Things you'd find in a cellar in 1940 for $500, Alex.

[zaika]

I'm curious...what do you think a family would store in a cellar in 1940? Canned food? Old furniture? Junk?
I love cellars...do you?

 

[Brinybay]

I'm curious...what do you think a family would store in a cellar in 1940? Canned food? Old furniture? Junk?
I love cellars...do you?

Family skeletons? Crazy Uncle?

 

[AmateisGal]

Hmm. Yeah, I'd say canned goods. And emergency supplies in case of a tornado (well, in tornado country, anyway!).

 

[Fletch]

COAL...

...chute...bin...furnace...shovel...maybe even a stoker in newer or fancier homes.

 

[J. M. Stovall]

We don't have cellars in Houston, not exactly sure why. Water table? Hurricanes? [huh]

 

[jamespowers]

A still left over from prohibition?
How about wine bottles? My grandmother used to make root beer down there. The cellars were also places to store vegetables, fruits and canned versions of these as well. The name root cellar comes to mind because they would store potatoes, garlic, onions and other root crops there along with flower bulbs for the spring.

 

[Fletch]

Anything that doesn't fit in the infamous hall closet.

Gotta clean out that closet one of these days...

 

[jamespowers]

Sounds like Ma and Pa Kettle. Gotta fix that one of these days.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lots of working-class houses didn't have central heating, so don't always count on a furnace -- although if there was one, 99 percent of the time it'd burn coal. So expect to find lots of loose ashes and clinkers scattered around underfoot. Lots of houses didn't even have proper cellars -- more common was a rather shallow mud-floored hole in the ground with brick-lined walls. Anything stored down there would rust mighty fast, so you'd rarely find anything of value. Canning jars might be tucked away out of season, or even empty milk bottles, and maybe half-empty cans of Dutch Boy White Lead from the last time the house was painted, but you most certainly wouldn't find a knotty pine rec room, a pool table, or a personal bar. At most you might find some discarded or broken tools and maybe a rusted out sled.

In the cellarway you'd find a crude wooden cabinet nailed to the wall holding household cleaning supplies. There'd be a dust mop, dust rags, a galvanized mop bucket -- with wringers, if the housewife was really thorough -- and a cotton-string floor mop, and a wire rug beater. There might be a can of congealed linseed oil for oiling the boards on the porch, and a wide brush for applying it. There'd probably a be a Flit gun for summer, and a can or two of ammunition for it. There'd probably be a coffee can or two full of loose hardware, most of it rusty, and a small can of 3-in-1 Oil to apply to the various squeaky hinges around the house.

And, there might -- just might -- be another coffee can stuffed in the back of the cabinet, apparently filled with oily rags, but actually containing a rolled-up sock containing $5 and $10 gold pieces hoarded during the bank runs of 1933 and held ever since just in case things get bad again.

 

[scotrace]

I remember my grandfather's cellar distinctly. Not a lot there, but the thing I remember was that big cider barrel.
I was in the same house about five years ago, and I went down the cellar and sure enough, I could still smell that cider barrel, even though it was long gone.

 

[Flivver]

My grandfather's basement (house bought in 1923) was a magical place to me. It contained a large home made wooden workbench with drawers containing a large selection of tools (which I now own). Next to the workbench was a door that led to an enclosed area under the front porch where wood for the stove (and for building things) was kept.

There was a wonderful white coal-fired boiler, and coal bin, lots of old paint cans, rings of no-longer needed keys, obsolete radios, and a discarded chest of drawers that contained more tools. Dozens of old food jars contained an amazing variety of screws, bolts, nails and other assorted small hardware.

I spent lots of time down there when I was a kid.

 

[staggerwing]

Mice. And spiders. Lots and lots of spiders.

 

[jamespowers]

Mice. And spiders. Lots and lots of spiders.

Don't forget the spider webs.

 

[Miss 1929]

Wheelchairs...

For some reason, when we were house hunting, every house we looked at had a wheelchair in the basement. Go figure.
Hopefully, lots of money and bottles of booze stashed in trunks...
A friend who does estate liquidation says the three big hidden objects are cash, guns, and sex toys.

 

[Viola]

Everybody had a basement around here. Not a NICE basement but a basement with a concrete floor. Good for storage. Also often had a whole second kitchen down there so you could do all your cooking down there and keep the upstairs kitchen COMPLETELY IMMACULATE, which sounds like an exhausting way to live.

 

[Miss 1929]

Wha?

Everybody had a basement around here. Not a NICE basement but a basement with a concrete floor. Good for storage. Also often had a whole second kitchen down there so you could do all your cooking down there and keep the upstairs kitchen COMPLETELY IMMACULATE, which sounds like an exhausting way to live.

I have never encountered the double kitchen before!
We plan to finish our basement and make a nice laundry room, 2nd bath and HUUUUUUGE walk in cedar-lined closet (equal to half the size of the house, about right).
I can't imagine wanting a second kitchen. Bizarre.

 

[John in Covina]

Everybody had a basement around here. Not a NICE basement but a basement with a concrete floor. Good for storage. Also often had a whole second kitchen down there so you could do all your cooking down there and keep the upstairs kitchen COMPLETELY IMMACULATE, which sounds like an exhausting way to live.

**************
It is strange but I recall hearing of a second kitchen only once before. An Italian-American family that had the family dinner on Sundays would cook that one in the basement kitchen to be out of the way as the house was full of people.

 

[John in Covina]

Some of the older houses i was in on Long Island had basements and the pillars holding up the floor ceiling were usually oak trees cut to size and place down there. They had cement floors and tended to be cramped spaces, used as storage like one would use an attic. Sometimes there was a work bench.

 

[Twitch]

1940 was before the war so emergency food or supplies were out. Yeah if you lived in Tordado Alley maybe but no where else. People did have fruit cellars- little sub-rooms in basements where they kept jars of fruit and whatnot that they "put up" in previous times. The rest in basements was the same as today- stuff you're not using.

My grandmother had her washer in the basement. She even had clothes line strung up there when weather was bad to dry clothes.

 

[jamespowers]

Everybody had a basement around here. Not a NICE basement but a basement with a concrete floor. Good for storage. Also often had a whole second kitchen down there so you could do all your cooking down there and keep the upstairs kitchen COMPLETELY IMMACULATE, which sounds like an exhausting way to live.

That's not so unusual. My great grandparents had a kitchen at the back of their house---outside under a roofed area. That is where they cooked stinky food, like fish, so it wouldn't stink up the whole house. Pretty practical if you ask me.