This Modern House

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The time-tested advice you never learned in school for getting back to basics and running a healthy, happy, sustainable household.In this amazing collection of proven wisdom and practical advice from real vintage textbooks, you’ll find everything you need to know about shopping, cooking, cleaning, budgeting, and managing a household like an adult—whether you’re renting your first apartment or establishing a family home.
Learn handy home management skills such as:
• Replacing a button
• Planning a dinner party
• Choosing paint colors
• Reducing food waste
• Making natural cleaning supplies
• And many, many more
Give your household a happier, healthier future with time-tested tips from the past!
Previously published in 2010 as Home Economics, this fully updated version includes a new introduction and improved advice on cooking and canning. Jennifer McKnight-Trontz writes, designs, and publishes Women in Print, a biannual zine devoted to depictions of women in the printed media past and present. She has compiled eight books of vintage culture and design, including The Good Citizen’s Handbook: A Guide to Proper Behavior and How To: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know Fully Illustrated. She lives in Brooklyn. IntroductionIf you came of age after the 1980s, you likely did not have home economics class in school. By then, the subject had lost public support, as well as educational funding; educators and policymakers wanted to emphasize marketable job skills, and home economics—keeping a family fed, clothed, housed, healthy, and happy on a budget—was largely unpaid and unappreciated work (mostly because of the assumption that it naturally fell to women). But people didn’t stop having to manage households just because they weren’t learning how to anymore. And maybe if we had all been given home economics training—which was not just sewing and cooking but also design, agriculture, and even some aspects of nursing—we would have an easier time with these necessary tasks.
     The purpose of home economics class was not simply to pass on these skills, but to improve upon the tasks of homemaking: to make cleaning less backbreaking and more efficient, child-rearing less confusing, and dinners more nutritious and economical. Prior to indoor plumbing, modern appliances, and effective birth control, homemaking was grueling work.
     It’s not surprising that from the beginning, home ec courses and texts were aimed almost entirely at women, largely because that’s who we collectively decided was to do this work. But decades before secondwave feminism, some of these educators did recognize that a well-run home was indeed a team effort. The Boy and His Daily Living, published in 1935, included chapters on clothing, nutrition, budgeting, and maintaining the home.
     In the early 1900s, home economics was even promoted as a way to “counter the breakdown in society,” an enduring complaint through various times and perceived causes. There could be no better case for home management as a universal pursuit, not restricted to a particular gender or a particular era. Don’t we all want the home to be a sanctuary from what has always been, to some degree, a threatening outside world?
     These days, we have more time-saving devices than ever, but even less time. Fortunately, it’s not too late to learn the principles of home management. This Modern House collects real lessons from texts as varied as 1919’s Getting the Greatest Food Value out of Your Garden, the 1938 government pamphlet Infant Care, and 1951’s Homemaking for Teenagers, highlighting material that is as relevant today as it was in times long past. The tips are directly from early- and mid-twentieth-century textbooks, though there have been some minor edits; in particular I have made adjustments to the canning section, as methods have indeed changed since the 1930s. I have also altered texts that assume homemakers are women, as today that role is held by whoever is at home.
     Overall, these vintage texts offer more substance than style—precisely why most are still relevant. The lessons waste no time, make no pretenses, and don’t call for hard-to-find ingredients. The pioneers of home economics were not brands or celebrities—they were educators, scientists, and social workers trying to help homemakers and families flourish. This book is not necessarily a call for a return to the past, but a reminder that the fundamental goals and desires of home life have not changed. CN

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