Things found in American Homes in the 1950s
Step inside one of the many American homes in the 1950s and you'd find a household caught somewhere between old-fashioned routines and a shiny new consumer future. Radios and rotary phones were still everyday essentials, but televisions were rapidly taking over living rooms while kitchens filled with colorful appliances and gadgets promising to make housework easier.
The postwars also brought plenty of new materials, conveniences and foods into the home. Tupperware offered an alternative to heavy glass containers, frozen TV dinners turned supper into something you could pull from the freezer. Pastel refrigerators and Pyrex bowls added plenty of color to the kitchen. Not every family had every item, but these household staples offer a glimpse of what everyday life looked like in an American home during the 1950s.
At the beginning of the 1950s, a television was still something of a novelty. By the end of the decade, it had transformed the American living room. Unlike today's ultra-thin screens, early TVs were hefty pieces of furniture, often housed inside substantial wood cabinets and topped with rabbit-ear antennas. With typically just one set per household, deciding what to watch was very much a family affair!
Television may have been the exciting newcomer, but radio wasn't going anywhere just yet. At the beginning of the decade, radios were already fixtures in nearly every American household, delivering everything from music and baseball games to news and dramas. Some families had large wooden console models in the living room, while smaller radios could be found in kitchens and bedrooms.
There was no checking your phone from bed in the 1950s. The household telephone usually lived in one permanent location often in the hallway or kitchen and everyone had to share it. Calling someone meant turning the rotary dial one number at a time and waiting for it to spin back. In some communities, famlies even shared a telephone line with their neighbors through a party-line system. Eventually, private lines became available.
Few pieces of furniture scream "1950s kitchen" quite like a chrome dinette set. These tables paired shiny tubular metal legs with easy-to-clean Formica tops often in cheerful shades of red, yellow or aqua. Add matching vinyl chairs and a speckled or boomerang-patterned tabletop and you had a dining set perfectly suited to the colorful suburban kitchens of the postwar years.
By the 1950s, the refrigerator had become an essential part of the American kitchen and manufacturers were finding plenty of ways to make families want an upgrade. Newer models offered more freezer space for the growing selection of frozen foods along with colorful finishes that went well beyond basic white. Rounded doors and chunky chrome handles gave these refrigerators a distinctly mid-century look.
Plastic food-storage containers don't seem particularly revoluntionary today, but Tupperware was a genuine postwar phenomenon. Its lightweight, flexible containers offered families an alternative to glass storage, complete with airtight lids famous for their distinctive "burp". Tupperware parties also became a social fixture during the 1950s, allowing women to demonstrate and sell the colorful containers from their homes.
Open a 1950s kitchen cabinet and there was a good chance you'd find some colorful Pyrex inside. the decade brought shades of Lime and Flamingo Pink, along with now-iconic patterns such as Pink Daisy, Snowflake, Butterprint and Gooseberry. Nesting mixing bowls were particularly practical since they could be used to prepare food, serve it and then stack neatly away when the cooking was done.
The promise of the modern 1950s kitchen was simple: Let electricity do more of the work. The Sunbeam Mixmaster fit right into that vision. The substantial countertop appliance with its metal beaters and mixing bowl could tackle everything from cake batter and whipped cream to mashed potatoes. It was the kind of shiny new kitchen gadget that made everyday cooking feel decidedly more modern.
Long before pod machines occupied kitchen counters that dispense single cup servings on kitchen counters, there was the percolator. Electric models became increasingly common as kitchens filled with labor-saving appliances though plenty of families still used stovetop versions. One of the most recognizable features was the little glass knob on top, where you could watch the coffee bubbling away as it brewed.
Breakfast was getting an electric upgrade, too. Shiny chrome pop-up toasters turned an everyday kitchen task into something almost automatic. Drop in a couple slices of white bread, push the lever and wait for breakfast to spring back up. By the late 1950s, countertop appliances were increasingly being marketed as part of the streamlined, modern kitchen.
Few products captured the changing 1950s household quite like the TV dinner. Swanson introduced its version in 1954, combining a complete frozen meal with a divided aluminum tray that could go straight into the oven. Meat, vegetables and even dessert each got their own little compartment. The name also conveniently tied the meal to another booming obsession: television.
Laundry rooms were going through a technological transition. Some families had upgraded to automatic washing machines, while others were still feeding wet clothes through the rollers of a wringer washer. Either way, these machines tended to be large, practical appliances tucked into a basement or utility area. A far cry from today's sleek matching washer-and-dryer sets.
Owning a washing machine didn't necessarily mean owning a dryer. For many families, freshly washed sheets, shirts and towels still went straight outside to the backyard clothesline and left do dry in the sun. When the weather didn't cooperate, an indoor drying rack might have to take over.
Mending clothes and sewing at home were still common skills so a sewing machine was a practical piece of household equipment. Many were built into heavy wooden cabinets that looked almost like ordinary furniture when closed. Open the cabinet, lift the machine into position, grab a paper pattern and the table transformed into a home sewing station.
Before today's roller shades and cordless blinds, mid-century windows were often covered with horizontal Venetian blinds. Metal versions were especially common and could be paired with curtains or boldly patterned drapes. Anyone who grew up with them might remember the long cords, rattling slats and frustrating attempt to get every blind tilted at exactly the right angle.
White wasn't the only option for bathroom fixtures in the 1950s. Pink, pale blue, yellow and green could cover everything from the bathtub and toilet to the sink and tile. Matching fixture suites created bathrooms that were unapologetically colorful and a surviving pink bathroom today can instantly make a home feel like a mid-century time capsule.
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