Spring cleaning the Victorian way...

Well spring cleaning has arrived at our house , one room at a time.
Having done much research into this area I am inclined to imagine that most of you cringe at the thought of a true Victorian spring cleaning ...well you need not cringe .
It was not as bad as is believed.

Most of the bad press was due to advertisers trying to display/push that the old ways were "too Victorian" .If you used their new cleaners your life would be one of leisure and you would have an always clean house ...

Victorians were much worried about disease , with good reason. People died easily  until the invention of modern medicines ,especially antibiotics. We have no such worries in today's world.

 Problems such as bed bugs were a scourge in most households, today we have treated mattresses to avoid such things.  Although these little buggers are back I am told.(Pardon the pun I could not help myself)

We have central heating which is clean and most furnaces have filters. Unlike heating and cooking with wood or coal as was. Most of us do not store wood in our homes , bringing in spiders and ants with the wood. And there is the ash and the wood debris from a winters load of wood in the basement or wherever you keep your wood.
Most of us do not store our foods from the garden, so pests do not move in in the fall with the food stuffs.
Our modern homes are much cleaner , not to mention our central or push vacuum cleaners, our modern paints and our wonderful washing machines. Just to name a few differences.


Anti Victorian style spring cleaning and Anti-Victorianism reached its peak in the 1950's and early 1960's. At that time there started to be a push for a  more "relaxed" style of house cleaning to be adopted. This new method/trend focused on a clean as you go method rather than a change of season deep cleaning.
There were also many new "products" sold and advertised to make cleaning a breeze...
Houses were getting more modern and young families tended to buy new homes rather than old homes.
And women instead of staying home and cleaning could go to work in order to pay for their new homes and uber cleaning products ...so they could not possibly have the time to clean the "old fashioned way"

So which is better ?

Spring cleaning here is important, we heat with wood and the walls and ceilings show the dirt. We also seem to get a lovely variety of cob webs , that show up wonderfully . As I mentioned with wood comes spiders and ants , and dust and wood chips etc...
So I clean the Victorian way, One room at a time starting up and working down to the basement.
I have heard tell that some think that the Victorians did this in a one full swoop and emptied the house, I must tell you that this is not true , they cleaned thoroughly one room at a time. Top to bottom, including repainting or papering, re sanding floors. Makes much more sense to do this one room at a time ,especially with the threat of rain in the spring. Besides there were still the usual chores to do along with this extra project.
I have yet to read an account of them emptying the whole house ...just would not make sense.

We have wood floors, it is wonderful to give them a really good scrub especially in the guest rooms. For the rest of the year I just dry mop them.
All of the windows are cleaned with ammonia and the sills are feed of last years fly graveyard.

The kitchen is cleaned much more often ,it gets dirty especially the ceilings because of the wood cook stove. So I pay paparticular attention. I wipe down all of the wood at least every other month with ammonia.
The kitchen is also the most travelled room so it is needless to say it is the one that gets the most attention..

Another Victorianism I would like to mention is the strength of the cleaning products, again advertisers were looking to convince women that if their products were purchased ,women's lives would be much better. I have seen the ads with women wearing gas masks, But I would argue that our cleaners are caustic today as they were then. We have just sort of tidied them up and added "spring garden " smells to them..We still use ammonia and ammonia products ...just as they did then. To name one ...

Spring cleaning gives us a new beginning each year in a sense.
In the Victorian era and the eras before it "spring" would have welcomed a new year so to speak, a new food growing year, a new visiting time as now people could travel easier and would not be afraid of getting ill from the weather,.
Summer kitchen wood stoves would be fired up, keeping the heat and therefore the dust out of the main house.
Meals would be eaten out of doors or in screened rooms/porches. Many activities would be moved out of doors .Summer curtains would be hung and winter heavy,keep the cold out curtains would be washed ,mended and stored until the cold returned.
I love spring and spring cleaning, I look forward to the season that is approaching and can hardly wait until we can breakfast on the porch with seasonal flowers on our table ..
until next time ,,,you know where I will be
Margaret

Sap, shacks and syrup oh my!

Greeting all, Ken here. The sap is running full tilt and we already have had about 80 litres of sap partially boiled with another 180 litres waiting in our storage bins. I'm just about to head out and gather more after this post (about 5:30).

I built a little sugar shack this year but my design leaves much to be desired. I'll have a better one for next year given my experience with the design flaws of this year's model!

Last year we made about 20 to 25 litres of syrup from around 800 to 900 litres of sap. I'm trying to keep a better record of sap collected and syrup made so I can get a feel for how much we might have spent on syrup in the store. Margaret said she heard on the CBC that it will be a banner year for syrup. I guess we'll know come  April.

That's all for now. Stay dry and warm.
 Ken

Letter writing

I went to Guelph yesterday, on my trip home today I was listening to CBC as usual. Nora Young was on with her program Spark...she  interviewed someone who has decided to write a letter a day , hand written, not on the computer...It is called the "letter a day project" and can be found on the CBC Spark website...Funny enough I had just affixed a stamp to a letter, Yes you guessed it, a handwritten letter. Written with pen, nib and ink from an ink well..Just they way it was done in 1865.I have a few people that I write to often from all over . We write in period style and I am blessed enough to have a lady who writes from the US and even draws in the post mark as it would have been...very cool.
I have numerous ink wells and my newest favorite was purchased in an antique shop in St Thomas ,it is wooden and covered with tooled leather, The lid opens to reveal the ink holder/well  (which had been replaced with a thimble,,oh well it works fine .) it is a lovely piece. My Grandson Aidan has gotten into using my pens and ink and loves practicing . So I had a little chuckle as I was listening to this program while my letter to my friend was sitting on the dash waiting for me to mail it. I have often wondered if anyone at the post office notices our letters ...
Talk to you soon
Margaret

Tea not just for drinking anymore

I had heard that some Victorians saved their tea leaves to assist in cleaning . They sprinkled them on the floors apparently,then swept them up. I had asked someone about this and had asked if this was for dust control. I never did get a reply so I decided to give it a test. We saved our tea leaves and today I did the whole room .Sprinkled the tea leaves over the floor and swept them up according to what I had been told ...sure enough it decreased the dust . We get a lot of dust in the house from burning wood. So this is an ideal way to control the dust somewhat ..Just thought I would share that with you ...see you soon
Margaret

Wicks, Winter and Wood

Greetings all, Ken here. My lovely wife Margaret posted earlier about wicks and the need to trim them once in a while to maintain an even burn. We have been using nail scissors to do this. Today,we played hooky (I was supposed to be getting wood) and went into St. Thomas, the Elgin County seat and some antique shops to see what was there. We  came across a pair of unusual wick trimers in a shop called "Antiques on the Side", located on Talbot Street in downtown St. Thomas. This is truly a wonderful place, filled with all sorts of lovely items ranging from the whimsical to the historical. We also picked up a wooden ink well, a silver plate serving basket, a quill pen and nib, a ladle and a ceramic serving dish. All this and we spent less than $60!

We also visited three other antique shops and thrift stores and picked up some enamal ware, some wood bits and other hand tools, a covered serving dish, some wall sconces and candles, a sixties style Do-it-yourself book and a few other items. All in the name of Victorian living! Ok, the Sixties DIY manual doesn't count but everything else does.

We played hooky today because we were both feeling, dare I say it, lazy! I had planned to get wood today but the wind was blowing pretty fiercely so I elected to shop instead. We have been spoiled by the mild winter so this icy blast would have made getting wood a very chilly proposition indeed.

Speaking of winter, this is the kind of weather I'm used to seeing at this time of year. It is also the time to make ice blocks for the ice house and the ice box. We have had a few containers full of water sitting outside for this purpose and have watched them freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw and had given up hope of ever getting ice blocks the natural way. I guess we'll see what transpires over the next few days and weeks.

Today was also special for another reason. Our granddaughter Zoe celebrated her 7th birthday today with some of her friends from school. Happy Birthday Zoe.

That's all for now. Thanks and Good Night.

Ken and Margaret

Keeping wicks trimmed

Some evenings we will be sitting reading or playing scrabble and the room seems to brighten unexpectedly...sure enough one of the wicks will have curled and the candle flame shoots up . Time to trim the wick.You do this  for a couple of reasons. As your candle wick burns it seems to sometimes curl causing it to burn unevenly. When the wick burns uneven your candle does too. you end up with a candle that burns quicker on one side , ending up with wax spilling down the side of the candle and pooling into the candle holder lip and often onto the floor,table whatever. Can be messy indeed. I have a few of those lovely glass pieces that sit on your candle holders and seem to collect the spilled wax in them but that sometimes causes a problem when the wax is cooled it is hard to remove them. I am constantly scraping wax from counter tops and table tops..and floors. I have found that using an offset spatula works wonders for scraping wax from tables and floors. We have found that all candles are not created equally, some are wonderful and burn slowly and the wicks seem to burn slowly with them, and others burn so quickly it is hard to believe. We got a bunch recently and we were so surprised at how quickly they burned away. In between dipping our own candles , which I might add is a forever job, we buy as many as we can at used stores such as the Salvation Army used store or Goodwill,,,Yes I have heard of Value Village but after a bit of research I found out that they are actually an American company that although they give a extremely small percentage to a charity they actually are listed on the stock exchange,,,and are not a charity at all , so I will not buy from them.
We have found many good deals at some of these discount stores and can find candles for as little as 25c each,, and all of our family know what to get us for Christmas etc,We really enjoy dipping our own candles and Ken created a lovely frame and we can dip up to 9 candles at a time ,,which makes out grandchildren very happy when they come here and can dip candles. We even make their birthday candles now ...which they love .
Oh well, as I am typing this I can see my above kitchen table candle holder brighten, I now have a lovely pool of candle wax on my table cloth..better go change it and I will talk to you soon..M

You won't belive this ....

I wanted to come on here to tell you that believe it or not the sap is actually running. Ken heard on CBC that the sap was running now, almost a month early,. When he got home today he tapped some of the trees, sure enough they are running . When I arrived home this afternoon from London I was shocked to see the buckets on the trees, then I giggled a bit because of last nights post,,,just thought you might like to know .
Margaret

I am wondering about maple sap this year.

With the warm weather we have been having I am a little worried about what effect this will have on this years maple syrup production . We had such a wonderful amount last year , we actually haven't used all of ours up and trust me we gave a ton away and still have some left. We will have to do some research and see what old records show regarding such a warm winter. It has been wonderful for our wood pile, not using as much as we normally would that is for sure. Wonder if any of you are aware that during the time period we are covering that along with Maple syrup ,birch syrup was also used. It was slightly bitter in taste and from what I have researched took a lot more sap to produce a reasonable amount..We will have to try this and let you know.
My kitchen this evening smells of apple sauce,Ken picked up some beautiful apples at a place close to Ayr for a really good price so I am making them into apple sauce. One thing about having a wood stove, you can slow cook many things at a time . When I visit my daughters house I have a hard time figuring out where to put things on her stove because in order to have heat and to cook things you have only 4 places you can put a pot...on mine you can put pots everywhere, and still have room for the kettle in case you want hot tea. Oh and the wax pot sits on my stove all the time to dip candles whenever the mood hits us. I am enjoying Mrs Beeton's book of household management ,it is a wonderful resource. Gives me a good window into the time period. Especially around food and dining. I was greatly surprised when looking at the baking section , she describes cake making and decorating and lo and behold there are pictures of a cake being decorated using icing in a parchment or grease paper using piping tubes,,,what we now call piping tips.  Well I had better go stir my sauce and give it a taste test...by for now
Margaret