So while I was browsing on Amazon a few weeks ago, I came across the $5 magazine subscriptions and got a year long subscription for Good Housekeeping and Southern Living. Well my first GH came in the mail yesterday and I was so excited.
This year is the 125th birthday of GH and I loved reading the editor's letter in this addition. I love that when Clark W. Bryan published the first edition of GH, his mission was to have a family journal to "produce and perpetuate perfection as it may be obtained in the household." And today, the mission has changed a bit...now, GH strives to perpetuate a happy life, not a perfect one! I love that simply because it doesn't have to be perfect, to be wonderful.
In each addition, GH is taking a piece from the past 125 years, and reprinting it. I laugh because some things do seem to be a bit outdated, but some, are just a true today as they were back then. In 1885, GH printed a "Chapter of Household Don'ts"....it goes like this:
Don't stand when you can sit just as well.
Don't put off the mending from week to week.
Don't you know that vinegar will clean the isinglass in the stove doors?
Don't you know your floor oil clothes can be washed in buttermilk or kerosene?
Don't give little children two languages to learn, first baby-talk, then afterward true pronunciation.
Don't hesitate to place a piece of zinc on the live coals in the stove; it will clean out the stove pipe.
Don't throw away nice woolen stockings when the feet are worn out, but cut them down for the children.
Don't fail to clean and tidy in every nook and corner but Don't be a slave to a shining stove or carpet!
Don't do unnecessary work because your grandmother did. There was not half so much to be done in her day.
Don't put off the mending from week to week.
Don't you know that vinegar will clean the isinglass in the stove doors?
Don't you know your floor oil clothes can be washed in buttermilk or kerosene?
Don't give little children two languages to learn, first baby-talk, then afterward true pronunciation.
Don't hesitate to place a piece of zinc on the live coals in the stove; it will clean out the stove pipe.
Don't throw away nice woolen stockings when the feet are worn out, but cut them down for the children.
Don't fail to clean and tidy in every nook and corner but Don't be a slave to a shining stove or carpet!
Don't do unnecessary work because your grandmother did. There was not half so much to be done in her day.
I hope that in this upcoming year, your life will be wonderful, not perfect; and that you don't become a slave to your shining stove and carpet!
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