If you unstitch the burlap, open the bags up, they make good wind shelters for plantings or wrapping for small bushes. We had other uses for them in horses. Some folks once used the washed burlap, hooked wool thru, to make a wool blanket for under the saddle. Used for regular hooked rugs, backing for other projects around the farm or ranch. Stuffing the bag with rags, wool, makes a nice pillow for the dog or cats. They unstitched the bag, rolled it kitty-corner, used it as hobbles on a horse. Collected up ear corn from picked fields, though the modern cornpickers don't leave nearly as much nowadays. It was free, so worth picking up. Always good to throw your stuff in, tie the bag shut, transport brushes, buckets, grooming tools to the show, before plastic boxes and totes came along. They took abuse well, with heavy, sharp edged implements inside, to be moved. Didn't rip open easily. Makes a nice rug in the shed, for piling up pots, on the hard cement. Less likely to chip or break the terra cotta when you set it down. Works as a doormat too. Bags layered, in between stacked things, allowed better piling up for storage. Since the bags have gotten so rare, we have gone to other methods of doing things, instead of using the burlap bags. Burlap is still available, just costs you. Bags were free and always around, so we just grabbed them for our first method in a plan.

To me, it looks like the first German kitchen was set up for a cook who spent a lot of time prepping or canning. The work surface in front of the window and next to the sink is perfect for that kind of work. The cook could sit on the stool instead of having to stand up for over an hour while sorting berries for jams. The sink was handy for rinsing the berries or whatever produce was to be prepped for canning. My family did a lot of canning in summer. As a teen I spent countless hours helping sort through and tear stems with leaves off blackcurrants, gooseberries or strawberries. Typically there would be 3-10 kg (6-22 lbs) of berries heaped on the kitchen table. I still make jams (we have mulberry trees) but it's a pain to stand by the kitchen counter for two hours while sorting the berries. Different heights helped contain mess. When sorting berries, I would put a pot on the raised part on my left, if I were sitting in front of the window. I would scoop berries from the sink filled with water and place them on the work surface. As I processed the berries one by one, I would toss them into the pot, and the mess of juice and debris would be contained on the surface in front of me. The pot with the berries would stay clean. So far as I know, Germans have a longtime tradition of garden allotments in cities. Also, I imagine that in the 20's or 30's most foodstuffs required more prep work since there wasn't much food packaging. Grains like rice or buckwheat had to be sorted and debris picked out by hand since they were sold by weight from large sacks. Again, an hour of work before your rice was ready to be put in a pot and boiled. I think storage space is more of an issue now that people have more stuff. There are also more appliances to house. There are several sides to the "dated" concept: 1) Technology development. New appliances and materials make cooking and cleaning easier. Novelties like pull-out shelves make for more efficient storage. Better lighting like can lights banish dark corners. Again, adoption of novel technologies varies by culture. While dishwashers are standard in American homes, many Russians opt not to have them and spend the money on something else - like fixtures for a sauna at a dacha. At the same time recessed lighting is wildly popular in Moscow apartments. People put them even in bedrooms. Which is no surprise given the long and dark winters. 2) Cooking habits and traditions. A family who has a large garden would have different cooking habits than a family that gets all their food from supermarkets. Culinary preferences evolve with time, as well. Some foods that weren't common 50 or more years ago, have become a daily staple. 2) Changing esthetics. This is a highly subjective category, and probably more emotional than practical. Some designs and decors withstand the test of time better than others 3) Societal attitudes. Pre-WWII kitchens were purely utilitarian and separate from the public areas of the home. The modern German kitchen pictures posted by circuspeanut make me think that Germans still tend to be mostly utilitarian about their kitchens. On the other side, many Americans treat their kitchens as a part of the public space and thence as formal showpieces. For Russians, kitchens straddle the boundary between utilitarian and public. Open floor plans aren't as widespread in Moscow, and many people prefer to have kitchens that can be closed off. If there is no formal dining room, formal or holiday meals are usually set up in the living room. However, kitchens are the place for casual (and cozy!) socialization with a friend or two over a supper and/or a cup of tea. That encourages people to make their kitchens presentable to visitors, but not overtly formalized.

Any more offers? 1. If you like to save margarine or other plastic containers with lids to store things, here's a handy storage for the lids, which tend ordinarily to slide all over and make a mess. We get our milk in square boxes, just under 3" square, about 9" high, with top folded like a roof, squeezing open part of the roof to pour it. I pull open the rest of the roof, measure the width of the largest lid that you want to store up from the bottom, then cut from there down the middle of one side of the box, then fold each cut side down and staple. Then cut down each corner of the box to just a bit above the space needed, then fold the four sides over one another, cutting off extra material if there is any, and staple. To make the sides a bit stiffer, after you cut down the side of the box, slip a yardstick at the fold of each of the flaps and fold the flap down over the yardstick, to make an edge about 1/16 - 1/8" just before the flap turns down. If you do that, it helps if you lay the box on a board just wide enough to fill the hole in the side of the box and staple into it from the outside, rather than using the bottom of the stapler, which will push down the folded edge of the wall that you want to make. That will hold your lids in one place, in order, on edge, taking up only a small space in the cupboard, drawer, etc. 1a. Cut to a different length, they make handy storage containers for letters, as well. Slip two together, top to top, then staple to make a box for business-sized envelopes. You'll soon learn that you'd like to use the fold-over-the-yardstick system for the outside one of them, to make the sliding easier and to add strength to the sides, even though there may be two of them for most of the distance, I think. 2. Use frozen orange, etc. juice containers when empty to hold pens, pencils, etc. on your desk. I use them to hold nuts, candy, etc., as well ... but have had some trouble with Indian grain moths, whose larvae love nuts, cookies, etc. and whole wheat (but not white) flour. We have individual yogurt containers with sloping sides that fit just nicely into the tops of those juice containers, to foil the larvae and the webs that they spin (in addition to the residue from their behind that they leave behind). I can leave the various processed breakfast cereals out in a dish on the table for a week and those critters won't touch them - smarter than we are, I guess. ole joyful

I purchased a King Sized set over one year ago. At first I seriously questioned their comfort and would have described them as feeling like sleeping on canvas tent sheets. I didn't give up on them and decided to use some common sense and wash them in hot water with a gentle natural detergent. I washed them about 3 different times in hot water once a week as I change my linens that often. Then I only washed them in warm and rinsed in cold. They got softer and softer everytime I washed them. These sheets have very strong fibers. They have not worn thin like other cotton sheets I have purchased wherein I have to get rid of them after a few years. I highly recommend these sheets. The cotton is grown in the Southern USA and woven on a loom in the South as well. Redland Cotton is 100% American grown and made! I don't know what the deal is with some comments here about "politics." I look at results, not politics and the results of Redland are top notch in my experience. I love them.