History of home, garden and kitchen accessories

A couple of centuries ago, housekeeping was not as easy as it is now.There were still no washing machines, detergents, water had to be carried from the river every day, and the dishes did not have a high-quality non-stick coating. But our ancestors were not discouraged and created their own devices to facilitate household chores. Some of them boggle our imagination, and some are still used today as home decor.

Kitchen utensils

Poker, chapelnik, stag

These devices can still be seen in villages - where real Russian stoves have been preserved.

Poker was needed to move firewood and coal in the oven. It was made of fire-resistant metal, usually to order from a blacksmith. Also, some housewives used wood burn, which mixed the ash, and sometimes used it as a torch to illuminate the hut.

Chapelnik was a metal hook with a wooden handle. With his help, they grabbed a frying pan. In Russia, it was called chapel, hence the name of the hook.

Chapelnik is one of the few household items that did not die, but was reborn in the modern kitchen industry. Some manufacturers create collections of pans and pots that only require one removable handle. In a modern home, this helps to significantly save space.

Stag or grip was used to send a cast iron with food to the oven. The hostesses usually had several stags: small, medium and large - for all sizes of crockery. The grip had a wooden handle and a metal base. With a certain skill, some owners made grips for themselves without the help of blacksmiths.

Sadnik

Wide and flat shovel made from a solid piece of wood. With the help of the gardener, the hostesses took out and sent to the oven a cake or bread.

Suitable for its manufacture aspen, linden or alder. When a craftsman found a tree of the right size, he split it into two pieces. Then a long board was cut into each piece. They drew the outline of the gardener on it and cleaned it smoothly, trying to remove all the jags. After cutting out the object, it was cleaned again.

Such a piece of kitchen utensils can now be found in Italian cafes, where chefs use it to get pizza out of the oven.

Millstones

The peasants knew: bread is the head of everything.Therefore, they approached the cultivation and collection of grain crops responsibly. The collected grain was ground into flour by the peasants, and usually hand millstones were used for this. The fixture consisted of two tight-fitting stone circles. In the upper one there was a small hole for filling grain and a handle that turned the millstone.

Millstones were made of stone, less often - of wood with the inclusion of metal elements. Millstones can also be found in remote villages. But now I use them more often for grinding seeds and nuts, and not for making flour.

Home and garden accessories

Pomelo

Unlike an ordinary broom, the broom was used only for cleaning near the stove and for cleaning it from ash.Outwardly, it looks like a broom: a long stalk, to which juniper branches, brushwood, rags or bast were tied.

In Slavic folklore, the pomelo was an attribute of witches or Baba Yaga. Many proverbs and sayings were associated with him.

Trough and ruble

Needed for washing and ironing clothes.The trough was used for washing, feeding livestock, dough or pickles were prepared in it. This word comes from "bark", from which the first troughs were made. In the future, they were made from halves of a log, hollowing out a recess in the center.

The washed linen was ironed (rolled) with a ruber. It consisted of a jagged rectangular board and a rolling pin. The fabric was wound on a rolling pin and rolled on the table with a ruber. At the same time, linen was softened and smoothed.

Rocker

Everyone has seen this household item.. The rocker is a curved stick with hooks at the ends. Suitable for its manufacture willow, linden, aspen. Buckets of water were carried on the rocker. By the way, carrying water on a yoke is not as easy as it might seem. Firstly, this purely female work is physically hard. Secondly, so that the water from the buckets does not splash, the woman had to walk with a special, smooth gait.

Progress has been moving at all times, so the ruble has been replaced by a cast iron iron.It came into wide use much later because of its high cost. The iron was heated on a stove or hot coals were poured inside. Cast iron irons weighed a lot: from 5 to 12 kg. Ironing with them was difficult and inconvenient in comparison with the ruble, but on the other hand, he could iron "shaped" linen, while the ruble could only cope with straight linen.

Spinning wheel

An important attribute in the house of every Russian mistress.The women got the spinning wheel as a gift from their fathers, brothers or groom. This household item was appreciated and treated with care. Spinning blades and the ends of spinning wheels were decorated with painting - in each area in its own way. The spinning job was monotonous and long, often staying at work deep after midnight. The spinning of the threads progressed slowly, so the girls began to master this process and prepare their dowry from an early age.

Box

Wardrobes appeared in houses much later, and initially chests were used to store things.The girl's dowry was folded into the chest, it was also painted, decorated with carvings. The chest could be a full-fledged decoration of the house. It was believed: the more chests in the house, the more prosperous the family.

Sickle

It is a metal arch with a wooden handle.The sickle must be very sharp. With his help, the peasants reaped their crops.

The first types of sickles had a silicon tip. And the type of sickle that we are used to did not appear until the 18th century.

Many household items now seem ridiculous. But our ancestors with their help ran a household, were engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding. Most of the household items of ordinary peasants can now be found only in museums, but in some villages the older generation still uses grabs, pokers, keeps things in chests. And in many houses you can see the preserved spinning wheels.