When I was little we always took the old catalogs and made door stops out of them.  When my father was little the old catalogs were used for toilet paper in the outhouse.  You could sit and read the catalog and then rip out a page to use as toilet paper.  When the toilet was moved indoors and such paper was too heavy to flush without clogging the toilet the old Sears, Roebuck catalog had no use anymore but people hated to just throw away anything so they made door stops out of them.  I always had to go to my grand mother’s house to get the catalog  because my brother or mother beat me to ours so I remember working on a door stop at her house.  Very seldom did I get to finish mine as I could not sit still that long so Auntie (my grandmother was known to every one as Auntie) always finished it and used it in her house.  When we left TN I took the phone book and made this door stop from that.  Now the catalogs are not large enough to make a good door stop and many are made from too heavy a paper.  To make a good door stop you want most of the pages out of new print paper and the only one today is the large telephone books but it has to be one that has the yellow pages too so that it is large enough to make a good door stop.  

Here is my completed door stop.  I hope to make more of them as it is so relaxing working on them and they look so neat.  We don’t need a door stop any longer as the houses are not as warped as they were back in the early 19oos.  Now our door stops keep the door from opening so far they hit the wall, back when I was little the only way to keep a door open was to have a door stop to hold it open.  The same was true of windows.  You needed something in the window to hold it up.  When my brother was old enough to go hunting he always came home with a deer each year and we used the lower leg of the deer as a window stop.  Before that we used a stick, now the windows stay up by themselves so another part of history is lost.  There is one other thing I remember and want to make again was the “draft dodgers”  Back in the mill houses where I grew up there was no insolation in the house and when the cold winds of winter began to blow it blew into the house around the windows and under the doors so my mother made long stuffed snakes or animals such as a fox or dog and laid them on the windowsills or in front of any outside doors.  That way the floor stayed a little warmer.  I think some of the old houses still need those.

Rosemary, did you make these in Nova Scotia?  Do you remember seeing any at your grandmother’s house?  Nancy, I am sure you saw these, do you remember them?  Have a great day