About

This curated blog is devoted to discovering “how-to” ideas, recipes and other helpful tips from civilian women of the World War 2 era with its years of intense need and community spirit.

Stories of the ways women kept their homes running and everyone well fed—while working away from home, feeding and clothing refugees, knitting for the military, and enduring during air raids, among other things—are fascinating to me.

If you have ever wondered how our grandmothers and great-grandmothers managed life during the great upheaval that helped mold them into the Greatest Generation, then you’re in the right place.

Useful Tips:

This is a spot to relax with a cup of tea or coffee and look at a bit of history about life at home during the War. It’s also a place for those who want to figure out how to use that wonderful wisdom today!

There are many delightful books and other resources full of tips for how the women on the “home front” took care of themselves, their families, their homes—and how they even went beyond all these to help their communities as well as strangers in desperate need. Sound like anything that might be helpful in our day?

Many of the tips are so unusual compared to the way we do things now; they sound interesting but we aren’t sure how to make them work. Wartime Wisdom explains how! Each blog post highlights one useful tip and how it worked when I tested it. You’ll also find handy downloads of things you can test, too.

Recipes and instructions may be slightly modified to work with what is available now but they still maintain the spirit of the Second World War era—economical, practical and helpful.

I hope you will be inspired by these glimpses into the world of the 1940s, with its marvelous women who kept things running smoothly on the home front and overcame to achieve Victory. Enjoy!