Seasonal Living: Old Fashioned Homemaking in the Fall

Do you love the vintage life? Here is how to start old fashioned homemaking in the fall!

I love old fashioned homemaking. One reason is because I am a hopeless romantic. I love to dream of days gone by, what they wore in those times, how they cooked, how they made a home even in scarce times.

The second reason is because convenience and modern life has left me grasping for meaning and understanding of life, how to live life, how to make a home. Old fashioned homemaking has been a looking glass for me to peer into the past and find answers from experienced women in how they used to do things. It has been a gift from God to guide and direct me in creating a place where my family and I can flourish.

One thing people used to do a lot more was seasonal living. They lived with the seasons. They did certain things at certain times of the year. It didn’t make sense to do it any other way.

So what did homemakers from years gone by do in the fall? They…

Preserved Food
Baked
Cleaned
Celebrated Thanksgiving

Here are some simple ways you can start doing these things this fall!

Preserve Food

Since fall meant harvest time, homemakers learned to preserve food to enjoy (and survive) for the rest of the year. Although our survival is not dependent on us preserving the harvest during the autumn months, this is a great old fashioned skill to know.

Certain foods are also cheaper during this time of the year. Just think of what you could save if you preserved some of those foods to enjoy later on?

This doesn’t mean you have to grow the produce you preserve. You can buy some pumpkins or apples and learn how to preserve small batches of pie filling, apple sauce, or apple butter.

It doesn’t have to be this huge ordeal either. It’s as simple as using your instant pot and a few jars.

This is one area of seasonal living that I am looking forward to learning this fall!

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Bake

Homemakers in the past and even today make use of the cooler weather and the abundance of food to bake all kinds of delicious things. Pies, cakes, muffins, cobblers. Would it be fall without these things?

Recently, I found some old cookbooks and have been enjoying looking through them. Wouldn’t it be so fun to bake some real old fashioned recipes from the 1800’s and early 1900’s? The first one I want to try is this pumpkin bread recipe from 1859 which would be right around the time of Little House on the Prairie. It isn’t sweet like what we think of pumpkin bread being, but I am intrigued to learn this recipe that Ma Ingalls would have made!

Clean

Fall is the perfect to time to do a seasonal cleaning. The weather gets cooler which makes it an ideal time to clear out the dust and deep clean your house so you can enjoy being inside for the winter more.

For homemakers of yesteryears, I can only imagine how crazy harvest was. Perhaps housekeeping got set aside in order to focus on making the most of the harvest. When it was all over, there would be a lot of cleaning to do.

Maybe they cleaned in fall also because winter was coming and the cooler weather was a better time to clean while you could open the windows and wash things without having to defrost water.

Work Hard

For farmer’s wives, this was a season of hard work. They brought in the harvest, spent countless hours preserving it among all the other duties of a homemaker. Although many of us may not live in these same circumstances, I think, we can all learn from their example and learn to be more diligent and willingly work hard for our house and home.

Celebrate Thanksgiving

Old fashioned homemakers took this season of abundance to celebrate. Yes, I am talking about Thanksgiving, but I’m sure it was much more than that one meal and family getting together that they celebrated. God blessed them with a bounty and I have no doubt they celebrated the end of another growing season.

Growing food is hard and when any hard thing concludes, it’s time to celebrate!

It probably sounds ridiculous to talk about celebrating Thanksgiving because doesn’t everyone do that? Yes, but do we really take this opportunity to truly learn and understand what it means to be thankful. It’s much more than saying three things you are thankful for on Thanksgiving Day.

How good is God to give us a whole season to teach us to be grateful! It comes back year after year. Why not make this season extra special and grow in the virtue of a thankful heart.

Final Thoughts!

What ways are you going to start old fashioned homemaking this fall? Maybe you could learn how to can a small batch of apple butter or bake a pumpkin pie from scratch. If life is too busy to do any extra things, perhaps you can take a few minutes throughout the day and establish the habit of being thankful in a more meaningful way.

One way we can all enjoy old fashioned homemaking this season is to fully celebrate Thanksgiving and make the most of it this year.

If you love the vintage life, here are some more posts you might enjoy!