11 Old Kitchen Features That Have Vanished Over Time
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- Опубликовано: 2 июн 2024
- Discover the charm of yesteryear with our exploration of vintage kitchen features that once made every home a culinary haven. From cozy dining nooks and colorful tiled countertops to space-saving pull-down ironing boards and handy built-in flour sifters, we'll take you on a nostalgic journey through the heart of the house. Join us as we delve into the history of linoleum flooring, Hoosier cabinets, push button stoves, wall-mounted can openers, central vacuum cleaners and more, celebrating the unique elements that shaped the kitchens of the past.
#kitchen #cooking #1970s #1960s #nostalgia
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I think we have taken a step BACKWARD in our current designs....so many good features in these old kitchens. They need to have a comeback!!
Alot became more portable these days
Many items are still available, and many of the items they show on this channel were either not that popular, or just concepts.
I agree. Especially the drop down ironing board and the rolling pin drawer.
@@jessieflores8788 Drop down irroning boards were quite common where I came from. The rolling pin drawer, not so much.
absolutely, we have lost imagination, ingenuity, vision, desire lots of things 😪
Correction - many of those meat safes are PIE SAFES, for cooling pies while keeping flies out. Note the wheat sheaf decoration!
Definitely
In New Zealand a meat safe was just called a "safe" and vented to the outside of the coldest wall in the house. We had one at the far end of of our walk-in pantry. We certainly kept a cold leg of leftover mutton in there, after we had eaten one meat of it roasted.There was a double swung door on the kitchen end that was fantastic. I have never seen it in any other NZ house, not many of the things mentioned above.
@@faodail3913”one meat of it”??
'pie safe' makes more sense. I've (64f) heard of those, but I've never heard of a 'meat safe'.
Yeah, don’t know where the writer got the idea of a MEAT safe?
Forty years ago I taught myself how to bake bread. My Dad gave me a wood bread box. I still have it on my kitchen counter. I am now 65 years old. Thanks Dad.
Wow, that’s so awesome to have the bread box 🥰
Thanks for sharing, love it !
Nothing better than freshly home-baked bread!
That is a beautiful anecdote. Thanks for sharing!
Don’t you all just hate the drab grey modern interiors! I do.
Yes, I am sick, sick, sick of it and those horrid stainless steel appliances. I remember when they first came out and I cringed, they remind me of a hospital.
@@lr8424or a morgue! NOT an industrial look fan either!
And dull exterior colors as well! There's a mid ground.
They are so ugly. I love a lot of color in a house.
I like color. Color doesn't mean tacky, either. It can be tasteful colors. I think the white and gray showroom look is not for us. I do like white walls and light colors, but not super neutral. Right now I am using bright summer colors, against a white background. I like pops of color. Not maximalism but not minimalism, either. I decorate like a cottage style and love my 50 houseplants and mostly vintage decor. I think people to some extent got sterile with tastes and more expected, but I love homey things, not so much the store showroom look.
We need to bring back wall mounted can openers. Those things worked on the first try, worked if the electricity went out, never got lost, didn't hurt your hands, simple to use and were built to last. Sometimes simpler is better.
they are still available
I got tired of the handheld ones with cranks wearing out (same with the electric ones), so I just use the boy scout type with a wood handle, fast, effective, and will never wear out.
The built in ironing board is what I need most.
Because my mother did not have the use of one of her arms, the wall mounted can opener my father put in place for her to use was placed lower than most, but in an area she could open any size can with ease.
My grandparents had a really tiny kitchen in their 1930s home with very little storage. They had a wall mounted can opener, a wall mounted ice crusher, and a wall mounted pencil sharpener. Some of the best meals I’ve ever had were made by granny in that kitchen. 💗
In the southern U.S., those cabinets with wire-mesh walls are generally called “pie safes.” I never heard of keeping meat in one, though maybe that would work on a cooler climate. People kept baked goods, like pies, cakes, and cookies in pie safes. The mesh screening was to keep insects (and pets) out.
Meat was kept in an ice box- a metal or metal-lined box with a separate compartment for ice (ice was delivered daily). If you didn’t have an icebox (or ice), you’d hang your meat in the coolest place available- maybe a cellar, or a dark back room.
I cared for a 99 year old in her home who cared for 3 sons and 3 adopted sons. She was a nurse in an early war during this time.. She said she'd buy 10 pounds of hamburger meat and covered it with a cloth, and kept it inside a dark pantry.
We had a meat safe in UK the pantry was down a few steps so lower and on the coldest side of the house. No fridges in those days but no central heating either. Did none of us any harm at all but to be honest food was cooked fresh daily and we actually ate very well now in 80's so it couldn't have been so bad. No upset stomach either😊
I was born in PA and yes, they were pie safes - never for meat!!! Meat needed to be refrigerated - this was a dumb statement!
They probably re-purposed them when refrigerators arrived simply be removing the hook and installing a few shelves. And what a good idea it is. A place to put baked goods fresh out of the oven to allow it time to cool without becoming an attraction for insects and animals.
In the winter we often use the balcony (enclosed) to keep big items that would take up too much room in the fridge, like a pie or a cake, a lasagna or a frying pan full of something.
We have a house that was built in 1930. When we remodeled our kitchen about 15 yrs ago, we modified it to include a breakfast nook! One of my favorite areas of the house now.
Nooks are cool. Very space efficient. And very cozy. I think they facilitate communication.
My 1927 house has one and I LIVE in it! Great east light!
❤
@@PRH123❤️
I have one from the 50's, the cans of today are not as they were then and most times now, my wall mount can opener won't work on the newer cans. In Joy
As a baker, I 100% would appreciate a rolling pin drawer today!
And a sifter. I eat gluten free and low carb. I need to sift. And a pull out workspace.
I had never seen the rolling pin drawer before! I'm 63, been in well over 8000 kitchens throughout my appliance service career- many vintage ones, have seen all the other items in this video, but never the rolling pin drawer!
Right!? They take up such a weird amount of space in a regular drawer and that's such a neat solution!
I hang my collection of rolling pins on the wall.
Our house was built in 1912… kitchen was a big open room…no wall cupboards until the house was added onto in 1935 …when a breakfast nook/ small dining area was added also. I have a 1914 Wilson free standing kitchen cabinet now too. We also have a fold down ironing board upstairs hallway.
I was a designer in the Los Angeles area. I worked on a kitchen built in the 1920's that had a "root cabinet" in the wall. Its floor was a metal mesh allowing air to circulate up from beneath the house. Wooden slated shelves separated the potatoes from the onions etc.
The homeowner kept this feature in the remodel.
That sounds like such a cool idea!
@jbelle021 Yes, it was/is cool, literally.tge cool air from beneath the house circulated up around the vegetables helping them to last longer.
I lived in an old farmhouse in the hills of Hayward, CA, in 1972. It had the same feature but all the shelves were wire mesh. It was great for keeping vegetables fresh.
My husband grew up in a house with one of these. It was built in to an exterior wall on the north side of the house. They called it ‘the cool cupboard.’ It pulled cool air up from under the house and vented it to the outside at the top of the cupboard.
The sleeping porch was the screened window and screen door. Was at the back door, but could be a side entrance or even the front entrance. It was used for sleeping, with beds or cushioned benches. Used to hang wet clothes to dry, since in many parts of the country, summer rains meant hanging outside had to come in. Screen porches were great for children to play, great for entertaining or relaxing.
My great-aunt's was upstairs at the end of the hall. There were 3-4 beds lined up on one side when summer really began and the other side was simply a back porch for relaxing. (They had some money.)
We have a sleeping porch in 100 a 100-year-old house. It's a study/office now. Very useable for about 9 months of the year.
My own kitchen is fully authentic in almost every way to 1955. I do have a Swing-away wall-mounted can opener and a flour bin with built-in sifter integrated into an overhead cabinet of my Youngstown By Mullins steel cabinets. Even the range vent hood is a Stanthony from the 1950s. The only visible inauthentic items are the b&w checkerboard floor of 10" square porcelain tiles instead of linoleum squares and a small modern microwave oven on the countertop. The rest of my house is equally 1955 authentic.
I grew up with a 1955 house and thoroughly and completely dislike that era - probably because I lived through it - furniture and all. It seems to me that younger people (I’m pushing 77) really like this era. Nit a problem as I prefer other times - but I’d never give up ,icing without electricity👍👍👍
@@sandybruce9092 To each his own. But I too grew up in a 1950s house, and I am 66, so not that much younger. I live in Palm Springs, California, the epicenter of Mid-Century Modernism. The MCM design aesthetic is highly valued locally. It is a significant part of the local identity. And I love it.
My current home built in 1953 has a built in linen press for formal linens, pull out cutting boards under a few drawers, baking pan storage, serving tray storage, built in spice shelf, original push button stovetop with oven above, a smaller wall oven built with post-war aviation grade stainless steel, a Swingline can opener, original custom cabinetry, a covered hole in the countertop that when opened allows one to discard trash or recycling directly into garbage cans in an enclosed area in the garage, and an under-cabinet recessed corner cabinet that has 2 doors (1 into the kitchen and the 2nd to the outside when the 1950s-1950s local milkman would deliver the fresh milk directly into the kitchen. It also has a large pantry, a cleaning closest, and laundry area with storage cabinets above. At one end of the kitchen is a breakfast area with a large window with wooden louvers beneath, so that light from the garden room enters, a view of the garden area beyond the garden room is visible, and air can flow through the house when the garden room windows and the louvers are open. The house has some very special features, unique to its architect. A 1948 house I used to own had a 1950's type "rec room" with vintage linoleum with a shuffleboard floor design, a dry bar, a built in piano, and a brick BBQ grill with hood, vented to the outside. It also had a 20'x20" screened in porch. Vintage houses are special in their own ways.
Your house sounds awesome@@annetteclark8854
@@sandybruce9092 I am with you, sister. The only people who liked the 50's didn't live through them.
These kitchens had charm, character that always spoke "welcome, come in a sit a spell." In Joy
Agree. I adore the rusty, crusty and old. There was charm and character. Don't get me wrong, the modern kitchen is fine, but nor a deal breaker if old and screaming to be brought back to life.
They always forget to mention the Nutone Food Center. That was a motor built into the countertop, on which several appliances, blender, mixer, juicer, ice crusher and others could be attached. Those were so cool.
Now I'm going to Google it.
I was just thinking of that & trying to remember the name thank you!
Central vacuums are awesome. They are so much easier to use when needing to reach up high.
They are especially useful on carpeted stairs.
Best $1400 we spent in the late '90's. Our central vac in a 2000 SQ ft house has worked perfectly ever since! Collects in a canister in the garage. Can go months before it needs to be emptied. Very quiet to use too! All surfaces!
Consider installing one people!
You all have had good luck. I installed a large system when building my girlfriend and hubby's 5,000+ sq. ft. home from the ground up. I hated it from the get go. Never had proper suction and had the manufactures people over to diagnose at least a dozen times. It actually held back the move in date at least twice as I didn't want to have them sign off on everything before moving in. Once everybody gets their money, they scatter like roaches. Had the builder put pressure on them too. Anyway, that was over twenty years ago and we never use it and purchased three good quality vacuum cleaners and called it a day. She is in her late 70's and Hubby is 81 and in better shape than me and I am still in my 60's!
Glad it worked out, we must have received the "manufactured the day after a holiday" batch!
@naomimoore,
I have to be careful with our central vac. I can’t tell you the amount of times it sucked up, in an instant, something it should have. I’ve run to the outlet but never fast enough to rescue something.
Growing up int he early and mid sixties, we and our family had many of these features, the can opener, the pull down ironing board, central vac, tile counters, laundry shoots down to the basement where the washer was, push button stoves, linoleum (congoleum) and a push button washing machine. Ahhh the good old days, so much simpler!
Laundry chutes were fun, we used to throw toys into ours to see how fast they'd get to the basement. It's a good thing they were narrow, otherwise we would have tried climbing into them ourselves. I suspect they were designed to be narrow for that very reason!
That ironing board wasn’t a sixties thing. Older houses-1940s, say-had them.
When I had a residential housecleaning business many years ago I loved it when customers had central vac systems. It saved lugging a heavy machine around those big fancy houses I cleaned.
Dining nooks were awesome
Still our. Our home we bought 6 years ago has one. I love it.
We had a home 25 years ago with a round bench table. It was great!
I miss the wall oven from the early 60’s in the home I grew up in. It was at eye level, and we didn’t have to bend over to handle hot items and raise them to counter height. I think it’s easier to burn yourself with an oven below the stove top. Our current kitchen is very small, and we have a pretty cabinet in there that we use for extra storage. It doesn’t have a workspace in it, but holds the microwave oven, and reminded me of the Hoosier cabinet featured in the video. Thanks for the blast from the past.
I grew up in a 1926 house that my family lived in for four generations. In the 1960's the original kitchen was removed and we had not one but two ovens eye level, one oven a little bigger than the other. They were terrific. We also had a cabinet with a pull out shelf or drawer soup cans that laid on their side. The house was torn down in the late 1990's and I hope someone removed and re-used that excellent kitchen.
Oh me too. I would love a wall oven, with a stovetop on the counter. It eliminates a big hulking range that sits just high enough off the floor for crumbs to collect, but not high enough to clean underneath.....and that gap between the countertop and the range that you have to buy silicone strips to cover or everything drips down into it. Ugh.
I cannot stand modern ovens/stoves/ranges. Some things should have never been "fixed".
My parents had a 1960 brick ranch house with a wall oven and counter top stove. It was so easy for my Mom to cook in and clean that oven. It was a brand called Tappan. It was still working great when she passed away in 1997 and it never had to be serviced.
Had a home once with the wall oven. Got a regular stove and oven. It was great having to ovens.
My parents have a wall oven that worked nicely for many years.
I've never heard of a meat safe - I've been collecting antiques for 50 years. They show a variety of "pie safes" which we're used for baked goods and pantry storage. Meat was either prepared as soon as it was caught or butchered, bought as needed or dried / salted. The cage with hooks in the top is for hanging game after it's been stripped and gutted to prevent flies from getting to it before it could be cooked. It wasn't for "storage" but for transportation from the field to the kitchen.
I never heard of it either. But according to Google, this was more an British thing. So that might explain it.
I'm from rural New Zealand and we had a meat safe in several places we lived .
@@donna8243I'm English and Meat Safes were commonplace.
My first flat, when I was in university in New Zealand, had a meat safe in the kitchenbuilt into the side of the hill the house backed on to. Initially I was baffled, but I figured it out and came to appreciate it, old fashioned though it was. The front was a zinc perforated small door opening into the kitchen, but the fact that the other three sides were recessed into the damp hillside kept things cool. By the time I had the lower flat in this old house, the kitchen had a tiny refrigerator, but the safe actually kept things just as cool. It wouldn’t work in a hot climate, but you don’t need to refrigerate as much as most people think you do.
Some day in the future, someone will make a video for whatever has replaced RUclips about quaint early 21st century people thinking you need to store all your food in huge ‘refrigerators’ that guzzled vast amounts of energy and almost, along with huge gas-guzzling cars, burnt up the planet.
I totally agree with you!
My son and daughter in law have a very nice, upscale house built in 1992 that has central vac. They use it all the time and it's worth every cent IMO
I would love to have a central vac!
My house has central vac too built the same year.
We use a Roomba. It is a small house and we run it constantly.
We built our house in 1991 and included a central vacuum system also. Still works very well, trouble free and soooo convenient.
I never knew until today that I needed a rolling pin drawer, but it's now high up on the list of things I want in my dream kitchen. Also, I've lived in a house with a pull down ironing board and I loved it so much.
I love Hoosier cabinets. I'm looking for one for my kitchen.
I got mine several years ago, figuring to use it mostly for storage, simply because it fits my old-fashioned aesthetic. I cannot believe how useful it is! The pull-out is several inches lower than a standard countertop and allows a woman of average height (me) to really get elbows and shoulders into jobs such as kneading or rolling dough. Also, it's deeper than a counter and allows for access around all but one side. I just love it.
I've got my grandmothers Hoosier. Very good shape too except it's missing the flour bin/sifter.
Just don’t store your meat in it😂
My grandparents had metal cabinets that were from the 1950s. They lived in Florida where termites were a problem for wood cabinets.
Our first house had metal cabinets. They had to be sanded and painted every two to three years because rust would develop.
I've seen old ads with kitchens with the yellow and red metal cabinets and checkerboard yellow and red linoleum floor. Thought that wasn't a real thing until I moved in the 1980s and became acquainted with two families with kitchens like that (including Venetian blinds!). One had fridge and stove in red and the other family had fridge and stove in yellow.
When my daughters husband was stationed in Shilo, Manitoba, Canada, the military housing still had the old metal cabinets.
They were replacing them bit, by bit, as they were all rusting.
But in the long run it would have likely been cheaper to take them out, sand blast and repaint. Get another 70 years out of them instead of the 10 you get now with the good brands.
I still have my great aunt's metal stand alone "pantry cabinet."
@@dawnelder9046 If only they had repainted. I bet there are great rustproofing treatments now that just weren't around back in the day and those cabinets would likely look great for decades.
I grew up in the 1960's-70's in a house that was built in the 19th Century. We had the wall-mounted can opener, bread drawer with the sliding inside lid, pull-down ironing board, linoleum kitchen floor, and a pull-out cutting board over the drawers. No breakfast nook but the kitchen was big enough for a recessed pantry area, broom closet (I miss those!), and a medium sized table & chairs, plus a large dining room with a swinging door in-between that we loved playing with until my parents got fed up and removed it.
Ugh I miss a broom closet!!!! 😅❤
Let's bring back breakfast nooks, push-button stoves and fold-down ironing boards! Make him have a cute sci-fi look!
We have a fold down ironing board and I love it! So perfect!
@@eaudunilturnip3441 Awesome!
I have an old push button stove. Original to my 1948 home, & still works great. And I have the original linoleum floor too. Also love the kitchen nook. I wish I could put one in.
The buttons on push button stoves get gooped up with sticky food fingers over time and are hard to keep clean. I would like to have a fold down ironing board again. A breakfast nook is only practical if the diners are thin, or if at least the table is moveable. If it's stuck into the floor, then chubby people can't get into the nook.
@@darleneengebretsen1468 My push button stove is from 1948 ... Haven't had that problem yet! 😁
My Grandma's house from the 1950's had a pull out rack where you could hang dish towels to dry.
Oh we used to have one of those in our kitchen. Inside the cabinet door underneath the sink.
You can still buy them at the hardware store.
Would love this
I’m 63, born in 1961. Back in the 1960s, we had a metal Hoosier-styled cabinet with a flour sifter in it. We also had a wall-mounted can opener that my father installed. When we moved in 1972 to another house, my parents had a new kitchen installed by Sears. It had a bread box built into one of the cabinets.
A central vacuum is not a "kitchen feature", it's for the entire house. They are certainly still made, they are better than ever at being user friendly, and they are the best way of ridding a home of dust and allergens especially when that vacuum is vented outside.
Quite a number of these need to be brought back. I miss cabinets that were built in to house and show the dishes and crystal, I miss monster Butler pantries, and overall, A large and functional kitchen. The rest of the features shown would be my wife's dream.
Yes, lol. Today's kitchens are so dinky. It's like they forgot to put it in the plans and then, once built, decided that a dinky kitchen can fit here or there. Makes no sense when the rest of the house has huge rooms. I prefer older homes. Well built. Made with common sense. Practical. Functional. My added bonus would be a closet in every room and hall too
@OP My aunt had a "monster " pantry. One day, she walked into the pantry and found her twin sons, my cousins, had poured a gallon of olive oil on the linoleum floor and were "ice skating" in their new school shoes.
My cousins are now 76 years old.
Edit: punctuation
Modern kitchens have not "evolved". They have become easier to clean but less useful as a work space if you make everything from scratch as I do. Most of the young people I know now, don't need a kitchen--just a fridge next to the microwave and Keurig--and new house design is reflecting that.
Gotta love the flour sifters!!!!!!!!!!! Actually, WOW, some of these brilliant ideas and products would be great today!!!! Wonderful walk back to living history!!!!😊😍❤
Can u imagine trying to clean those cubby hole cupboards ....the flour sifters would attract bugs .. nope...somethings are goodbut not the built flour .sifters...
I still use a sifter. I live in a very humid tropical climate and dries clump.
Unless you do a lot of baking and use up a big bag of flour quickly, flour sifters aren't practical. That's because weevils get into flour in a short time. I keep all my flours, cornmeal, etc.. in glass jars with metal screwtop lids. This eliminates ants and weevils getting into the grain, plus you don't have harmful chemicals from plastic containers.
@@darleneengebretsen1468 Of course you're correct! I had never seen one of these items before so I thought they "looked" cool.....................
We installed a central vacuum system in our homes sind the 1990th.
Safes your back in a 3 story home, better quallity air, cleaner and easyer to empty and todays are easy to maintain yourself.
Bonus is that the warm and dusty air goes under your house.
I love it, so sad it is not possible for our new house, we have now a vacuum cleaner on each floor.
You a still buy central vac
Our last home had central vacc. Built in 64, when it was installed. We had to replace to hose. But still working great when we sold the house 6 years ago.
@@paulstewart2444 yes you can but the layout and materials make ik way to expensive to install it.
My favorite kitchen, memory is of my mother, who never had any conveniences when we lived on the farm. As a matter of fact, she always kept the wooden boxes that the grocery gave us to carry things home in, and she turned them into cupboards to put things away in the kitchen. I guess my favorite thing in the kitchen was my mother because she could ring a chickens neck, pull a few things from her garden, take the few ingredients she had in the kitchen, and turn it into something wonderful to eat! They don’t make women like that anymore.
Yes they do. I 'm too disabled to do many of those things now, but when I was a kid I lived on a farm for while. We didn't have electricity even. I learned how to do many things the pioneer way - including how to butcher animals, milk goats, cook on a woodstove, keep a fire going, make cheese, bake bread, make butter, weed a garden, can foods, and so on. We even had a treadle sewing machine, and a washboard.
@@darleneengebretsen1468we had wash boards when I was a kid and a machine with a ringer up top so you had to put the clothes through manually.
Our house was built in 92. We bought it 6 years ago. It has a dining nook. Love it. And I do store things under the benches.
You don’t see built in bread or cutting boards in new homes. Even if you don’t cut directly on it for hygiene reasons, this pull out workspace is really an essential kitchen feature in my mind.
I have a house that was built in 1949, although the kitchen was remodeled at some point, probably the 1970’s, it still has the bread board. Over the years it had gotten rough and stained with anything that had been placed on it that was wet. I recently sanded it down and covered it with mineral oil. It looks brand new and beautiful!
my first kitchen as a wife had a crapload of cupboards and drawers including a pullout cutting board and small "secretary" just big enough for bill paying, etc. i loved that little house. We'd still be married and living there if i hadn't done everything the old man told me to do. He's somebody elses problem now. No regrets.
I had a cabinet with one and it was handy as a extra work surface on large cooking days. I do miss it. The cabinet got damaged beyond repair while swapping out a fridge.
Tile counter tops: every glass that fell on them, broke and eventually a tile here and there would crack and peel up- no replacements. I loved the central vacuum in a house I rented in the 1970's. Dumb-waiters and servant staircases into the kitchen (made for great hide and seek escapes as a kid) We had separate "butler's pantry" with glass cabinets to store the china. Large crocks with heavy lids for flour and sugar.
I still prefer sitting in a breakfast nook and one you missed is the single recessed back burner for pots like soup or boiling spaghetti water, etc. which made tip overs impossible. Wish that was available now.😊
And that faucet over the stove to fill large pots!
I could go on and on. The small door outside the kitchen for milk bottle delivery- in the days of the 1-quart bottles. The fancier ones had a signaling device with a pointer to let the milkman know what other dairy products the happy homemaker needed. The rotating lazy susan storage system with the small trough at the bottom of the central shaft to pour in ant poison. The aluminum hatch set into the tiled counter with an inner cylinder and a linked lower door that allowed you to load up the upper chamber with garbage and dump it into a garbage pail accessed from the outside. The blender and citrus juicer attachments for my mother's prized Mixmaster countertop mixer. The curved-sided ceramic salt and pepper shakers that fitted into the backsplash of her O"keefe and Merritt 4-burner stove (with central griddle) with the timer and light switch. Our rich friends had an O'Keefe and Merritt "Town and Country Aristocrat" stove, 6 burners, a griddle, 2 broilers, 2 ovens, a warming oven and 18 pilot lights. The memorable accessory for my mother's ironing board was the sprinkling bottle, this one made as a Cub Scout project by my older brother, age 8. An RC Cola painted off-white (with a few smears and fingerprints), a flower decal and a mushroom-shaped plastic sprinkler head with a cork gasket.
You have a great memory. I never knew about the ant poison trough!
Another thing that was very common back in the day was the rotating spice rack, often in a corner cabinet. Very easy and quick to find what you need, and you wouldn't have little items sitting unnoticed in the back (for years sometimes!).
That "Step Saving Kitchen" video from 1949 is living rent-free in my head right now. It makes me think about the sense of ingenuity that we've lost over the years. We're trying to make cooking easier through over-engineering "smart" appliances rather than seeing what we can simplify. I want a kitchen with a layout like the one in that old video with some of the features. The garbage hatch wouldn't really work in modern materials like granite, but the rest would fit so well. I do like open-floor plans, but I think that kitchen arrangement (that can also be adapted to an L or corridor type) to make a comeback in the name of ergonomics
In one of the houses I lived in as a kid we had a large pantry that had wide slat shelves and a mesh bottom and was open to the crawlspace. We kept a lot of food in there, root vegies, winter squash, large fruits, cheeses, jams, bread. It was a great place to thaw frozen food.
My sister still has and uses the 1949 Frigidaire with door lever and rubber gasket. She’s had the motor repaired, belt replaced, gasket replaced. It runs great. It’s her extra fridge in the basement. She buys food in bulk because she has a rooming house with bed and board.
I miss the fridge door lever SOOOOOO much
My parents house had an old refrigerator in the basement to store gallons of milk since there was 7 of us. Went through a gallon of milk a day back then. My parents lived in that house for 55 years and the fridge was still working. The new owners did not want it so it got junked. They don't make them like they used to.
I love all the different breakfast nooks depicted in the first vignette.
They're beautiful. I paused on that.
And the interesting shapes of some of the counters. Just like cars back then, very outer space looking. We've gotten so boring and mundane these days.
My mom was a housekeeper in the 90s and my sister and I sometimes helped out. There was one house that had a fairly modern central vacuum cleaner installed. You had a 20 ft long hose/cord that plugged into a special outlet (intake?) in every room and a large collection canister and motor in the garage. It was indeed much quieter and more powerful than a normal vacuum, though I don't know if the added cost would be worth it.
I have lazy Susans in my corner cabinets. I love breakfast nooks. I like linoleum flooring better than vynal, use my antique Hoosier cabinet as my baking center and love the convenience of a lull down ironing board....guess I amm from a different century.
Wall mounted ironing boards and can openers need to make a come back!! So do breakfast nooks and Hoosier cabinets!
Edited to add: also central vacuum cleaners!!! I grew up in a house with one of those, and it was SO MUCH EASIER than lugging a heavy vac around. Also less trouble to store. Currently living in an apartment with no storage for things like ironing boards and vacuum cleaners.
That dedicated rolling pin drawer is cool AF. Maybe I’ll build one in my kitchen.
I have been planning on trying to build pull outs for my bottom cupboards. The smallest, I put up barriers for cookie sheets, cutting boards and cooling racks to keep them upright.
I was going to start with that one. Same design, but pull out.
If I do it I will have enough room for a shallow pull out second drawer on the top. And it could have a dedicated spot for my rolling pin and my rolling mats.
Best feature I've seen: a 6-apartment building from 1920 had 3 metal-lined refrigerator cabinets, of varying sizes, in the kitchen wall of each apartment, all powered by a central compressor in the basement. They were no longer functional when I saw them and the cabinets were used for ordinary storage.
Lee Valley still sells pull-down ironing boards.
We have a built in plate warmer in our kitchen radiator. A small metal cabinet with metal doors built on top of our iron radiator. It keeps plates warm but I sometimes use it to let my bread dough rise.
That reminds me of junior High school in the early 70s. A friend of mine would bring a leftover pizza slice wrapped in foil for lunch. She would lay it on the radiator and by lunchtime the smell was so good we all wanted pizza!
We installed a central vacuum system in our house in 1994. It still works great!
My old boss had one of those, it clogged so much he had to abandon it and get a regular vacuum.
In early 1960s England my grandmother had a zinc-lined meat safe, that she also used for milk. If she bought a block of ice cream for dessert it would be wrapped in many layers of newspaper to keep it cold until served.
The other thing she had that is now a collectable was scales with one pan for what she was weighing and the other for weights, 2 oz, 4 oz etc.
The last shot of this RUclips video is about 1938 kitchen economist from a university extension on saving steps for the American housewife. She interviewed housewives on what the liked and didn't like about their kitchen. Then she talked with kitchen designers on designers on how it could be built. After many of hard work they came up with a brilliant design. I love everything about this kitchen. Even though this is in 1938 and didn't have a microwave, dish washer etc. If I could I would have a kitchen exactly like that (with the microwave and dishwasher). Watch the video, it's very impressive.
had a programme here in the UK about a family living as a victorian family would. after it was over asked mum what she missed from 21st "automatic washing machine"
19th mum
boil water in copper, wash cloths using tongs as water too hot get to dry using mangle hang out to dry in a coal smoked filled city iron clothes using flat irons this was a 3 women operation
Do you have a link to that video by any chance?
@@bunnymcfoo8650 If you look up “A step saving kitchen, 1949” you should find it, the RUclips channel is called “US National Archives”. I tried including the link but for some reason my replies weren’t showing up.
Years ago we toured a home for sale that had pink fixtures and tile in the bathroom, and original turquoise-coloredfixtures in the kitchen. I so wish we'd bought it!😮
We moved into an early 1960s house in 1992 that had a pink bathroom. I couldn't wait to get rid of it.
When we were first house-hunting in the early 80s, we saw a house with a pink kitchen sink. Total No for me
I feel so old - especially since apart from the built in flour sifter and meat safe, I assumed people still had all those things in their kitchen. Mine does!
My kitchen is slightly larger than a galley, and I have a small dining area that we put in a small 4 seat table we love. I can't have lots of details in the kitchen due to space. I have 3 cabinets in the dining area I use for extra storage. I love our house, but I do work full time and as much as I love to bake, I am not a homemaker and do not spend a ton of time cooking in it.
Most of us are not as fortunate.
@@briansullivan5908 Most of you are "not as fortunate" as poor people like me who have old-fashioned, outdated kitchen features?! My dear, I think you have missed the point.
@@nutmeg208 no outdated kitchen features are wonderful. I have an outdated kitchen myself and wouldn’t want those gadget disasters for all the world. It’s just mine us scaled down it doesn’t really have any cool features so that’s it’s just basic.
According to this video, my kitchen is very retro. So retro, I'm practically a time traveller.
I am a millennial who actually cooks for my family and there are several things from the vintage kitchens I wish we still had. Like the rolling pin drawer, the drop down ironing board with an outlet in it, breakfast nooks (maybe even the vinyl seats), linoleum throughout the entire house as it's extremely durable and clean. I did grow up with a friend who had the central vacuum system in their house.
I loved the pull out cutting board, & the pull out cabinet on wheels with work surface top.
Plus they are wheel chair friendly!
Don’t talk to me about tile countertops!! Soooo many shattered glasses and broken dishes! sez me - the Very Clumsy Chef!!💕
I love CERAMIC COUNTERTOPS. tO KEEP THE GROUT FROM GETTING NASTY, YOU HAVE TO SEAL IT EXTREMELY WELL WHEN IT IS FIRST INSTALLED.
When I was a boy we had an ice box in our home, and a ringer washing machine also every home had an incinerator in the back yard.
We still have an incinerator in our farm yard.
i LIVED WITH AN ICE BOX ON THE FARM UNTIL WE GOTA PROPANE FRIDGE LATER. rINGER WASHING MACHINES WERE TERRIBLE BECAUSE THEY SO OFTEN POPPED THE BUTTONS OFF OF CLOTHES.
That central vacuum system is brilliant.
We always ate all our meals in grandma’s breakfast nook when we stayed with her!
I love these retro kitchens. So practical.
We made a huge mistake in the late 80's of selling my grandparents' 1930's house. It had many of these features and also a laundry press. I recently looked on Zillow and I could barely recognize the interiors. They could have been in a new house in the suburbs. Where the basement bulkhead doors were is now a deck and the attic where my grandmother sewed all her clothes has a wet bar.
I loved breakfast nooks! One thing I miss is having a utility sink!
My house (built 1950) had a breakfast nook added in 1970. Great feature!
I miss the bright colors and also refrigerators with egg holders! So convenient.
I remember most of these. I had a built-in ironing board in an old apt built in the 1940s. I LOVED it because we still ironed everything back then. Best kitchen thing I LOVED was a cutting board that came out in the cupboard right below the kitchen counter. You just pulled it out, made a sandwich, wiped it off, and pushed it back in to hide it away. I wish they STLL did that!! Loved it!!! TFS! Austin TX USA
Newly constructed apartments in Chula Vista in the 1970s had tiled counters. It seemed a new trend to those of us moving in.
A rolling pin drawer! We need this back! Rolling pins never fit anywhere! I live in a vintage house built in 1949 and I have a “spice cabinet” that is extremely shallow. And right beside it is an electrical outlet. I could never figure out why an electrical outlet was placed here. I just realized after watching this video, that that shallow cabinet with shelves too small to fit most spices was originally for an ironing board and the outlet was for plugging in the iron! SO COOL! I’m 49 years old and never realized that this was for a once built-in ironing board. I definitely want to restore this feature now! ❤️❤️
My grandma had a bread box drawer. We used to have one too until management renovated our kitchen. It was a metal drawer with a sliding metal cover. My other grandmother's house had one of those Murphy Bed style ironing boards.
One thing that my grandparents had that i loved and always wished i had was a laundry chute.
Now on the other hand something my husbands grandmother had in her house that always grossed me out: wall to wall carpet in the kitchen and one of the bathrooms.
I had a vintage gas stove that I really enjoyed..... The stove top had a griddle between the burners you could uncover and next to the oven was an electric rotisserie spit. It had a bottom broiler also. It was left by the original owners when I bought my first home in 1976.
Was it the kind of stove with pilot lights and you had to manually light the oven and broiler? We had one when I was a kid, so cool.
It was seen a few times in the video, but not mentioned:
The integrated sink/drainboard. Often part of a metal cabinet. I imagine they went away when the dishwasher became popular.
The central vac is still widely in use.
Features I remember as a kid:
built in blender, trash compactor, pull out cutting board, and grid style flourescent lighting.
Still popular here in the UK - mine has a small central bowl between the sink and the drainer (I am the dishwasher :) )
@@denisehill7769 I'm from the UK, now live in the US. No one has heard of a one piece stainless steel sink and drainboard. This isn't civilisation, these people are savages!
I just can't imagine not having a draining board. I have two, and a dishwasher.@@denisehill7769
Breakfast nooks should make a comeback. We have room in our kitchen for a dinette and 4 chairs with casters and we use it all the time. While linoleum was more heavy duty, its patterns weren't very attractive, I've always loved vinyl floors for their pretty patterns and ease of cleaning, plus things often bounce instead of break if you accidently drop them on the floor. Wall-mounted can openers were also mounted inside of cabinet or pantry door - they were great. Central vacuums, while expensive, are also wonderful - no lugging a heavy vacuum around or up the stairs, plus the vacuum head would fit under most furniture.
No way would I want a breakfast nook. I rent land from a woman who has one in her 1940's home. It's way too hard to crawl in and our of the booth every time you want to eat.
A benefit of tile countertops is that they can take hot pots right off the stove without damage. But the grout was definitely a pain.
Granite works better. It takes hot pots easily and is soooo easy to keep clean. Plus you can use it for rolling pastry, butchering meat and just about anything else you want in the kitchen.
@@lynnbean7200 It takes hot pots? Google Arch City Granite and Marble.
One of 8 things not to do with granite is hot pots. A second is not for raw meat etc.
I still have a central vacuum at home. Circa 1961.
I used to live in an apartment with a built-in ironing board- genius idea.
My Seattle apartments each had vintage items - one had the old ice box where ice blocks were stored and the other had the fold down ironing board built into the wall of the kitchen. Both lovely apartments where rent was about $160/month.
The kitchen island completely destroyed family meals at tables.
No cos mineb we used the island
Yes, the kitchen island takes away from the open space feeling of a kitchen.
Central vacuum cleaners are still available today.
I'm in the UK. We used to have the wall mounted can opener,but none of the other things American kitchens had.
My grandmother called the refrigerator the “ice box” out of old habit all her life. From a farming community, she also called the faucet a “spikit” (spigot?). She called her sofa a “Chesterfield”, but it wasn’t a Chesterfield at all - that’s a particular style of sofas, which she didn’t have at all.
My Northern grandma used to call her sofa a Davenport. My Southern grandma always called it a Couch.
The screened cabinet was a Pie Safe where bake goods and breads were kept almost Never for meat.
My best friend actually has a central vacuum in her house. I remember as a kid being so mind blown when she showed me how they vacuumed! Her dad built that house and it was one of the must haves he put in the house
Linoleum didn't get replaced by vinyl because vinyl is "modern" but because vinyl was much cheaper, more durable and could be pre-printed in patterns instead of cutting linoleum shapes like a jigsaw puzzle.
The Hoosier cabinet looks awesome. I would love something like that in my current kitchen.
I would love to have a wall mount can opener
I miss my Hoosier! So many great ideas that have gone by the wayside, sadly.
I miss the broom closets myself. There was a red wall phone right next to ours so you could go inside and close the door for privacy. I loved it......very cool!
Built our brand new kitchen in this style. Works great and looks great.
I love dining nooks... cozy ...
I moved into an apartment that was built in the earlier 20th century. It had a Hoover cabinet. My parents bought a house in 1963. The kitchen was turquoise. Everything. The sink, refrigerator, the fan above the stove and the stove. Of course, the stove had push button controls. Later, I moved into a house that had a central vacuum cleaner. It was ok, but the hose was long. It took up the floor of one closet.
In Cyprus, all relatively older houses have built-in air cleaners in the kitchens: a fan installed in the wall near the ceiling that pulled air (and smoke/smells) from cooking from inside to outside.
In my house we had a warming drawer that was always in use at dinnertime. One of my chores as a child was to make sure it was turned off! I remember using it on "low" setting to flatten a warped vinyl record by placing the record on parchment paper and weighing it down with a heavy book from the encyclopedia.
The home I grew up in had a wall mounted hand-crank can opener! Was SUPER handy & convenient!
We still cook on a 1953 O'keefe & Merrrtt range. It works perfectly after 70 years. The BTUs rival pro models today.
I rather like linoleum, as opposed to vinyl, which I hate. But, I put solid oak flooring in my kitchen, so that it’s continuous with the flooring in the adjacent rooms. I worried a bit about water damage, but I had three coats of oil-based varnish put on and it’s performed beautifully. I just make sure no water sits on it and check for plumbing leaks often.
I have too many things to say so I’m not going to say anything but I love this!
Thank you for compiling this trip down memory lane. 🌹
My Grandmother had most of these things and also a pie safe. As far me, I will always have a hand can opener. I learned the hard way because of ice storms with no electric.
I love studying how home design changes over the decades as lifestyles change. I think breakfast nooks were more popular when the idea of having a formal dining room was normal. I visited several homes in the 70s that still kept a formal dining room - usually shut off from the rest of the house and going unused unless the house was entertaining guests.
I love Hoosier cabinets and similar themed items from the past, where they tried to fit everything you need in a kitchen into one device. Furniture/cabinetry/appliances that actually tried to fit your needs vs. how we try to fit our needs into what's built in now.
I remember the mounted can opener at my grandparents' house and thinking, wow, fancy like a restaurant lol. Now that I'm an adult, I think I'd like one just so I could stop struggling to the dang can opener out of the drawer lol. I will mention that placement of those must be considered thoroughly, because they can be deadly - the cussing we'd hear when someone forgot to close it back and someone knocked into it was shocking lol
Dining nooks and obesity don't easily mix so probably a good reason they're not built these days.
I love the built-in ironing board. A friend of mine had it in her home, one regular board for clothing and a smaller one for sleeves. I think that is a great idea 😊
I have two of these in my kitchen - I have a breakfast nook (no need to heat up the dining room for breakfast or other meals by myself) and I have a linoleum-based floor.
The only usual machine still included in German kitchens (not sure about America) is an electric bread slicer (not in mine, I prefer using knives and needed the storage space for other things). We usually don't have garbage disposals in our sinks, though.
I really liked the tile surface I never saw a central vacuuming system but boy do I wish I'd had one.