The Brocante Home Chronicles.

Glamour In An Apron

While I do my best to be of a glamorous nature, there are days my friends, when tying one on makes me feel all sack of potatoes and bosoms... which is such a shame because the images below prove that it is entirely, beautifully possible to wear an apron with all the panache of the hostess with the mostess. Consider then...



..the crocheted pinny, circa 1950...



..the house dress in blue denim...



..and finally my personal winner.. the sackcloth... pertinent proof that elegance is all...

Favorites on a postcard please.

Mrs McWeeney

Here she is, one Mrs Marjorie McWeeney ironing amongst the fruits of her forthcoming labour... For here she stands in Bloomingdales, New York, 1947 amidst a "symbolic display of her housework". Namely 35 beds to be made, 750 items of glass and china to be washed, dried and put away, 400 pieces of silverware to clean and polish, 174 lbs of food to prepare, and 250 piece of laundry to be dealt with...

Gosh. Add to that kids to be washed, dressed fed, watered and educated, a full time job, all the financial nonsense we are required to juggle these days, a social life of some description and a whole host of personal hopes and dreams and I tell ya, it's a wonder any of us are able to function without falling over from sheer debilitating exhaustion.

And yet we do. Because we gotta...

The Practical Gift

In 1934, on behalf of the nation (and The Hoover Company)a certain Madame Schumann-Heink offered every husband in the country a little piece of her mind...

"Now is about the time you men begin to worry. To say to yourself, "Oh my! What on earth will I give my wife for her Christmas Present?"
Well if you have a good wife - and most wives are good- then you should not think of them only at Christmas, or maybe their wedding anniversary. But all the time, because they are your partners for better, or for worse.
So I say to you men, look back over the past year. Have you done all you could for tha good wife of yours. Have you made it easier for her to help raise your family? To make a place nice for you to go when you are through working?
Maybe you will want to give that wife jewelery or perfume. Or a nice new dress. Or a big, soft, easy chair- for you to sit in.
These are fine presents. She will love you for giving them.But there are some other things too which every wife should have. I know what I am talking about because I am a Mother- even a great-grandmother- and I am an old housekeeper too...

I mean those wonderful things that give your wife more time to take it easy and to play with the children, that leave her back not so tired at night and keep out those old wrinkles.
For instance I am wondering if your wife has a nice new electrical cleaner that keeps the house looking nice and clean? "

Well now Madame Schumann-Heink what a lovely idea, but I think you should be aware that I know women who would wrap the Hoover cord round that "thoughtful" husbands neck and stuff him with chives and an onion on Christmas Day if he shoved a present designed to "help her make a place nice for you when you are through working " down her stocking. Some women, you see, Madame, just don't know they are borne...

Now I have in the past been the recipient of both a food blender and a stock pot at Christmas. But here's the thing: I asked for them. It wasn't that said partner took a long hard look at me and thought, what she needs is an easier way of dicing carrots. Nope, No Siree. What actually happened was that I asked for a food blender and he looked at me sadly and agreed to buy it despite the fact that a set of saucy underwear would have been his gift of choice.

No wonder he left me!

So what's your take on this whole matter? Do you daydream about diamonds or a dishwasher? Would you, like my Mum, never again speak to a man who gave her something even remotely practical? Would an iron be a lovely little stocking filler or the height of all insults?

Should modern man listen to our Darling Madame Shumann-Heink or run a little wild at the jewelery counter?

Aprons For A Bachelor Girl

" The bachelor girl who has her own meals to prepare after returning from the office will find on this page a good selection of suitable aprons. All these deigns have the advantages of being easy to make, easy to launder, and easy to put on, added to the fact that they are exceedingly attractive."

She has only one room but it's home you see
And precious as anyone's home can be.
She's coloured the walls an eggshell blue;
They were drab before - an impossible hue!
And little Miss Smith, with the kindly face
Has sent her some curtains of creamy lace.
She has scrubbed the floor- it was terribly brown-
And now she has put the oilcloth down.
And Granny has sent her a rug - dark red-
It looks so cosy beside the bed!
A cupboard there is for plates and things;
A kettle upon the gas-ring sings.
There's a comfy chair, and a shelf with books,
A chest of drawers and some useful hooks.
She's asked the price at the next street store
Of curtains to keep the draught from the door.
It was her birthday awhile ago,
And the table came as a gift from Flo;
The little brown teapot came from Meg;
The pretty white cups from Molly and Peg.
Somehow or other the whole room's fraught
With scraps of somebody's friendly thought.
And so she declares that, wherever you'd roam,
There's nothing to beat her one-room home!

Lilian Gard, 1918. 

Housework For The Figure

"I am a housewife. I know just how tiring and thankless housework can be. I know that the daily chores leave little time for looking after one's face and figure.

But there comes a time when neglect begins to show, when you find you have to take a size larger than the last time you bought a new dress, when your muscles seem to be set.

I have exercised all my life and I am convinced that if the muscles all over the body- which are put there by nature to form a natural corset, bra and general support- are kept toned and supple as in youth, they will retain their elasticity and keep the figure young.

I don't set aside certain hours for my exercises- they are always with me. The few moments waiting for the kettle to boil or the bath to run- thats when I stretch, relax, bend and swing. There is no time to overdo it, but these gentle day-in, day-out movements are enough to keep the muscles strong and happy."

Oh Eileen. If only I was as perfect as you. Though I often find myself pretending to be a ballet dancer when I lean over the dishwasher and stick my leg in the air behind me, the truth is I suspect the elastic in my natural corset snapped a long time ago. But my Dear in your honour, next time I am brushing the carpet I will try to remember to twist from the waist and give the good old love handles a bit of working out...

God knows they need it.

Feng Shui The Vintage Way

 

Don't panic. I am neither going blind you with science, nor muddle you with mumbo jumbo because the truth is I think Feng Shui is a load of old codswallop. 

Actually that is a big fat lie. I don't think it's codswallop at all... I just think that it is, for the most part, common sense. Let's face it, leaving the toilet seat up just isn't nice is it? (Never mind that in Feng Shui terms it is an open invitation to flush your money away...) Dead plants ain't pretty (and thinking about doing something about them makes me feel exhausted) and sleeping under a bookshelf isn't a good idea because chi or no chi the damn thing could fall down in the night and knock you senseless couldn't it?

There are billions of Feng Shui laws designed to help you get the energy swooping around your house. Some of them are common sense, some plain old bonkers (with a dollop of truth in them- usually because they make our homes more aesthetically pleasing) and some, quite frankly, designed to fleece rich old ladies and men in suits of their erstwhile cash,while re-arranging the Chippendale furniture or insisting that Mary (with the spiky hair) sets up her desk in the money corner, right next to the water cooler, thus ensuring that the big licks in the room with the shattered glass ceiling still get their bonus's.

Heavens this is no way to fill you with enthusiasm for an afternoon of puttery treats is it? For that, Housekeepers,is exactly what this is... a little list of puttery treats inspired by the mystical art of Feng Shui because if there is even the tiniest shred of truth in it, we Vintage Housekeepers should embrace every opportunity to make our homes lovelier places to be...

(Please note that I deliver this random little list with no authority at all and indeed a smidgen of Brocante scrumptiousness that shouldn't be taken too seriously!)

*A bejewelled rabbit in the east corner of your bedroom will bring love and luck...

Bejewelled rabbits are hard to come by, but a homemade little velveteen rabbit wearing a rhinestone brooch should suffice. Get sewing!

* Red apples symbolise peace and have the power to dispel hostile energy.

Fill the prettiest bowl you can find with red apples (always visually stunning!) and place on the kitchen table, especially if dinner is the cause of much childish bickering or grown up argument.

*It is said that in 2008 fire energy is missing from our charts and thus we should be doing our upmost to shed more light on our worlds...

Pop tea lights in vintage china cups and arrange them on a tray in the South most corner of your living room...

*Shoes lined up by the door prevent good fortune entering the house. Refuse to allow them to live there. They look messy and often stink!

*Wear jewellery every day for sparkly yang chi.

Pin one of your gorgeous collection of vintage brooches on to your apron or the waistband of your pinny.

*Check your door-bell is working in order to maintain harmonious relationships with your visitors. (Letting them in is always a good start!)

* Dirty windows are said to cloud our judgement. Always keep them spotlessly clean.

I have recently found that adding a squeeze of washing up liquid to my vinegar/water/lavender potion makes all the difference to my windows...

*Chinese matriarchs believe chipped or cracked crockery is a bad omen and always throw it away.

This one makes me sob a little... some of my very favourite vintage crockery is crackled with age. So lets make it a Brocante rule to chuck out chipped pieces inclined to cut our mouths and give everything else a gentle wipe in frothy water...

* Encourage good chi to dance its way up to your front door by planting red flowering bulbs in groups of three along the path. Chi apparently needs to meander...

* Old furniture carries lots of yin energy and should therefore be cleansed and left out for three days before it is brought into your home.

The answer lie's apparently in rock salt, said to eliminate bad vibrations that may be stuck on the furniture, so tie little muslin bundles of dried lavender and rock salt and place in vintage cupboards and drawers. (Will also absorb damp!)

*The term peach blossom luck means a partner with a roving eye in china, thus banishing peach in the marital bedroom is essential...

But touches of salmon or red will spark passion!

* Dried flowers are technically dead and should not be given house room. Never mind the fact that they harbour dust like it's going out of fashion!

Go buy yourself a happy bunch of sunflowers instead. Or a money plant (Crassula Ovata) to encourage financial success. Or a Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum) to offset geopathic stress...

*De-clutter nine items at a time. Nine items a day for nine days. Or nine weeks. The more you give away, the more luck you bring to your own door...

Having a little white vase full of pink flowers on your bedside table will bring romance to your door..

*The concept of Yin and Yan can to those of us who prefer plain English, seem a little bewildering. So lets think of feng shui-ing our homes in terms of attending to all the things that drain us...

Armed with your Mission List replace blown bulbs, tighten screws, replace dead batteries, sweep your garden path, eradicate stains...etc, etc. In short do all the things that are bugging you and getting in the way of living your life as fully as possible at home.

*Things that squeak and creak encourage our tendency to be inflexible.

Get busy with the WD-40

*The desk where your children do their homework should not face the wall but rather have the chair itself against the wall and the desk facing into the room so they are sub-consciously supported by something solid.

*Have photographs of you and your partner at your happiest in your bedroom. And banish photographs of family in order to establish boundaries. Make it a private,intimate space about you and your relationships.

*Harness the cosmic power of "newly minted energy" (or sprinkle pretty rainbows around the house) by hanging ribbon strung crystals around the house.

(Cutting red ribbon in increments of 9inches is considered to be lucky...)

*Make a ritual out of capturing precious chi by leaving the front door open on a Friday afternoon (!) and burning fragrant incense or bundles of (lovely) white sage.

And if all else fails get yourself a blue hippo. That should do the trick.

The Laundry Party

Heavens this house as a child free zone thing is slightly un-nerving: all of a sudden there isn't a single reason why I can't be the dedicated housekeeper I was when Finley was a babe in arms and life wasn't one long round of picking up and putting away.

In the spirit of freedom I want to flit about in silk pyjamas, buffing my non-existent nails and singing along to Carla Bruni. (As if the help will arrive later and I have the luxury of doing bugger all...)

Truth is, if the help was on her way I'd be in a frenzy anyway: pinny strapped over my nightie, toting the homemade orange blossom air freshener like a gun and crawling around the skirt boards issuing dust bunnies their marching orders in case my chosen char has high standards and friends in high places...

So in the spirit of lets get back in the swing of things, I am today throwing myself a little laundry party:something much required in the long absence of my once regular Suds Days (Coming soon to a brand new Brocante Calendar!)

All the regular laundry is done (I woke up stupidly early consumed by panic in case I was the only Mummy to send her child in sans PE kit today) and sitting piled prettily/chaotically in the laundry room, and as we speak the shower curtain is swooshing around the washing machine. Beds will be stripped soon, ironing done accompanied by a delicious glass of elder flower water, a glug of fabric conditioner simmered in a pan of hot water to make the house smell divinely fresh, and the living room rug dragged into the garden and swung over the washing line so I can I can beat the frustration out of it in a suitably violent fashion.

And then... after a little lunch of leftovers I will slow down the pace, open up my little blue vintage linen cupboard and gently tend to the dust, creases and stains on the collection of new linens I have acquired over the Summer and stored away to rot (Bad housekeeper! Bad housekeeper!)...

Rust from dressmakers pins will be shifted with a mixture of lemon and salt (the linen stretched tight over the ironing board and then left to work it's magic for an hour) and linens I consider up to it, boiled (I love boiling things! It makes me feel like a Victorian Laundress and also just a fast makes me feel like I need to get a life pronto!!)  and if that too should fail to budge unidentified stains, a mixture of water and glycerine sponged on and the just as gently sponged off...

A nice cup of tea will be next and then it's upstairs to make the beds and because it has been Finley's first full day at school and I am expecting him to be utterly exhausted, I have wrapped up a teeny little present for my shattered little boy and will tuck it under his pillow as I puff it up.

An early to bed sweetener if ever there was one...

Happy Monday HouseKeepers.

*

Further Reading.

Cleaning Vintage Linens Soak at TipNut.

Removing Stains From Vintage Linens at The Sparrows Nest.

Cleaning Vintage Linens at Vintage Indie

The Days I Like Best

These are the days I like best. The ones where the house dances to it's own tune and Judy Garland sings the harmonies.

Days that smell of proper old fashioned beeswax polish rubbed into ancient pine furniture and white chocolate cookies baking in the oven. Nectarine gladioli and basil bruised by the brush of my sleeve. The thud of a new book landing on the doormat and the pile of old ones destined for new homes sitting in a pink basket by the door. Homemade hummous, crunchy the way I like it with flaky pastry sticks and a letter from a friend bearing oh so good news.

These are days that speak of domestic abundance: a three tier cake-stand full of lemons, towels warm and soft from the dryer, a pile of bills, I can, for once, pay. Raspberry jam on doorstep toast.

These are noisy days, untidy days: the scratch of my babbas pencil across the page, Scooby Doo and the whizz of the blender. Hot chilli spilt into the cutlery drawer and the slash of a red felt tip across the carpet. The Rat Pack in the kitchen, Rhianna in the bedroom. News clippings and glue. A poem shoved into my purse waiting to be made sense of. Laundry fragranced by sunshine stacked on the ironing board. White tea-towels swirling in boiling water. Milky coffee sprinkled with cinnamon please.

The Painted Veil with a cup of tea and a cranberry red blanket. Hands that smell of baby soap and the boxed set of Dirt to wile away the lonely evenings. Shopping lists collated. Post-it notes scattered through piles of must be done's. A pile of pennies in a polka dot eggcup set aside for an apple green mop bucket I can't stop thinking about.

These then are the days I like best.

Time Warp Wives

 

Golly gumdrops, I don't know where to start.

Thanks to an eagle-eyed BrocanteHome reader I gave my visiting Mum and Dad short shrift last night, shuffling them out of the house without so much as a cup of tea, so eager I was to be sitting in the company of The Time Warp Wives on Channel Four.

But oh my, oh my, oh my.

Now the problem is this: since that production company came and filmed me in all my "baby is just out of hospital and my relationship is falling apart" mad (and oh sooo much fatter) housewifely glory, it is very difficult for me to watch programmes of this ilk without knowing for certain that the willing victims who are it's subject matter will have been manipulated to within one inch of their lives: that they will have filmed breakfast just after they have faked dinner, that the "natural" conversation you hear is forced for the camera and that when it appears to be night-time it is nine o'clock in the morning and there is some poor oink standing on a ladder holding a blackout curtain to the window because the producer wants to shimmy her way back to London in time for supper. 

And so dear readers, I swallowed a hefty dose of salt on the time warp wives behalf and sat down to watch them go through their daily motions dressed to the nines in vintage costume.

My word what eye candy! An entire house lined with the austerity of the thirties. Deep red pouts. Husbands with quiffs (and nothing to say for themselves!), microwaves hidden behind utility cabinet doors, nipped in waists, and pastel coloured kitchens.

There were two "fifties" housewives, one of whom had a singing career to promote that was severely compromising her efforts to be the little woman of the house, a thirties lady, homely and honest, and a lovely young girl who had embraced 1940's style in an effort to deal with her sadness about her parents divorce.

Twas a joy.Or at least it would have been if there wasn't the over-riding unsettling sense of grown women "playing house". Here were four women so thoroughly obsessed by their chosen vintage era (the thirties, forties and fifties respectively) that they saw fit to eschew almost every aspect of modern society. And each to their own is what I say. But these women aren't dolls, they are people, real human beings living outside mainstream society, and life within the dolls houses of their own making were restrictive, occasionally sad and in one particular case, somewhat smug.

Three of the four women showcased had chosen not to have children because they would not fit in with their lifestyle. One in a cringe making moment she surely regrets, admitted that if she found herself pregnant she would have to "get rid of it".

Good old vintage values eh? And therein lies the rub: it is all well and scrumptiously good to decorate your house and lips in the stuff of your chosen era and it is absolutely admirable to look back on the way society used to be and find so many aspects of life today coming out wanting in comparison, but it isn't possible (and is a tad ridiculous) to imagine that it is possible to pretend that life outside your oh so delicious little front doors exists. To convince yourself that playing the good housewife stitches a marriage together. To think that modern day values haven't seeped their way into your conscience. And  that more than that, that by not embracing the more wonderful aspects of today you do yourself a disservice the housewives you are emulating would have embraced wholeheartedly.

Life isn't a game. None of us are Doris Day. Hell, even Doris Day wasn't Doris Day. So we would do well to remember that what we saw last night was the Photoshop version of four women's lives. Not necessarily the truth.

Read more about The Time Warp Housewives here and watch the programme for yourself here

Wardrobe Heartbreak

(An abbreviated version of this post originally appeared on The Vintage HouseKeepers Circle and is part of a series of articles I will be posting here before the Yahoo group is closed)

To me the most difficult thing to de-clutter in the house is my wardrobe. In all honesty I find it difficult to talk about because so much of who I am is wrapped up in the clothes hanging there: and thus because I find the clothes hanging there so absolutely without the Je ne sais quoi I crave, I stand gawping at the glaring disparity between who I am and who I think I am every time my wardrobe doors swing open.

Once upon a time in the hallowed halls of Vogue, Miuccia Prada declared that "Clothes should always represent your vision of yourself" and that is how and where we are going to start the culling of our wardrobes: not with what is old, or holey (Aren't those old and holey items amongst some of your favourites?) but with the clothes that don't make you feel shiny and beautiful. The ones that aren't any good for snuggly days in the house or glam nights on the town. The ones that were expensive but make you feel fat. The ones that look fine on, but really aren't you....

There is nothing sinful about throwing or giving clothes away if they make you feel bad: even if that means most of your wardrobe is going to be hanging in Oxfam tomorrow. You really shouldn't feel guilty about wanting to be truly, deliciously, authentically you. In
an article here on BrocanteHome once, Mimi wrote about embracing your "signature" and I know that a fair few of you took it to to heart and really did take the time to consider what really shouts "this is me!"...

Authentically I wear big jewellery, gypsy skirts and bohemian tops: but the authentic side of me went for a holiday twelve years ago and never came back and since then more often than not I live in my uniform black trousers (designed to disguise big bum syndrome) and I can't say it makes me feel quite as glorious as it ought to. Comfortable, yes. But not GLORIOUS. So it's time to start living out loud. And in our world that starts with not giving BrocanteHouse room to clothes that don't represent our most treasured visions of ourselves...

This doesn't have to be about extremes: it is about giving yourself permission to throw away the 1985 Donna Karen dress that makes you look like a waitress and finding someone to love the fur you adore, but would never dream of wearing....
I don't need to give you step by step instructions: you know what to do and in all truth, only you can really deal with the emotions wrapped up in even the most innocent looking t-shirt...

So do this one just for you. The time is right to be who you were meant to be.