4 ms·

I’m almost 40, not from the US, and mass market hit us later in ( 1955 rather than just after WW2 ) Still: you will have to go back to my grand parent generati

I’m almost 40, not from the US, and mass market hit us later in ( 1955 rather than just after WW2 ) Still: you will have to go back to my grand parent generation to find folks carrying out the activity you describing. And even then, that was seen at the time as a rural predicament ( bigger cities had «modern confort » already, but not isolated farm and so on. ( agreeing with all you says… just that the timing seems off ) Source : my 4 French grand parent born around 1920

quartesixte 4y ago
East Asia at the onset of WWII was playing catchup to European comforts. Took a while for them to catch up.
nosianu 4y ago
East German (GDR) here, born early 1970s. Let's go through OPs list one by one: > Don't forget making and mending your own clothes Not making, or not a lot, but some. Mending, definitely. > washing them by hand No, we had a washing machine. > beating rugs outdoors by hand Yes! We did that regularly. > Harvesting We had the garden in front of the house and an extra one a little further away. We had veggies and fruit in both, lots of it and great variety. And it tasted great. And it was A LOT of work. We also regularly went into the forests for mushrooms and berries and also spent a lot of effort on preserving food for winter. > chopping firewood I did that as a kid, a lot, and it was fun! I managed to never hurt myself somehow. > managing coal. Yes! We got coal every year, unloaded in front of the house blocking the street for the neighbors, so I, after coming back from school, had to start asap to put it into buckets and slowly move that large mountain of black dirt behind the house into storage. I must have gotten a lot of coal dust into my lungs. It only stopped after reunification when we got natural gas and central heating, which was not an option to buy anywhere in the GDR. We had our own house. On the other hand, he (in)famous concrete dwellings of the East Bloc, which East Germany had more and more of too to solve the housing crisis that lastet I think well into the 1970s or even the early 1980s, had central heating from the (extremely dirty) coal power plant of the (very large) local chemical factory. Still, even those living in that kind of housing often also still had a garden nearby usually used to grow fruit and vegetables to supplant what could be bought in the stores.
zdragnar 4y ago
Keeping in mind just how rural parts of the US were helps; many didn't get electricity until the 1930's or indoor plumbing as late as the 1950's. The farmhouse my dad grew up in didn't have indoor plumbing the first few years of his life. Of course, city folk had electricity and gas much earlier, but even today a full 1/5 of the population is outside of urban areas; it was at least that much back then.

quartesixte 4y ago

East Asia at the onset of WWII was playing catchup to European comforts. Took a while for them to catch up.

nosianu 4y ago

East German (GDR) here, born early 1970s. Let's go through OPs list one by one: > Don't forget making and mending your own clothes Not making, or not a lot, but some. Mending, definitely. > washing them by hand No, we had a washing machine. > beating rugs outdoors by hand Yes! We did that regularly. > Harvesting We had the garden in front of the house and an extra one a little further away. We had veggies and fruit in both, lots of it and great variety. And it tasted great. And it was A LOT of work. We also regularly went into the forests for mushrooms and berries and also spent a lot of effort on preserving food for winter. > chopping firewood I did that as a kid, a lot, and it was fun! I managed to never hurt myself somehow. > managing coal. Yes! We got coal every year, unloaded in front of the house blocking the street for the neighbors, so I, after coming back from school, had to start asap to put it into buckets and slowly move that large mountain of black dirt behind the house into storage. I must have gotten a lot of coal dust into my lungs. It only stopped after reunification when we got natural gas and central heating, which was not an option to buy anywhere in the GDR. We had our own house. On the other hand, he (in)famous concrete dwellings of the East Bloc, which East Germany had more and more of too to solve the housing crisis that lastet I think well into the 1970s or even the early 1980s, had central heating from the (extremely dirty) coal power plant of the (very large) local chemical factory. Still, even those living in that kind of housing often also still had a garden nearby usually used to grow fruit and vegetables to supplant what could be bought in the stores.

zdragnar 4y ago

Keeping in mind just how rural parts of the US were helps; many didn't get electricity until the 1930's or indoor plumbing as late as the 1950's. The farmhouse my dad grew up in didn't have indoor plumbing the first few years of his life. Of course, city folk had electricity and gas much earlier, but even today a full 1/5 of the population is outside of urban areas; it was at least that much back then.