Housewives of the 1940s had to get creative during the war years. Many everyday products that they relied on were rationed, and that meant they needed to come up with alternatives in order to live a comfortable life. As a result, these women came up with some ingenious ways to save money and make use of what they already had.
From cleaning hacks to beauty products, housewives of the forties still have a lot to teach us about being thrifty. Take a look at some of their creative solutions to everyday household problems and see if you might save yourself a bit of money, too. In some of these cases, housewives actually get the job done better than we do today.
Clothes Lines Keep Your Garments Looking New For Longer
For most of us, life before washing machines can seem like a daunting task. For housewives of the 1940s, they couldn’t rely on tumble dryers to wick the moisture out of everyone’s clothes. But what they did instead had its own benefits that most of us today have forgotten about. Hanging your clothes out to dry is far better for the fabrics.
1940s housewives would hang each clothing item out to dry on a washing line and clip them into place. This gentler drying method tends to give you more bang for your buck when it comes to the longevity of your garments, and on top of that, saves you electricity money since you won’t be powering an energy-guzzling machine.
Limiting the Amount of Sugar Used In a Cake Recipe
In the 1940s, supplies often weren’t as plentiful as they are today. While sugar wasn’t extremely expensive for the average household, housewives of the decade still made do by using less in their home-baked goods, even if the recipe called for more. That made the desserts a lot less unhealthy and usually, just as delicious.
Instead of pouring white sugar into their cakes and cookies, housewives would often use only a teaspoon of sugar or honey to add some sweetness. As it turns out, delicious baked goods don’t necessarily need the exorbitant amounts found in many recipes, which saves you on the empty calories as well as helps keep your pantry stocked for longer.
Borrowing From a Neighbor Is Always Plan A
The Great Depression forced housewives of the 1940s to get creative. When it came to buying household items, most homemakers would try to find other ways of getting a hold of products first before having to shell out the money for them. Especially when the items were entertainment items, like movies or books.
Housewives would try and find the novels they wanted to read in a local library, for example. If they needed to borrow some kind of an appliance or tool for the kitchen, garden, or DIY project around the house, the chances are that they would ask a neighbor or a friend first before going out and spending money on it. Waste not, want not!
Old Stockings and Soap Shards Make a Perfect Washing Sponge
Housewives of the 1940s were skilled at breathing new life into already existing household items. They even found a purpose for the old pantyhose or stockings for use around the kitchen, namely, for getting their washing up liquid all sudsy when washing the dishes. When their pantyhose developed a ladder, it was time to keep them by the sink for future use.
All you need to do is stuff the pantyhose with soap or any old soap shards that you can find until it reaches the toe of the section of the garment. Then it’s just a matter of cutting a few centimeters above it and tying it up so nothing escapes. Don’t be surprised if you find your dishes sparkling like never before.
Using Mason Jars As Tupperware Boxes
Back in the day, mason jars weren’t the trendy hipster household item they are today. They were practical, easy to clean, and in good supply, making them perfect for housewives of the forties to store leftovers in. Luckily, they’re still an affordable item today, especially when you repurpose store-bought items in jars like pickles.
You can reuse glass mason jars in tons of ways, from using the larger variety as a more hygienic Tupperware box to drawer organizers. They’ll not only save you the cost and effort of buying other storage solutions, but they’ll also add a trendy element to your home. And remember, if you’re not into the opaque look, you can always paint them on the outside.
Replacing Stainless Steel Pot Scrubbers With Aluminium Foil
Women weren’t positioned on the front lines during World War Two, but they were doing what they could back at home. That included saving and reusing aluminum foil, as there was a nationwide aluminum shortage due to the metal’s use in war materials. It’s funny to think that something we take for granted was a much-prized possession less than a century ago.
But housewives of the forties had thrifty tricks up their sleeves, which included repurposing the material for other odd uses. For example, once a sheet of aluminum foil was too ratty to use for food anymore, it could be further scrunched up into a ball and used as a pot scrubber for getting rid of stubborn stains, removing the need to purchase steel wool scrubbers altogether.
The Hidden Household Uses of Yesterday’s Newspaper
Many of us (hopefully) already recycle our newspapers, but housewives of the forties found another way to repurpose yesterday’s news. They found a way to use tabloids to help them get another household chore done – cleaning glass. Whether they needed to polish a window or a coffee table, newspaper works a charm on smooth glass.
Newspapers were used for another purpose, too. If a housewife collected enough old papers, she could combine them and use them to insulate her home by stuffing them into the walls. However, this is one you may not want to try for yourself as less flammable materials have since been invented and are far preferred. Also, for those of you who keep a compost bin, newspapers make a great addition.
Having a Green Thumb Helped Families and Troops Alike
Housewives of the forties were just as handy outdoors as indoors. Many of them decided to start growing their own food when times got tough during the war by growing their very own garden of fruits and vegetables. This allowed them to be less dependent on the suppliers, allowing more food resources to be given to soldiers.
During the war, there was a significant increase in the number of city allotments. Bushes and shrubs were blossoming during this decade, and it’s all thanks to the housewives who were determined to find alternative food sources for themselves and their households. Interestingly, there has been an increase in urban farming in recent years, proving that the methods of 1940s housewives still have a place in modern society.
Stale Bread Can Have New Life Breathed Into It Again
Housewives of the forties hated throwing food away. But just like today, they fell victim to the bread turning stale. Luckily, they had ways to reuse the household loaf to ensure that nothing went to waste. After all, bread has nutritional benefits to it that don’t just disappear when it gets a little hard and dry.
Using either their hands to crumble the loaf into several small pieces, or using a knife to cut slices into smaller cubed squares, housewives would turn those stale bread bits into croutons by sticking them in the oven for a few minutes. It just goes to show that it’s possible to increase the shelf life of even the most overlooked kitchen staple.
Old Rhubarb Had a Neat Effect On Dirty Pots and Pans
Burn marks and hard-to-clean grub on the inside of our once-sparkling pots and pans are all too common. But don’t worry, housewives of the forties had some ingenious ways of keeping cookware in tip-top shape. Amazingly, it involved the use of a staple household ingredient even if it had gone bad and wasn’t good enough to eat.
Using some of that old rhubarb lying around in the back of your fridge, you simply need to cut it up into more manageable-sized pieces and boil it in a pan. After a few minutes, the water should be thick and glue-like, which is just the right consistency. Once you pour away the liquid and remove the rhubarb, you should find that the bottom of your pan looks brand spanking new!
Diapers Were Made of Cloth and Boiled After Use
It seems as though housewives of the forties were ahead of the curve on this one. These days, it’s popular among eco-friendly individuals and sustainability movements to opt for reusable diapers. But housewives of the 1940s had been washing and reusing diapers long before it became trendy.
Throwing away used diapers was simply too wasteful to contemplate, so using cloth diapers that they then had to boil to sanitize was the best option available. It may have been more labor intensive, but at least it saved the household money during such an unpredictable and unstable time in history.
Every Scrap of Fabric Can Be Put To Good Use
Nothing went to waste in a 1940s household. These days, we happily throw our old clothes in the garbage when they have one too many holes or a bleach stain. But housewives of yesteryear made sure that every inch of fabric was put to good use, even if it wasn’t good enough to wear as clothing anymore.
Often, housewives would make clothes for their household themselves, and even the scraps were put to good use. Whether it was old clothes or scraps of spare fabric, these materials were transformed into cleaning rags for the house. They could even be reused if they were washed, making it friendly on the environment as well as the wallet.
Creating a Hearty Batch of “Waste Not Soup”
Amazingly, housewives of the 1940s didn’t just put their fresh fruit and vegetables to use – they had a way to use the crops that went bad. “Waste Not Soup” became all the rage when they realized that their soon-to-be-inedible produce could be chucked into a pot of boiling water along with anything else lying around the house.
Animals bones were added and sometimes even a stock could be made with the hard skin of vegetables. All they needed to do was leave it boiling in a pot for a few hours and before they knew it, dinner was served. They either drank it as a hearty broth or used it as a delicious and nutritious base for future soups.
The Smoothest and Softest Butter You’ve Ever Had
Food was rationed during the war, and that extended to household staple ingredients like butter. A single household was only allowed to receive a pound of butter in a single week, which might sound like a lot for today, but back in those days, housewives were using the dairy product as their primary cooking and baking ingredient.
Aside from that, they were also using butter to spread on everyone’s sandwiches. But 1940s housewives found a way to make it go the extra mile by combining it with oil. They would mix approximately 160 grams of oil with a pound of butter, add a little bit of salt, and there you’d have it. Enough butter to go around.
Meat Shortages Meant Creative Vegetarian Meals
Meat was rationed during the war, along with a ton of other products. That meant that housewives of the forties had to plan the household’s meals in advance to make sure that everyone was adequately fed enough protein. Out of all of their meals, roughly a third of them ended up actually containing meat.
This meant that housewives had to get creative when it came to vegetarian dishes. As a replacement for meat and all its nutrients, beans would be a staple stand in as would cheese. It saved the household a lot of money during difficult years, but everyone still got enough protein, iodine, iron, zinc, vitamins, and fatty acids.
Creating Their Own Cosmetics Out of Food Ingredients
It wasn’t just food that got rationed during the war. Even everyday basic items like makeup were in short supply. Housewives had to find other means of acquiring lipstick and blush, and they did exactly that. They turned to the kitchen to look for an alternative to rouge for when they wanted to dress up.
They discovered that the deep reddish purple of beetroot could be used as pigmentation for homemade cosmetics. All you need to do to achieve it is slice a beetroot into pieces or grind it up, dip your finger in the juices, and apply it to your lips or cheeks. It might not have been as glamorous as using an actual tube of lipstick, but it did the job!
Organizing Potluck Dinners To Socialize With Friends
You may be familiar with potlucks from around the neighborhood or at your workplace. But back in the forties, they were a great way of sharing resources among the locals. Housewives would throw potlucks to socialize with one another, but also so that the responsibility of feeding a whole group of people didn’t fall on one pair of shoulders.
That way, there was a ton of food and variety to choose from, and everyone only had to make one dish to be a part of it. It certainly made party planning a lot easier too, as you didn’t have to worry about whether everyone would have enough to eat. Housewives had enough to do, so this social gathering hack was a life saver.
Achieving the Perfect Curls Overnight With a Rag
Housewives of the forties had other ways of using spare bits of fabric or old clothes. They would use these discarded items to help get perfectly defined curls. Section by section, they would wrap bits of their hair around the cloth when it was still damp, and leave it on for a few hours or sleep with it overnight.
Using fabric instead of the rollers we find today might sound like a daunting task, but it’s really quite simple. And this way, you can comfortably lay your head on a pillow and forget about it until the morning. They obviously knew what they were doing, as housewives of the forties were famous for their gorgeous ringlet hairstyles.
Finding Ways To Make Coffee Last longer
Many of us can’t imagine life without coffee. Well, housewives weren’t any different it seems, but they had difficult circumstances to contend with. Coffee was rationed, like much else during the war, so housewives found an ingenious way to make their coffee last longer. They would add chicory root to help bulk up the beverage.
Chicory root doesn’t contain any caffeine, but it has a similar flavor and texture when added to a cup of coffee. It allowed everyone in the house to have their morning cup of joe (or two) and helped them cut down on their caffeine intake per cup. All around, this beverage hack was a win-win.
Shoe Polishing Their Wooden Furniture For Instant Upgrade
Leave it to housewives of the forties to come up with a way to get wood looking polished and shiny. Whether they were looking for a cheaper cleaning material or they simpler didn’t have an alternative at their disposal, housewives would grab a tin of shoe polish and a rag and wipe the product all over.
It was especially handy when their wooden furniture was looking a little old and outdated. Some simple shoe polish managed to breathe new life into their furniture items and even provided the wood with a protective layer. Thanks to the waxes in the product, it turned out to be good for more than just leather footwear.
A Seasonal Cleaning Guide Would Ensure That Everything Was Attended To
Housewives of the 40s respected the changing seasons more than we generally do today. When there is so much to keep on top of in the home, they decided to come up with seasonal cleaning plans to ensure that they got around to everything eventually. It made it much easier and much more organized when it came to their chore list.
For example, when winter was around the corner it was a good time to deep clean the fireplace before it was put into heavy use. Or when spring would roll around, many housewives would take the opportunity to clean all the windows in the house. It would be just in time to see all the leaves returning to the trees, after all.
Staple Kitchen Ingredients Helped Unclog Drains
Housewives of the 40s discovered a fool-proof way of unclogging the drains. It involved a couple of kitchen staple ingredients and didn’t take more than a few minutes. These days, we’re used to calling in a specialist to help with those kinds of issues, but back then, housewives had to fix these problems themselves most of the time.
Chief Hygiene Officer at Pro Housekeepers, Jennifer Rodriguez, explained to men’s magazine Best Life the best recipe for the job: “Take a tablespoon of baking soda and pour it down the drain. Follow the baking soda with a full cup of white vinegar.” Leave it for a few minutes, then pour boiling hot water down the drain and sure enough, your drain should be fully functional again.
Ketchup Was Used As a Cleaning Agent
Housewives even found another use for ketchup (other than eating it!) The tomato-based sauce works wonders at cleaning brass items, such as doorknobs or table legs. They take a modicum of ketchup and wipe it onto the metal with a rag, before going over the area with a damp cloth and finally a dry cloth.
It’s important that no residue would be left behind as no one wants their brass items to smell like a tabletop condiment. But amazingly, ketchup really did get the job done. It polished the brass and best of all, housewives didn’t need to buy a special cleaning product to get their metalware shiny again.
Taking Toothpaste To Your Window Could Save You Having To Replace It
This 1940s housewife tip might save you hundreds of dollars. Back in the day, when one of the windows would get scuffed up or scratched, homemakers found a thrifty way to get their windows looking brand new again. After all, kids would be kids and pets would be pets. Scratches to the window were simply unavoidable.
They would take a simple tube of toothpaste and take only a tiny amount of product. With an old rag they would smear the cleaning agent on the scratched window surface, and amazingly, you wouldn’t be able to see the marks anymore. Toothpaste also has a tendency to dry when exposed to air, which helped secure it in place over time.
