The Shopkeeper Diaries ~ What I Found in The Old Ledger Books

When I go looking for vintage kitchenalia for The Foodie Bugle Shop, I sometimes come across really interesting things for recycling.

Take these old ledger books, dating back to the early decades of the 20th Century. Splattered, torn and aged, with broken spines and inky stains, they contain fantastic lipstick-pink ruled paper inside, marbled endpapers and heavy hardback covers. All can be recycled to make new notepads and recipe writing books.

Inside there are beautifully written accounts, insurance funds and bank reconciliations, which I have photographed here to show you. So neat, so organised ~ I wonder who all these people were, who wrote the accounts, what did these people do for a living and what wares were they selling? It is not clear from reading them ~ it is a mystery. Some people owed lots of money and their account was closed ~ or maybe they died before they could settle the bill.

I will keep and treasure all the written parts in a wooden box and look to create new books with the extra empty pages, so that the paper is not wasted. The new notepads will go on to a new home, to a new writer, maybe even to be used again as account books.

Nobody keeps ledgers anymore ~ what a shame. They are so much more interesting than Excel spread sheets. We try to recycle-reclaim-relove-reuse-reinvent as many of the vintage things we come across, because we only have one planet, and resources are scarce.