Long before convenience stores, overnight delivery, and endless household gadgets, home makers often had to solve small domestic emergencies with whatever was already close at hand.
A missing door knob, a broken barrel lid, a room with no hooks, or a kitchen fire that refused to burn could throw an entire household into discomfort, especially at a summer cottage or rough camp far from town. The practical answer, according to this 1907 household guide, was invention.
Empty thread spools became door knobs, hooks, handles, and bumpers. A glass bottle could serve as a rolling pin. A wide-mouthed jar could become a butter churn. Even a tin pail, broom handle, two chairs, and a lamp could be turned into a makeshift stove.
These emergency resources for the home maker reveal a time when thrift and quick thinking were essential household skills.
Emergency Resources for the Home Maker
It often happens that the average home makers is unexpectedly confronted with the problem of substituting something within her reach for a broken or missing item of common household furnishing, and unless she can find the substitute quickly, general discomfort is likely to ensue for the entire family.
Such a trifling thing as the absence of a knob on the screen door of a summer cottage located a long distance from the source of supplies, can be the cause of greater annoyance than one would readily imagine.
Such was the experience of one home maker, and the family tried all sorts of makeshifts for opening the door from the outside after it was closed tight. But one day, as she was looking over her work basket, the housekeeper happened to find a large empty spool. She procured a large nail, and in a few moments had fastened the spool in place as a knob (Fig. 1).
On another occasion, after the home maker, who was bothered by the falling to pieces of a cover to a barrel that she used frequently, fastened the pieces together with cleats (Fig. 2), and nailed a large spool on the center of the lid for a handle to lift it by (Fig. 3).
Empty spools should never be thrown away, for they are useful in numerous ways. Carry a lot of them with you the next time you go to a rough and ready house camp where the board walls have no accommodations for hanging up clothing, then with a handful of large nails and the empty spools you can soon make a row of good substantial hooks (Fig. 4). These homemade hooks will prevent rust, or tears which would probably result if bare nails were used.
The empty spool comes in well as a bumper for the door of your room when it opens too wide, striking against the bed, table, or chair. Fasten the spool firmly in an upright position on the floor (Fig. 5), or on the side of the wall near the floor (Fig. 6). To prevent the door being marred when it strikes against the bumper, cover the end of the spool with several thicknesses of heavy cloth.
When you wish to make biscuits or cookies while at the camp house, use a large glass bottle for a rolling pin (Fig. 7).
If you would like some delicious, fresh, homemade butter, you can have it almost any time, because you can make it yourself in a few minutes. Pour your cream into a wide mouth glass jar, add salt, fasten on the lid tight, and shake the jar vigorously up and down (Fig. 8). When all is churned pour in a little cold water and again shake the jar, then place the butter in a bowl and work the milk out with a large spoon. The butter milk will be good for luncheon.
If your kitchen fire for any reason will not burn when you wish to prepare a little luncheon, hunt up a tin pail which you are sure will not leak; then place two chairs a short distance apart, with their backs toward each other; lay a broom across the backs; then hang the pail of water on the broom handle. Stand a lighted lamp on the floor under the pail of water (Fig. 9), and soon the water will boil and you can have a hot cup of tea or coffee. You can make an oyster stew, cook potatoes, warm up soup, boil rice, make an Irish stew, and cook various other things over your homemade stove. Always be sure that the pail does not leak, for should any moisture fall on the lamp there would be trouble.
Source: New-York Tribune. New York, N.Y. March 17, 1907.
