Housewife poses with a weeks’ worth of groceries in 1947. She spent a total of $12.50 a week (not including milk) to buy her groceries. On this budget, she is able to feed herself, her husband, her four-year-old twins and her cat.
by Total_Currency5601
13 Comments
That’s… $176.46 in 2024 dollars. That actually tracks.
Average salary appears to be about 50 usd a week. Minimum wage would bring home about 25 usd a week. So food has always been expensive.
Four pounds of sugar, two pounds of salt, three dozen eggs and a dozen sticks of butter in a week?
I’m so curious what this would have looked like a decade-odd before and after—didn’t canned food really take off during WWII or am I thinking of something else?
Why would anyone pose with their groceries, much less, organize them on the floor and pose with them?
This explains heart disease and cancer rates of that era — only veg is celery, iceberg and radishes!
Flexing on us so hard😔🫡
>If all American housewives had the spunk and ingenuity of the woman on this page — Mrs. Hamilton Williams of Atlanta, Ga. — inflation would be less of a swear word. Mrs. Williams, wife of a high-school teacher, allows herself $12.50 a week to buy all her groceries except milk. On this she manages to feed herself, her husband, her 4-year-old twins and even the family cat (opposite page). The job takes considerable doing. Mrs. Williams is an avid student of grocery ads and shop windows (above). She limits herself to one shopping expedition a week, at which she weighs every penny against the family’s full-week appetite. She serves no meat at lunch and limits her evening entrees to such items as meat loaf, hamburgers and chili. yet she manages to provide two desserts daily and such frills as cookies for a party (below). When she described her budget in the Atlanta Journal recently, less enterprising housewives sent in letters of disbelief, and the city’s C.I.O. got to work on an official denial that any family could eat so cheaply. But Mrs. Williams, the 1947 heroine of the Battle of the Budget, carried merrily on.
[Life Magazine, 10 November 1947 ](https://books.google.com/books?id=p1EEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=%22if+all+american+housewives+had+the+spunk+and+ingenuity+of+the+woman+on+this+page%22&source=bl&ots=DiuBTu7yWx&sig=ACfU3U1hh9y_qZXEyduzm4Mcxhw4YM0uhw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwja8uL50caCAxXfkIkEHe-PDrsQ6AF6BAgJEAM#v=onepage&q=%22if%20all%20american%20housewives%20had%20the%20spunk%20and%20ingenuity%20of%20the%20woman%20on%20this%20page%22&f=false)
Simple that picture may look, but there were many who couldn’t afford that much, then.
r/knolling would enjoy this
Average weekly salary was around $57, if that puts it better in perspective
It’s amazing how much you can save if you eat meals instead of snack all damn day. Grocery prices are out of control for sure I’m not debating that.
That’s a lot of salt for one week