'' your largest prep bowls, cookie sheets become lids, etc.

My home will be 100 years old in 2010 and my kitchen is pre-1950s I'm sure. Rather than rip out the few cabinets, I left them as is and had them painted (the wood was solid but not good quality). There is a space for an "eat-in kitchen" but it is so small that in actuality only two people could eat there.

The kitchen has one of the old-fashioned built-in ironing boards in one corner. The door is gone, so I added more shelves to have some open small shelves to display pretty mugs, bowls, and pottery.

There is a good sized pantry in this kitchen, but it was not very practical. So I had some handy guys remodel it this year. Now it hold much more and I can get to my pantry foods much easier. The pantry walls are the original bead board. Here is a pic:

I guess I almost qualify as resident "grandmother". The house I grew up in had the original 1904 kitchen....huge room, table in the center...porcelain sink on legs and the only counter space as such was a 2 by 4 square next to the sink. The stove was something my mother replaced with a wonderful red chambers with a top of the stove grill.
BUT....there was no blender no food processor, the coffee pot was a "chemex" and lived in a pan of hot water over the stove pilot light.
There was an enamel top cupboard which stored bakeware and was used for cookies and pies and breads and cakes.
The refrigerator was small and only contained 2 kinds of mustard and eggs and milk and maybe some eggs cheese butter and pickles. there weren't 6 kinds of mustard and a rack of bottled water and cans of beer etc.
I only remember having perhaps 2 kinds of breakfast cereal at a time and one kind of cracker and one kind of boxed cookie.
BUT....there was a huge butler's pantry ajacent with storage for punch bowls and stemmed glasses and china and tablecloths and room to lay cooking pies or trays of cookies waiting to be baked.
AND a huge walk in pantry full of deep shelves to store the roasters and big mixing bowls, tall vases, canned goods etc. There was no downstairs bathroom, and that space would have been ideal, but my mother wasn't willing to give up her pantry!!
I still have the remnants of an alley kitchen, but with an added room...so I have counters to fill with coffee pots and blenders and jars of coffee and cookies and tea etc....but when you get 2 people working...it's still a "one butt" kitchen as my son is fond of telling me!
Grandma did it because she didn't have a million appliances and gadgets to perform tasks that could be accomplished with a knife or a rolling pin.
I have my great grandmother's pie plate on display on a shelf in my kitchen. chipped enamel ware, bent, shallow and even a little rusty on the back. She used to say.."It's a poor crust that doesn't grease it's own pan"....and that wasn't only speaking of pastry!
Linda C

We owned & I've worked in the kitchens of several very old homes (1848 & 1887 were the oldest).

The 1848 home did not have built-in cabinetry nor countertops. We furnished the home as period appropriate as possible & still have it function as a modern kitchen; so workspace was limited to long narrow worktables that did double duty as a dining table for meals. Wall shelves, hooks, & hanging racks stored equipment. We took a nook & created a small pantry hidden behind homespun fabric. Modern small electrics were kept hidden behind that fabric panel.

The 1887 home had an eat-in kitchen plus a butler's pantry. The sink & dishwasher were in the butler's pantry & the stove & refrigerator were in the other room. The rooms were divided by a swinging door. (There was another swinging door between the butler's pantry & the dining room.) The butler's pantry had built-in cupboards & less than 8' of running countertop minus the sink cutout. The larger room had no built-ins so I used a Hoosier-style cabinet with the pull out next to the stove so I'd have a landing surface for baking. My grains & baking equipment were also stored in the Hoosier-style cabinet. To augment storage, DH hung pot racks both over the stove & over the sink. Nearly all pantry items were stored in the basement. There was little wall space...as common with many old farm-style houses there were (still are!) 6 doors leading into that kitchen/butler's pantry...including 2 swinging doors.

I loved both of those kitchens. You become extremely well organized & learn not to waste space or steps. Every piece of equipment in my kitchen had to be absolutely necessary & perform multiple tasks...like AB, no uni-taskers allowed.

Both homes had built-in corner cupboards in the dining rooms that I utilized for formal china & sterling plus we purchased 3 stepback cupboards for additional storage.

To be honest, I loved those old places & can't warm up to today's modern showpiece kitchens. They feel cold & sterile, IMO. They are so large that I wouldn't want to walk back/forth between work areas.

When we sold the 1887 house...the purchasers fell in love with the way I had the kitchen furnished & how it functioned. They made their full price offer contingent on our leaving the stepback cupboards & Hoosier-style cabinet plus all of the shelving & hanging racks. We negotiated it so that I was able to keep my Hoosier-style cabinet, my favorite stepback & my favorite hanging rack. It's an 18th century horse tack rack that I use to store my copper.

Here's the tack rack (pardon the cord hanging down from our VHF radio...have to be able to keep track of DH when he's on the boat & out of cell phone range!):

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And here is my favorite stepback cupboard:

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This is the shelf where I cooled bread & pies in both of those old homes. Somehow, the baked goods just looked "right" cooling on that cupboard. It's a feel my current granite countertops just can't match.

/tricia

We bought and moved into my Dhs childhood home in 1980. The actual size of the kitchen was 6x9. I used to call it my "walk-in-kitchen" The refrigerator was in what had been a pantry, with built in cabinet with glass doors. The doors were long gone and you couldnt open the lower doors anyway with the frig there.
The kitchen was a small u shape- had a stove- a triangular piece of laminate with chrome edging that went over to the wall.A hole had been cut to allow for the radiator which was 6 inches taller than the counter. The sink was a double sink porcelain with a drainboard over a metal cabinet on one side and a dishwasher on the other- it was one unit. And that was all we had for years and years. Oh and some hand made cabinets that my DHs Dad had put in in the 50s. No space for a table.
One of the 4 doors out of the kitchen led into another tiny room which had been dubbed the breakfast room. A drop leaf table was squeezed against the wall. barely room for 4 and it was full of echoes!
2 years ago my DH removed a wall to give me a 15x9 space and he renovated the kitchen DIY! I love it, and have so much more storage space. But I cooked elaborate meals in my tiny kitchen and they tasted just as good as what I can cook in my bigger kitchen. But the cook is happier!

many of the older homes were set up with a kitchen that was work space only-- the main surface being the kitchen table-- cabinets were regulated to a "pantry" area where not only staples were stored but also dishes, pots - pans & bakeware-- & often a "china cabinet" in the formal dining rm. for the "good dishes". And even in the city neighborhoods quite often there was an auxillary kitchen either in the cellar ( where perisable staples were kept & shelves of home canned goodies) or in the back yard .

And keep in mind yrs ago only the "rich" had the variety of dishes, pots, grocery items that are now available to us-- let alone the multiple "sm appliances" so many of us use.
And dishwashers were the kids in the family-- who dried & put away !

I remember my Grandmother's kitchen-- big room with huge round table, wood stove; sink with well pump & drainboard (on legs with material draped across); one lrg tin cabinet with flour bin & pull out, telescoping work surface;ice box;
hooks all around the walls; a "cold rm" between the kitchen & back door where dishes, pots etc were stored.

Mom's kitchen had sink with drainboard, stand alone stove & refrig, dropleaf tin topped kitchen table -- no cabinets! But good sized pantry rm bet kitchen & din rm.

My kichen is fairly sm by todays standards-- & as I look at it most counter space is taken up by sm appliances-- toaster, micro,food processor, auto coffee pot, jar opener, stove "tools" bucket . Other surfaces are covered with teapot collection, favorite pottery pieces, cookie jars, cookbooks, "stuff" I enjoy having out,plants, plaques from grandkids.

My mom made her noodles and kneaded her bread on the dining room table. She only had about 12' of cabinet space and some of that was taken by a window and the kitchen sink below it. She had one of those old Roper 42" white enamel gas kitchen ranges that had a tiny oven with a broiler below it, and a pull out drawer on the other side where she stored a lot of her pots and pans. She used a roll-around cart to store her Guardian Service pans. They were cast aluminum and had domed glass lids, which she turned upside down into each pan.

She also had a buffet. It matched the dining room table and chairs and they were all made of oak with some ornate carving on the chair backs, the drawer and side door fronts of the buffet and the legs of the table. They were very pretty but suffered from the hard use they got. When we had family meals, she would clear off the top of the buffet and put all the desserts there. She always used the two doors on each side of the buffet to store some "fancy" glasses she got in oatmeal and her set of Frankoma pottery. The top middle drawer in the buffet contained the silverware and the deeper drawer beneath it held tea towels, dish cloths and extra potholders.

She never had a dishwasher. She washed dishes as she cooked. When she canned, she spread towels on the floor to set the jars on when they came out of the canner. She had a cellar outside with shelves in it where she stored all her canned goods.

One response from my dear, precious, and hardworking mother (of 5) that would be applicable here is "you don't miss what you don't know". So she would have responded that she didn't miss blenders, convenience foods, counter space, special pans, FoodSavers, no food hydrator to make her sun dried tomatoes, etc, because she wouldn't have know about them. My dad bought her a Hamilton Beach stand mixer for Christmas one year and she thought she hit the lottery because she did know mixers existed.

I agree, Cathy, Grandma would have been ecstatic with my bread machine, my stand mixer, my food processor, even the microwave didn't exist when Grandma was raising me. She even taught me to cook and bake on a wood stove, no gas or electric ranges there and we had a "pitcher pump" that had to be pumped, hot water was heated on the stove and the outhouse was in the backyard, LOL.

I was about 5 or 6 when we got indoor plumbing and an electric stove, Grandma thought she'd hit the jackpot!

My house was built in the 30s, so it isn't quite 100 years old yet, but Elery's house was build in 1984. He has a tiny kitchen, U shaped with little counter space and about 4 feet of space between the cabinets on one side and the refrigerator on the other. Usable floor space is about 4X10.

My kitchen is a bit larger, it's probably 10x12 but contains a walk in pantry, a built in island and a built in table (which I hate). The "traffic perimeter" around my kitchen is less than three feet, I can't open the refrigerator without hitting the island or the cabinets. The washer and dryer are also in a "bumped out" space off the west side of my kitchen.

Both houses have big dining rooms which are very seldom used anymore. When Grandma was running the kitchen and I was a child we had regular sit-down type family dinners where everyone was expected to attend. Now there's just me and I tend to eat at the kitchen counter, the only time the dining rooms get used are during family holidays.

Annie

My Aunt Grace raised 7 children in a tiny Cape that had one bathroom, no shower, a dirt cellar and a kitchen the size of my walk-in closet.

Not only did she cook, clean and care for all 9 of them, she worked as a seamstress for a bridal shop and took in alterations at home. In addition, she catered wedding receptions - including her 5 daughters'.

I do not know how she did it. I remember her sewing machine was always set up in a corner of her living room. You could find your way to her home by the wonderful aromas that wafted from the windows.

She would set up the most beautiful buffets. She made all the fillings for her finger sandwiches from scratch and they were delicious. She made cream puffs, and eclairs with real pasty cream. The one thing that she was known for was her "Divinity Fudge" which I have never been able to get right...

No dishwasher, no food processor, and an old gas stove. I haven't thought about it in years. Where there's a will, there's a way.....

This is all so very interesting. I had one living grandparent when I was born, and we didn't live close to her. We'd visit occasionally, but unfortunately I didn't pay that much attention to her cooking nor her kitchen.

I had forgotten about root cellars and pantries, or didn't realize the older houses had pantries.

I love your stories and thoughts - thanks!

Sally

My grandmothers kitchen was larger than mine...My great grandfather built his ranch house in the 50's...the house they owned before that had a large farm kitchen, that house was built in the early 20's.
My house was built in 1972. We remodeled about 4 years ago, and I gained more counter/cupboard space by shifting appliances and taking out my laundry closet and turning it into a pantry.

I think that people did not cook with as many ingredients as we use now. Nor did they prepare the variety of menus or dishes (unless they were wealthy enough to have a cook) that we have become accustomed to. A meal might be just an entree & a side dish, maybe with pie for dessert. And of course, everything in cabinets was stacked, sometimes up to the next shelf.

One way that small-kitchen people might cope is by having an extra refrigerator and/or freezer. I'm considering that now.

My grandmother got her kids to help more that I did, and her kitchen was a classic triangle. But her mother dropped dead between the woodpile and the cookstove.

Both my grandmothers had big kitchens with

Like all the women I have known, this grandmother (my father's mother) did her best with what she had, and she has always been one of my heroes.

My other grandmother, who I didn't know as well, had a huge kitchen and a huge pantry, and a lot of food preparation took place in the pantry - it was probably originally used by a cook. The pantry did have more counters than the kitchen.

My mother had a tiny kitchen in the house my dad built in 1950, and she, too, was a loving cook and made wonderful meals and I don't know how she did it. Like you, by the time I'm done, there's not a clear place on the counter.

BTW Teresa, Your pantry turned out very well. I know it makes kitchen life easier.

This is all so interesting to read and does bring back memories of the already old house where I lived in the late 30's to 1950.

Our kitchen was quite small. Even then it seemed small; wonder how small it would look today! We had no pantry, and I do wonder where things were kept, as we only went to the grocery store once a week. During the war years there were six or seven adults in the house. I was the baby of the family, and didn't really learn to cook in that kitchen as there were more than adult women there who did.

But I do remember that we had a "fruit cellar" where most all fresh food was stored as well as the home-canned stuff. My mother made most of the bread at home and I now wish I had the in-the-cupboard flour bin that held 25 pounds of flour with the built in sifter at the bottom.

I hadn't really given much thought before to what all went on in that kitchen and how much was produced there. However I do remember that we also had an ironing board in the kitchen that was lowered from a built-in cabinet where I learned to iron under my mother's watchful eye as she cooked.

I am loving all your stories!

Tricia, your cabinet is beautiful, as are your copper pots and tack rack! I'm glad you got to keep them.

Teresa, that's a great cabinet.

Momj47, I love the pictures of your grandmother and the stove and sink she cooked at. Priceless!

Sally

Oh! I love Momj47's picture of her grandmother too...she looks almost exactly like my grandmother! What lovely memories.

When I was very young, early 1950's, I lived in a house that was built in the 1880's. It was an old New England farmhouse on 40 acres, way out in the country. I think the kitchen might have been updated when they wired it for electricity in the 1930's. So it was only 20 years old when my Mom cooked in it.

It was a good size kitchen with room for a big round oak kitchen table that could seat 8. And we had a walk in pantry. I remember her using the table to make things and to roll out pie crusts and knead bread. My sister and I use to kneel in the chairs and help mix batters. The stove was like those old Okeefe Merritt stoves with storage for pans in a bottom drawer. Mom use to also store pots and pans in the oven itself and just take them out when cooking. (DH hates it that I do that too! LOL) There were very few cabinets, probably added in the 1930s or 40's, and the only counterspace was by the huge farm house sink. Also back then, people didn't have that many pots and pans or bowls, unless you were rich, so you had to keep washing them to have them available.

Alot of the home canned food was stored on a shelf in the cellar. We also had a 'root cellar' dug into the dirt floor where root vegetables were stored all winter. There wasn't a lot of variety in the food or dishes we ate. Back then they made simple foods. The only appliances were a toaster and coffee pot. We ate all our meals in the kitchen except for holidays when we had company, then we ate in the formal dining room. She had a built in cabinet there where she kept the good china, silverwear, glasses and linens. They were used a couple of times a year. Unfortunately the house burned down when I was 5 1/2, but I do remember the kitchen better then the whole rest of the house.
Clare

How neat, Clare. I can just see you 3 ladies at work at the kitchen table.

It sounds like it just boils down to simpler meals, fewer pots and pans to have to store, and having a pantry and root cellar.

Sally

My bubbe had a pretty big kitchen, (at least I remember it that way, but then I was LITTLE, lol!) But I do remember the kitchen table being a main workspace. My other grandma had a small but efficient kitchen, table workspace, and a large "summer porch" filled with storage furniture, barrels and crocks, etc. Boy I miss both of those spaces!! But I also think size doesn't matter. I once lived in an apartment with a tiny, tiny kitchen, but it had efficiently arranged counter space--that's the key! That's what makes my current kitchen such a PITA, I don't have one decent usable counter space. I end up using half the stove as prep space, which has led to many a burnt dishtowel and melted spatula, lol!

Also, I think our grandmothers spent a lot more time hanging out in the kitchen, just doing a bit of this and a bit of that. They always had a project going, at least that's how I remember my grandmas. Start a batch of cookies, get the dough ready, take a break, have a cup of tea, put a load of laundry in, bake the cookies, take a break, pick some beans in the garden, put away the cookies, snap the beans, take out the laundry, make and clean up lunch, peel some potatoes and put them in water in the fridge, fold the laundry, put the stew on to cook, etc., etc., etc. So they were only handling one little task at a time in there.

When I was a small child...until I was about 5 years old...my grandmother lived in the house my great-great grandfather built between the beach and the marsh of the Southern Maine coast. He'd bought a house, reversed the plans, and added a whole extra house worth of a wing. One side faced the ocean, and one, the marsh. They made it into what would now be called a bed and breakfast, I guess, and their guests were hunters in the Fall and bathers in the Summer. Oh, and they served 3 meals and tea every day. They being my great-great grandma and her maid/girl Friday (and my grandma, once she got old enough to help). I don't know what their average guest load was, but I do remember seeing a picture that had been used as an advertising picture post card with the crowd of guests out in front of the Woodbine Cottage...there had to be at least 30 people there.

I remember my grandmother telling us how she used to have the chore of picking the meat out of the lobsters. The skin on her hands would turn red, start cracking and sometimes bleed (I don't know why lobster shells do this, but having picked the meat out of 3 at one point, I can believe her). This, so they could put big bowls of lobster meat down the middle of the table for the guests to help themselves. See, lobster at that time was dirt cheap, and for my great-great grandfather, who had his own boat and traps, an economical way to stretch the food costs associated with feeding the guests.

My poor grandma still got a flash of anger in her eyes some 50 years later, when she related how the guests would put their cigars out in the bowls containing the remaining lobster when they were done with dinner.

They baked all their own bread, made all their own pies and sweets, in fact, cooked everything from scratch...and a far more difficult scratch than people of our generation cook from, if they do! On a WOOD stove/oven. Without a REFRIGERATOR, let alone a dishwasher.

In the Winter, they shut down the entire ocean-side wing, and lived in the original house to save heat.

I have only the hazy memories of a young child, but I remember that kitchen as small. And as y'all know, generally the things of childhood are usually smaller when visited as an adult.

Naturally, by the time my grandma was mistress of that kitchen, with grandchildren underfoot, more modern appliances had been installed. But there was still a narrow, dark stairway going down into a cellar in one corner (I assume that was the root cellar) and a small closet with a toilet in it in the other corner. I don't know what the use of it was before they put a toilet in, maybe a pantry?

There was a kitchen table, where we ate, and a window seat (probably a storage chest) where my brother was bedded down after he had his tonsils out, so that he could eat with the family (he got ICE CREAM while I had to eat boring old chicken, potatoes and peas :( Funny the things you remember). With about 6 people around the table, I do remember my grandma having to sidle around the table to serve things, which paints a picture of how small the kitchen was.

I have lived with and cooked in a number of small kitchens in my life. The smallest was in a condo I rented, which was called a "junior one bedroom", meaning that it was a studio apartment with a small bedroom tacked on. I could literally stand at the stove stirring a soup, reach over to the sink on my left for some water to add if I'd let it boil down too far, and pivot on one foot to open the fridge behind me to pour myself a glass of wine to sip while I cooked.

And yet, you do learn to make do with what you have, if you like to eat well. I cooked a 5 course Japanese dinner for 6 people once in that tiny kitchen. You just learn to prep all your ingredients before you start actually cooking, and you sit down and plan your timing carefully before you begin, picking dishes that can be made ahead or partially ahead, using the minimum of last minute pots, pans and dishes.

Yes, our grandmas and great grandmas generally made simpler dishes than we might now, but those simpler dishes were more difficult then. No (or very few) convenience foods, prepackaged mixes or instant ingredients. Recipes weren't as precise either, they couldn't be, because ingredients, measurements and temperatures weren't all that precise either!

I shudder to think of trying to bake a loaf of bread or a pie in an oven heated with wood or coal!

I don't know how old lpinkmountain is, but I did smile when you talked about what you imagined your grandmother's day to be. It doesn't seem that long ago (but it must have been) that I remember my mother's average day, and I don't remember her ever having time to sit down for a cup of midmorning tea, nor did she put the laundry in, take it out, fold it. Her laundry routine was not one during which she could do other things, as she (and I don't remember all the steps) had to stand over the wash machine, ready to run the items through the wringer ( to me: "Dont'stand near that! You'll get hurt!) Boil the starch, dip certain items in the starch, and/or bluing. Wring again, carry the laundry basket the basement stairs to the door, string the laundry line and prop up line with poles, shake out the laundry and hang to dry. (Run out and take laundry down if it starts to rain) Take the dry laundry down, and take inside to dampen (could never figure out why we just didn't roll up the stuff before it got dry outside. :) ) That seemed to be enough for one day, as there was dinner to get ready. Next day, iron everything.

Thank God for automatic washers and dryers. I see that it's now de rigeur and also a good thing to once again hang laundry outside, and there's nothing like the smell of sun-dried sheets and towels. . .but they felt like sandpaper, too.

When I lived in Ely, Nevada during the mid-1960s we cooked on a wood/coal fired stove. A huge cast iron thing with a bucket for hot water hanging off the side. That bucket held the only hot water in the house. It was my job to bring in coal every morning from the back porch. Mom made all of our breads in that oven.

The house was originally built c. 1878 for a family with 11 daughters. Over the years, it was used as a boarding house & eventually turned into a duplex. We lived in one half & Dad ran his business from the other half. It looked just like something out of the set from Gunsmoke & we, in fact, nicknamed the place, "Gunsmoke Alley".

We had no central heat & it gets VERY cold in Ely, Nevada. I can remember the snow piled so high on Main Street that there were tunnels dug through to get from the street to the sidewalks. The house was on a hill & our root cellar was dug into the side of the mountain. It was sooooo creepy in there...I HATED getting Mom's home canned goods from that cellar. Spooky in there!

I rode my sled to school. I could coast all the way to Main Street & then had to drag the sled up the hill to the school yard. Going home, I'd hitch a ride behind somebody's car & they'd tow me to the bottom of the hill by our house & I'd drag the sled up the steep hill to our home. My dog, Nannette, was always with me. She slept in the school yard during classes. Can you imagine how fast a parent would be arrested today if they allowed their kid to be towed behind a car on a sled?! rofl

There was no shower in that house & just one bath tub. We had cold water to the tub but had to haul the hot water to mix from that coal stove. Fortunately, the bath was just a few steps from the kitchen & stove. During the summer, Mom heated water on a stone stove outside but still cooked on the big indoor stove. In Ely, summer is short & not too hot, fortunately. It's about 6,500' elevation, I think.

We hung clothes to dry outside & I clearly remember the sheets sometimes freezing solid before Mom got them inside. During the winter, clothes were mostly dried hanging around the stove wherever Mom could find a place to put them. She had a hand wringer washer & rinsed in a huge tub. This was in the mid-1960s!!

My GREAT GRANDMOTHER was born in 1848. My maternal GRANDMOTHER was born in 1873. My MOM was born in 1913. I was born in 1950. Mom was the youngest of five kids & I'm the youngest of three daughters. So, there's a larger than normal time frame between when my grandmother was born & my birth.

I've got some great pictures of the house my great grandparents lived in (Keokuk County, Iowa, 1870s); but don't know how to get them from their frames to the computer?

/tricia