Categories
Everyday Life

Sleep Tight

During Colonial times, the beds did not have box springs. Instead, all the feathers and other bed material were suspended by a series of criss-cross ropes tied to the bed frame.
Before the children would go to sleep, the mothers would remind them to ‘sleep tight’, or to tighten the ropes attached to the bed frame, so that the next morning, the ropes would not loosen so much that they would fall through the bed.

Categories
Life Oddities

Dead as a Doornail

A doornail is the strike plate against which the door knocker strikes. Because it has been hit so many times, it must be dead.