This is one of the stories in my autobiographical collection.

The Relief Society Homemaking Project- decorated waste baskets from ice cream barrels, early 1960's 37th Married Student Ward, on BYU campus.

One of the many Relief Society Homemaking projects that I will never forget involved ice cream barrels that we procured from the local ice cream stores in Provo, UT in the 60's.

Some of us would call the ice cream shops and pick them up before they were thrown out.Then we would wash them and dry them.

Then, we would decorate them in Relief Society Homemaking Meeting in the basement of one of the Wymount Terrace buildings on campus.

I remember putting all kinds of funny things on them: tiny pom-pom balls, rick-rack and covering them in cloth or wall paper! We were recycling even back then!

One Christmas as very poor students, I decorated one waste paper basket for my mother and one for my mother in law as presents and managed to get them in our little car and drive them all the way to Portland, Oregon.

The one I gave to my mother was kept by her favorite over-stuffed chair in the living room. Mother had polio many years before then suffered many strokes and now spent a lot of time in her favorite chair next to her small bookcase reading and doing crossword puzzles, and napping.

Mother loved her dogs. She had a little white cock-a-poo-mix, called "Cookie" that never left her side and used to sit by her on the wide arm of her large chair. "Cookie" got old and a little blind and would often sleep on the arm of that chair with Mother. Most days both of them fell asleep in the chair.

One day, when I called home, I asked about her little dog "Cookie." Mother told me that "Cookie" died. "She is pretty old," I said, "I guess it was her time."

"Well, mother said, "Cookie fell into the waste basket and broke her neck!" I gasped! "The waste basket?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "you remember the one you made me for Christmas a long time ago?"

I have never been sure whether "Cookie" died on the arm of the chair and fell off or fell off in her sleep and the waste basket broke her neck and she died. Either way, that little decorated ice cream barrel is forever associated with the death of "Cookie" and a Relief Society Project of recycling by very poor students at Christmas time!

Ahh, the days of Relief Society Projects!

This is a sad little story.....but the name Cookie, and the Ice Cream bucket are making it almost too hard to resist the bad Ice Cream flavor jokes.

(Sorry!) ;)

That's actually hilarious. I would have buried Cookie in the wastebasket.

One thing I can't quite understand though... why decorate the ice cream barrels? Why not just, I dunno, clean 'em out and pop 'em in the corner and use 'em as wastebaskets? I fail to see the reasoning behind decorating a trash can. What a useless waste of rickrack and pom pom balls. And glitter. I'm sure much glitter ensued.

Did it not occur to anyone during these projects that the cost of the decorating supplies would probably be more than the cost of a plastic trash can? It just sounds like the dumbest project ever, with the possible exception of knitting bandages for leper colonies. That one makes me LOL.

dogzilla Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That's actually hilarious. I would have buried
> Cookie in the wastebasket.
>
> One thing I can't quite understand though... why
> decorate the ice cream barrels? Why not just, I
> dunno, clean 'em out and pop 'em in the corner and
> use 'em as wastebaskets? I fail to see the
> reasoning behind decorating a trash can. What a
> useless waste of rickrack and pom pom balls. And
> glitter. I'm sure much glitter ensued.
>
> Did it not occur to anyone during these projects
> that the cost of the decorating supplies would
> probably be more than the cost of a plastic trash
> can? It just sounds like the dumbest project ever,
> with the possible exception of knitting bandages
> for leper colonies. That one makes me LOL.


Actually, dogzilla, the items used for decorations were scraps. We all donated little bits of decorative items, from sewing projects etc. The whole project was very inexpensive.
It was a way to use up scraps and recycle the ice cream barrels.
No glitter!
Those were the days when rick rack and pom pom balls were in style also! :-) They really were quite cute.:-)

Oh Susie!
I remember Baskin Robin ice cream containers- so much WORK cleaning them off! But that's before office depot or walmart or staples had three dollar plastic trash cans- in some things there has beem massive deflation- People not only reclyed they made things & worked real hard with their resources back then.
& when people made things for each other they reall really appreciated them. Which is why she had your trash can by her chair. Everytime she touched it or looked at it she was thinking of you & you were far away before internet picture loading or Skype. So she touched the fringe you put on & she touched a little bit of you.

and later, her dog. AAAAh

paintinginthewin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh Susie!
> I remember Baskin Robin ice cream containers- so
> much WORK cleaning them off! But that's before
> office depot or walmart or staples had three
> dollar plastic trash cans- in some things there
> has beem massive deflation- People not only
> reclyed they made things & worked real hard with
> their resources back then.
> & when people made things for each other they
> reall really appreciated them. Which is why she
> had your trash can by her chair. Everytime she
> touched it or looked at it she was thinking of you
> & you were far away before internet picture
> loading or Skype. So she touched the fringe you
> put on & she touched a little bit of you.
>
> and later, her dog. AAAAh


Yes, indeed, mother kept everything I gave her and used it.Not only was this before the Internet, we couldn't afford long distance charges on the phone so we rarely called.

We actually wrote .....letters!

I don't know anything about today and the RS. I do remember Homemaking Night and the ice cream wastebaskets. So many projects. I had ward cookbooks from at least a dozen wards. Most had the same funeral potato recipe and various tuna or jello dishes.

Mormon women made the craziest things. Every person had the same stuff (crap, usually) as home "decor". Here were some I made in my day.

Resin Grapes. Xmas porch things...like deer made from logs and twigs, wreathes made from torn plastic tied around a wire ring, decorated with bottle caps. You could pick your color of torn plastic;) Snowmen made with cotton balls glued onto christmas balls of various sizes.

Deenie the Dreaded Single Adult would love this thread. She had links to funny things--- like tampon angels. It was Deenie that had the turkey carcus Santa sleigh project, wasn't it?? I miss her.

I still go to Utah for my annual family pilgrimage. At times I see things in homes from those Homemaking night projects. This junk is still considered "art" for some people...lol.

Thanks for the story, SQ#1.

I needed that. Thanks. :0)

First of all, SusieQ, I was also in the 37th ward in Wymount Terrace, but not until fall 1970. What a hoot if we had known each other!

And about those RS homemaking projects....when we went to graduate school, I had a co-worker at the bank where I worked who asked me if resin grapes were a part of our religion. I was taken back and said "no", why do you ask? She said she had seen them in every mormon home she had been in! LOL

gemini Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> First of all, SusieQ, I was also in the 37th ward
> in Wymount Terrace, but not until fall 1970. What
> a hoot if we had known each other!
>
> And about those RS homemaking projects....when we
> went to graduate school, I had a co-worker at the
> bank where I worked who asked me if resin grapes
> were a part of our religion. I was taken back and
> said "no", why do you ask? She said she had seen
> them in every mormon home she had been in! LOL


OH GOOD GRIEF! Same Ward, but... different years. We were there from early 1962 to fall 1967. Our first two kids were born in Provo.

I missed the resin grapes. We didn't do those. I'm so deprived! LOL

I took notes at the meetings, read them back each week and collected dues. If forget what the dues were, but they were minimal. They were not required. Probably only a dollar or two but many didn't pay them.

"Dave in Hollywood" - interesting others did the ice cream barrel recycling. I thought it was a local project.
Mormons typically eat a lot of ice cream! :-)

My Mom was the stake relief society president and we had countless dried out empty ice cream containers in our garage waiting for the "big day." I know we ended up with a couple of trashcans, but I just can't recall what they looked like. This would have been in the 60s when I was just a kid.

Dude, your stories are always so action packed!

(Or "tonnes" of those containers, for our Standard English speakers on the board.) She just would not quit because she thought they were so neat, and she must have equipped the entire ward with them back then. Plus, everyone else was a-makin' 'em, too. Good times.

Sorry to hear about cookie. Sounds like the momos are still doing lame projects like a 1st grader would do.