Food Expenses in the Rhythm of Daily Life. An Analysis of Household Accounts

Abstract

The subject of detailed analysis presented in the article is the daily shopping and food expenses incurred by a single family resident in a large Polish city in the period of the People’s Republic of Poland. The source material for the analysis is the ledger of daily food expenses originating from a set of household accounts in the household of a female clerk in Łodź, which in its entirety covers the period from August 1952 to August 2004. The analysis presented herein, however, is based on a detailed analysis of records pertaining to only three selected months of the autumn of 1960, that is expenses dated from 1st September to 30th November 1960. The main aim of the analysis is not to exhaustively document the specificity of the period of the People’s Republic of Poland, but only to present the source material and its interpretative capability, as well as to show a small section from the picture of daily life revealed by one family’s three-month expenses. The author demonstrates that a detailed description of the daily shopping may constitute a very clear illustration of the specificity of private life in the given time and cultural space, as well as a reflection of not only the socio-economic, but also the political conditions in which the shopping is done.