Buy a loaf of bread? No way! You'd go to your Hoosier Cabinet for flour, yeast, salt and sugar, and to your General Electric monitor-top refrigerator (if you had graduated from the ice box to electrified cooling) for eggs and milk. Then you would blend these ingredients in your hand cranked dough mixer, and finally bake the bread in your Wedgewood gas/wood stove. You might even make your own butter in your own small table-top churn.

Next to the refrigerator is a wire basket containing several recently emptied milk bottles. Tonight, you will place the bottles on the back porch, along with a note to the milkman specifying what is to be left in their place. If the milkman is kind, he will be quiet and not wake you and your family when he makes his 6 am rounds.

This way of life is recreated in the early 20th century kitchen at MOAH. It may also bring back washday memories when you see the old washing machine, complete with exposed mangle. Housewives had to be quick and nimble to avoid getting fingers between the wringers!

On the table is a small washboard and pan, useful for items not suitable for the washing machine. They could also be the emergency backup for use when the washer (or the electricity) failed. The irons on the table and shelf were not your modern steam iron. Some early electric irons weighed 15-20 pounds, and definitely helped to build strong arm muscles. Some irons burned hydrocarbon fuel to generate internal heat. The non-powered irons were often heated on a stove top, which is one of the reasons many older houses had drop-down ironing boards stowed in a kitchen closet. Electric or gas dryer? Sorry, not available. Hope the weather is dry, the air is pure and the sun is warm as you hang the wash on the lines outside.

This page last updated: July 1, 2002