10.09.19 1950s Home, Oh the Memories!

I recently put together the post “Name One Thing Kids Nowadays Will Never Experience.”  Yesterday, a young family member shared with me pictures of a 1950’s House they toured last week in Kansas.  Lots of things in the pictures brought back wonderful memories from my childhood. I did some research, found more cool pictures of rooms in that house, so this post is a follow up to “Name One Thing Kids Nowadays Will Never Experience.”

In 1954, Kansas City Power & Light created this ranch-style house as a model home. It was gussied up with all of the latest and greatest technological advancements, which now amuse and delight the nostalgic visitors passing through.

Our home wasn’t as snazzy or had as many electric gadgets as the home in the pictures, but we did have many of the things in the pictures. I thought you all would enjoy seeing some of the pictures from that museum even if those things are not from your era. I had a lot of fun writing about the items in the pictures that I remember in my childhood and youth! And had fun looking through our pictures to find things from when I was a baby and child!

This first one is Christmas in the 1950s. My grandmother Mimi always had a tree like this with the rotating colors projected up on it! As a little child, I loved watching it every Christmas.

We had outdoor chairs and a small table like this and those colored “tumblers” that we drank lemonade and iced tea from! Roy’s family had a BBQ pit like this one.

The bike with the banana seat was all the rage and I had a baby doll stroller just like that.  All of us kids had metal skates that we put on our shoes like the one in this picture.  We used a key to tighten them on our shoes!

Our bathroom wasn’t like this but we did have the lights and the medicine cabinet like this!  Roy and I chose to have medicine cabinets like this in our current house.  Ours do look a bit more stylish than these old ones! Our granddaughter Madisyn was very surprised to see that you could open the mirror to the ones in our house and put things in there! The colored tiles (especially that aqua color) were pretty standard in all bathrooms.

Oh my goodness, this kitchen! Our phone, yes the only one in the house, sat in a little nook in our hallway, this one sat in the kitchen. Every cook wore an apron in those days! Look at the pink countertops! The insulated tall glasses may have been Tupperware.  Some of those were pretty much the same in everyone’s home.  This kitchen is, of course, all-electric because this is a 1950’s electric house.  Our kitchen had a gas stove and was not a countertop type.  It wasn’t until we were married a few years that we ever had an electric range.

Everyone had a square folding table that was used mostly for playing cards or outside parties.  I remember growing up that if we played cards we always put them away on Sundays because the preacher might come by and see us playing cards!  We weren’t playing poker and smoking cigars, we mostly played Rook!  The decorations on the walls look like ones we had!

The wooden salad bowl with matching tongs and the round lazy susan with individual bowls were pretty standard in our friends’ homes!

Look at the ashtray next to the chair!!  People read a lot of magazines back then and I guess smoked while reading! It’s hard to remember when people would smoke inside but they did all the time!

A bread box (I’d love to have one now!) and standard pantry staples in old time cans, etc.!

Inside the refrigerator!  The green stuff in a fluted Tupperware mold on the middle shelf was quite fancy back then! My mama made a pistachio cool whip concoction in one of those.  That’s what the green stuff was! The fridge opens via a foot pedal. This was a very fancy sewing machine for the 1950s.  Mine worked with a pedal on the floor, not like this one!  Everyone sewed back then.  I took sewing in Home-Ec in school and even sewed some of my own clothes back then. The old fashioned radio was very popular as televisions weren’t really plentiful back then!

The baby’s rooms were usually yellow and green because we had no idea what sex our baby was before the moment they were born.  Baby beds back then were so hazardous. We didn’t know any better so we didn’t worry about things like that back then!  The baby bed our two sons (in the late 70’s early 80’s) used had several layers of paint on it and one of the things they played with, in their beds, was a long curly telephone cord.  I’d be arrested today if we had a bed like that!  Crazy isn’t it! When I saw this one at first I thought “nothing odd here.” Then I remembered I used one of those scales to weigh our sons when they were little baby boys.  It was actually what Roy previously used to weigh his fish!!!

Several of these things are still used today, just in different packaging.  Remember flashbulbs, photo corners for putting them in photo albums, metal bandage boxes! We haven’t been able to figure out what the items are in the white box to the right.  Click on the photo to enlarge and see if you can figure out what it is.  Let us know if you do!

I don’t think I had a modern hairdryer until I was in my 30s!  The hairdryer we used when I was young was like this.  We’d put curlers in our hair and put the bonnet on our head, then plug the hose to it to blow hot air in there! We also ironed our hair back then on our ironing board and rolled our hair on large orange juice cans!

My young family member pointed out to her children the old vibrating exercise machine.  She had to find a YouTube video so they could see it in action! I used one of those at the fitness center after both my sons were born!  Chenille bedspreads were what everyone had on their beds!   Bathrooms in these fancy houses had a separate area where the ladies could put their make up on in front of a mirror sitting on a comfy chair. 

To wrap this up, here are a few of my 1950s pictures that include items from the 1950s!  Yes, the baby and little girl in these photos is me!

A baby swing from the mid-50s

Two childhood toys, Dolly’s First Aid and Kid-O.Little girl baby doll playpen, high chair and kitchen appliances as Christmas presents in the 50s

My 1957 baby doll stroller

Every photo I found of our outside chairs had someone sitting in them!  This was the only one that was empty.  Doesn’t hurt that me as an adorable little blonde child was in it!

A real baby’s stroller in the 50sBaby bed in the 50s.  The blanket my Aunt Betty gave me survived and was used by my sons when they were born, and my granddaughter Madisyn with her baby dolls!

Our TV with rabbit ears for an antenna.

Okay my naked baby picture, but it also includes a 50s toaster, coffee percolator, and canisters.

The contact information for the1950’s Electric House is: Johnson County Arts & Heritage Center at: 8788 Metcalf, Ave., Overland Park KS 66212 | 913.826.ARTS (2787)

Ya’ll have a Blessed Week!