Our Future Is Now - Musings on Storage Space in a Trailer in 1948

OUR FUTURE IS NOW

(In working on my dad's life story, Joni told me to contact

my oldest brother to get my parents' love letters, and stories my mother

had written.  He had been injured on the landings at Normandy and was sent

stateside to an army hospital for surgery on his hand and arm.

She attended a dance/party for the servicemen and they met there.  

They married in July of 1945 and he wasn't released from the service until January

of 1946.  They moved from Utah back to Wisconsin where he was from.

Housing and jobs were in short 

supply after WWII, so they moved into a trailer that was placed

on his parent's farm in Wisconsin.  He couldn't find a job locally, so he worked out of town

 from Sunday evening to lateSaturday night for the first five years of their new marriage.  

They kept letters from when they were dating and those first five yeas of marriage.

She was an aspiring author when they were first married.  

 She used her time at night to write the short

stories and magazine articles,

and successfully published three or more short stories.  There is quite

a collection of stories that she wrote, that had been returned from publishers.

None of us had ever read any of this material before. 

 What a treasure to find!

 This is one of her short articles.)

(A picture of them on their couch in their "house trailer".)

When we purchased a house trailer, which was to be used as a stationary dwelling, we thought of it as makeshift at best, something of a substitute nature, and at first we lived in it temporarily.  We planned to stay in it until an apartment became available in our price range, or until building materials became more plentiful and less expensive.  But the apartments which were occupied, and priced within our means, remained occupied, and after awhile, the prices went beyond our means.  Building materials became plentiful, but the price tag placed upon them was exorbitant, and so what we had planned on living in for a few months “until fall”, became our home for an indefinite time.

We lived within the confinement of a home 24 feet long and 8 feet wide for quite some time before we became aware of the fact that we couldn’t continue to live there on a substitutional basis.  We must begin to accept it as the now, the present, and govern our actions accordingly.  It is a human fallacy to consider what today provides as only the circumstances of the present and to continually project oneself into the future as the time when living will actually take place, when this luxury or that foible will be an integral part of daily living. 

There are advantages and disadvantages in living in a trailer house.  The space is small, and therefore, it is not necessary to keep a very large area clean, but it is extremely important to maintain order, for without order, chaos soon develops.  In a trailer a housewife can not possibly walk the multitudinous miles often accredited to her in an ordinary day’s work in a kitchen.  Everything in the small kitchen is within arm’s reach.  One movement is all that is necessary to get from one side of the working space to the other.  The storage space, though not as plentiful as might be desired, is within convenient reach.  It is well to remember though, that one person working in the kitchen area is sufficient, in order to avoid much confusion and collision.  Probably the most important thing to learn about preparing food in so small a space is to use a minimum of dishes.  Otherwise, you become surrounded with the pots and pans you have just used and there is no place on which to put the ones you are about to press into service.

We were, at first, much inclined to put off having and enjoying many of the little luxuries available for the use of the American housewife.  When electric mixers became plentiful after the critical war years, I wanted one very much.  Where would we put it?  There was no tuck-away shelf on which to hide it, no convenient cabinet where it could be placed, nothing but the working counters and those were already well-occupied by the canister set on one side and on the side where the sink was placed, the cleaning materials, soap, floor wax, cleanser, etc., for which there was no other room, were stored.  Months went by during which we decided that we must wait, that a mixer actually did not belong in a trailer, that it would take up more room and be more of an inconvenience than an aid to efficient housekeeping.  But our self-arguments were to no avail and one day we purchased that handy appliance.

Now I could mix my cakes, using a minimum of effort and one bowl, to a feathery lightness.  Whipped potatoes could be served from the same bowl in which they were prepared.  Here was an appliance which worked wonders with egg whites, whipping cream, cooked frostings, and took so much of the tiring arm work out of so many jobs.  Also, there was an attachment which came with it, the juicer, which enabled me to extract juice from oranges speedily and with practically no effort.  Later, when they became available, a food grinder attachment was added to this equipment.  This is in use many times during the week, for grinding sandwich meat, for making a palatable and readily prepared hash from the left-over roast, potatoes and vegetables, and for grinding nuts, fruits, and many other foods to just the right texture, determined by the type of cutting blade used.  A cheap cut of meat can be ground easily and quickly to make patties which are delicious and oh-so-tender.

Where did we put this equipment?  By moving the canister set closer together it fitted nicely into the niche in the corner, and covered with an attractive plastic cover, became a part of the decoration scheme of the miniature kitchen.  The juicer attachment has a spot of its own in the shelf directly above the mixer and the grinder parts are also placed there, in a plastic bag, through which a drawstring has been run, thus avoiding misplacing the small pieces of the equipment.

I am a working wife and after inspecting the many and varied pressure pans on the market, I became quite convinced that meals could be prepared rapidly, with a minimum loss of food value, in such a pan.  Of course, since our living was temporary we could do without it and what if it did take longer to cook the potatoes when we were in a hurry?  But the months stretched out and the indefinite stay became quite definite and the pressure pan was ultimately purchased.  Only it was not a small pressure pan, but a small pressure cooker, a seven quart capacity.  We reasoned that such a size would do large cuts of meat nicely, a whole chicken, and what was more important, the cooker could be used to do a small amount of canning.  Now I cook large pots of chili, old-fashioned vegetable soup, or tenderize an old chicken, which later is browned to a delicious crispness, very handily in this utensil.  In the summer I do some canning, just a few jars of our favorite fruits and vegetables, not too important a part of our diet perhaps, but the main thing is that it is available if I so take the notion.

Where is this large cooker stored in our place of limited storage area?  There are two racks in the oven and these are arranged so that there is room for the cooker, its lid, two frying pans and covers to fit handily into it.  Of course, when the oven is to be used they have to be taken out and placed on the top of the range, or if that is in use, on a stool, and when the oven is turned off, they are returned to their storage space.

An electric toaster, once thought to be too cumbersome for our little home, now has its own space reserved beside the electric mixer.  It is covered with a matching plastic cover to blend with that of the mixer. 

The heat of cooking in itself is a problem in such a confined area, but we partially solved that by installing a ventilating fan in the window over the range.  This, too, was purchased after a long period of temporizing.  Still, it is necessary to open all windows and the door in order to allow the odors and heat of cooking to escape before eating, especially if we have guests.

Guests are as momentous a problem as any connected with this type of living.  Though our trailer is not one of the luxurious houses on wheels that one sees in the trailer sales lots today, it does have some ingenious features, one of which is the table.  It is a collapsible affair which folds up against the wall, the benches included.  When in place to be used there is room to seat four persons quite comfortably, but when the service for four is arrayed on the table, there is little room left for serving dishes.  Part of these are placed on a stool, and this suffices, though the arrangement is an awkward one.

Recently we purchased a folding chair to use at the long end of the table, and thus seat five people.  This also comes in handy when the table is in place against the wall and we have more guests than our davenport can accommodate.  When the chair is folded, it fits behind the davenport, against the wall and out of sight.

There are definite shortcomings in this way of life, most prominent among them would be the lack of storage space.  But we have found that if each article is kept in its own special nook, the difficulty is reduced to a minimum.  A good rule we have found is PICK IT UP – KEEP IT CLEAN.  This is more than a rule, it is a code to follow which becomes a prime necessity.  A scrap of paper on the floor, an unwashed coffee cup, a jacket draped over the davenport, stands out like a sore thumb.

We are learning important things in this way of living.  We are learning to conserve time, to make space count, and above all, to be neat and tidy.  When we at long last have our home, and be it small or roomy, it will seem infinitely capacious to us, we can apply this knowledge to good advantage.  We will try to remember to live each day to the utmost, in the present, the now, enjoying the goodness of the things which make life more bountiful; never dwelling upon that far off Utopia, the tomorrow when all things will be composed of perfection.  We will keep in mind that our sterling silver was as much at home when it graced the fold-down table in our trailer house as it will be in any other place we live.

Written by Nedra Littlefield Culp