{"id":677,"date":"2010-08-22T07:32:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-22T07:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/?p=677"},"modified":"2010-08-22T11:19:29","modified_gmt":"2010-08-22T11:19:29","slug":"am-i-a-1950s-housewife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/?p=677","title":{"rendered":"Am I a 1950’s housewife?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Recently I’ve been reading Colin Beavan’s book ‘No Impact Man’. It’s about his attempts to live for a year without impacting on the environment. It’s really rather good and last night even made me go onto Amazon and various other sites to delete my shopping basket contents. (And anything that stops me from making late night internet purchases is a good thing!).<\/p>\n

However, one thing worries me slightly about the book. This is a family who didn’t ever shop or cook before the project – they lived on takeaway food – even home-delivered breakfasts (I didn’t even \u00a0know there was such a thing!). Colin’s wife comments that one of the best things about the project was seeing her husband change into a 1950’s housewife. I’m not finished yet, but the gist of it is that he starts to cook and shop.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Does this make me a 1950’s housewife? I go even further. I have always looked after my children myself, I bake, I garden, God forbid I sew. I even mend things. In the Beavan family a step in the no impact direction was to take clothes to the tailor to be mended instead of throwing them away. At that point I came to a stop. Do people really take their clothes to tailors to be mended? It wouldn’t cross my mind to go to the grocery store without a half dozen shopping bags and I walk to the nearest farm regularly to buy whatever produce is in season.<\/p>\n

Is there something strange about me or is it just a case of a New York lifestyle versus that of the rest of the world. I have to admit I was appalled at the thought of a small child (the Beavan’s) being brought up never eating a home-cooked meal. There is even an example of them \u00a0meeting other parents in a playground and laughing about the last time the children ate home-cooked meals. It was just beyond my comprehension that that was possible. (OK, it may have coloured my perception that here there aren’t many takeaway possibilities and no-one could afford to go that route on a daily basis). But aren’t cooking and shopping basic life skills?<\/p>\n

It seems to be put down to being a time-saving decision. But saving time to do what? Watch TV in most cases.<\/p>\n

It all made me think that, yes, maybe I’m not too far removed from my 1950’s predecessor, but also that life in the 1950’s was probably a whole lot more normal (and healthy) than what seems to have developed in some places. And I’m going to stick at what I have, which by this book seems to be an incredibly low-impact lifestyle!<\/p>\n

Happy cooking and shopping and mending and….<\/p>\n

I must put my lipstick on before my husband comes home!!<\/p>\n

Helen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I’ve been reading Colin Beavan’s book ‘No Impact Man’. It’s about his attempts to live for a year without impacting on the environment. It’s really rather good and last night even made me go onto Amazon and various other sites to delete my shopping basket contents. (And anything that stops me from making late […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQtrc-aV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}