Cheap Advice Still Worth Borrowing

Magazines have always provided tidbits that strike such a chord, we are moved to clip that bit of info or recipe or advice (both personal and financial) or fashion suggestion or helpful hint and paste it to the empty pages of a book purchased for just that purpose.

From the pages of this vintage scrap book is one with a hodgepodge of clippings that include the latest in laundry room layout, a tip on sewing weighted tape to the hem of curtains to hold the folds, and repurposing defective jar rings by applying them to the bottom of a scatter rug to keep it from sliding about. All good information and worth saving.

Another page’s pastings included home decorating advice concerning the importance of choosing room colors based on the room’s light exposure, the definition and symptoms of thyroid disease to statistics regarding a submarine.

The diversity of the owner’s interests and curiosities filled page after page.

On these facing pages, the clips are all Streamliner household hints, which appeared in newspapers in the late 1950s. One clipping caught my attention

because the blooms of an arrangement were fading and those still alive were a bit droopy. I took Mrs. Moskowitz’s suggestion to practice and voila! the remaining flowers stood tall and sturdy within their individual, tape cells.

So clever was this idea, that it’s stayed with me. So when I was flipping through an old Martha Stewart magazine and saw this photo of a vase with squares of cellophane tape, I knew before reading

Tray Chic the tape’s purpose.

Shocking! I thought, that Martha staff came across Mrs. Moskowitz’s tip in another homemaker’s vintage scrap book and appropriated it as an original idea. But on second thought, much more likely is the grid of tape isn’t original to anyone, including Mrs. Moskowitz.

Within the pages of stacks of old magazines, I’ve come across a vintage domestic version of many ideas that are touted as today’s newest and greatest, which points, I think, to how difficult it is to be truly original.

The Chicago Sun-Times paid Mrs. Moskowitz $2.00 for her stand-up flower tip. Fifty-plus years later, it’s still worth borrowing.