4:10 p.m. - 2008-07-29
Staples and Memories
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
STAPLES OF LIFE....
Based on a comment I received after my last blog, it got me to thinking about what used to be considered staples of life when I first got married. I mean, the things I felt I NEEDED to have to start out my marriage.
Oh sure, there were the usual sheets, blankets and bedspread, a couple of sets of towels, some dish towels, dishes and pots and pans and utensils, including basic food stuffs in the cupboard.
But we also needed the following:
broom, ....iron ..... ironing board ...and clothes sprinkler....You put the sprinkle top on an empty pop bottle, filled the bottle with water and sprinkled or dampened the clothes you were going to iron......
******
bottle opener, church key, or whatever you wanted to call it. It took off bottle caps, punched holes in Carnation Pet condensed milk, juice cans, soft drink cans, Hersey chocolate syrup cans, soup and fruit cans.
Some people would even have one of the bottle openers attached to their kitchen wall. I think I even knew a couple of people who had perfected opening up bottles by using their teeth. Ouch!!!!! not to mention broken teeth.
Another staple was a can opener that you turned by hand.
You could develop a serious blister on your thumb if you had to open several cans at one time.
In spite of the fact that there are all kinds of new automatic electric can openers, I still use a hand operated opener.
For me, another staple was a good cookbook like Betty Crocker.
If you were a coffee drinker, the cans were sealed and you needed to use a little "key" that was attached to the can. It would turn and pull off the metal strip. The same key system was used on canned hams. You would have to be sure to keep that key tightly wound or the metal strip would come off and you would cut your fingers badly.
Of course, we had our flour, sugar canister sets set out on the kitchen counter. If you were a coffee drinker, you needed a coffee pot. Or, you had a tea kettle sitting on the stove.
........ and a spice rack of some type..........and you always had to have the ashtrays.
Oh, when I think about those ashtrays....what a memory! We had no idea that smoking was bad for you and I lived with ashtrays in my home for years. Lucky for me, my husband decided to stop smoking inside our home about 15 years ago so I don't have to see and smell those filled ashtrays.
I also used to have a filled candy dish in the living room.
I have had plants inside the house over the years but I don't anymore because my cats seem to be fascinated by the plants and get into the dirt.
Most of the things mentioned above are not in my house anymore. We don't need a bottle opener or an ashtray...the canister set has been replaced by some plastic sealed containers that stay inside the cupboard....the spices are in little bottles in my cupboard and often go stale before I use them up. The candy dish is out on occasion (around the holidays) and otherwise there might be some Tootsie rolls in a cupboard. I use the microwave to heat up water.
Now my home is filled with clutter.....pieces of my rooster and hen collections, books, magazines, mementos given to us by family members, pictures and stuff that just seems to land on a table and reproduce.....
It's our home and we like it.
