Spending a couple of days at my Grandma’s house brought home quite a few lesson.
Lessons like:
1. Jello used to require recipe books.
2. If you’re ever putting away your fifth set of dishes, you might want to reconsider your place setting requirements.
3. Finding VHS tapes of my childhood is both sweet and incredibly frustrating.
4. There must have, at some point in time, been a run on suitcase locks. Or my Grandma, who didn’t fly until her 60s and only ever then for her yearly visit, had no valid explanation for the thirty locks and keys she owned.
5. If you have a clock that chimes every 15 minutes and a clock that chimes every hour, you should make those two clocks tell the same time.
6. Some clocks can be stopped from chiming by removing their battery.
7. Just because an appliance is adorable and old doesn’t mean it works well.
8. It does, however, mean I’ll want to own it. (I’m looking at you, Waring blender.)
9. And then my mom will talk me out of bringing home the standing Edison fan.
10. And I will be sad. And self-regulated breeze-less.
If only my new place
Came with a standing fan closet
I could have won that argument
Regrets,
Megan
10 Lessons from My Grandma’s House
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
i love your grandma’s house…these pictures are beautiful and full of amazing vintage! i would have taken the batteries out of the clock after the first two chimes, probably…good call!
Your grandma’s house makes me think of my own grandmother’s house. She doesn’t live there anymore (she moved up the street) and since I have the house now, it doesn’t look the same, but there are things that I will never change because it’s just the way it always was. (Does that make any sense at all? There were a lot of grandmas and houses to contend with.)
Oh my word…a Paris Fashion Shoes box full of brush rollers. That is absolutely priceless.
Did you take home one of the chiming clocks, so you can lay in bed and remember every day (or hour or fifteen minutes)?
That box full of rollers reminds me so much of my great grandmother. I still associate those with her to this day.
Also that blender is awesome.
If, when I die, I have even one of my people notice the details of my environment as lovingly as you have your grandmother’s, then I will be a happy, restful soul.
I’m not kidding. Please add my list to your “obit watch: (or start it with my name if you don’t already have this), and make sure my bloodline produces at least ONE person with an eye like yours, ok?
Ok!
I can not believe you didn’t come away with the lamp in that first picture. It is fabulous!
I would have battled for the dishes. All five sets. In fact I would even fight for all five sets of YOUR grandma’s dishes (sight unseen!) because I clearly have an illness.
You have to watch mothers when cleaning out grandparents houses. Mine was about to donate a heap of vintage faux jewellery to the Salvation Army when I stepped in to rescue it. I love all the stuff I saved from their house. These photos are lovely.
(5) is making me giggle. There must have been a lot of times being marked!
I LOVE your photos, Megan. But then I always do.
Also I probably shouldn’t admit that I fashioned a pair of numb-chucks out of hair-rollers when I was a kid. So… you know… I won’t… do… that.
Love your photos and your writing! I could probably get stuck here all day but I have to go … btw – I would have totally wanted the fan too!
What an enchanting place. So many treasures.
I love Ponds cold cream and I cannot wait until I can buy it. I think the legal age is 60.
I think the only clock in my grandma’s house that wasn’t perfectly synced was the clock on the VCR. She never could figure out how to set that thing.
Missing my grandmas (they’ve been gone for a while now). I love this post. I hope you end up with several of her things. The things I have of my grandmas are treasure for me. And my kids know they were theirs too. It’s special.
Adorable old appliances are almost guaranteed not to work well. It’s in the rule book, I’m told.