Sales of butter churns are soaring amid the pandemic, as Americans go full-on “Little House on the Prairie," pursuing activities far more old-fashioned than just baking or gardening. I tried to figure out why this is happening — and, yes, I bought a churn. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-05-14/coronavirus-butter-churning-candle-making

It's not just butter churns that are selling out — stores said candle-making kits and washboards are also seeing spikes in sales. First, it seemed people could just be bored. But academics w/ expertise in consumer behavior said it's not only that, and they offered a few theories.

People are buying things that were once necessities — 150 years ago — tapping into a past they never experienced. A Harvard lecturer said "nostalgia is a strong motivator for purchase, particularly nostalgia not for our own past — which often contains ... negative associations."

Academics theorized that people are buying old-fashioned items to seek reassurance through hard work during this tumult, or perhaps consumers are looking for something "real" in a technology-saturated world. One expert: "We are trying to meet these needs in a subconscious way.”

As for retailers hawking anachronistic wares, some said customers seem to be in search of a simpler life, or are trying to allay boredom. A worker at candle company — whose $80 starter kits have sold out — was stumped by the brisk sales. “What the heck is happening?” she asked.

An employee of an Ohio-based washboard company whose sales are way up said that a much larger swath of its business previously centered on selling washboards for musical instruments (!!!). Now, she said, "it is mostly people who aren’t able or don’t want to go to the laundromat."

But I didn't just talk to academics or retailers about the higher sales of old-fashioned items — I spoke to a "Little House on the Prairie" expert. And the head of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Legacy and Research Association had this to say: “It’s, in a sense, a survival technique.”

For more on this strange corner of the coronavirus economy, check out the story, which also details my own experience churning butter. Spoiler: IT'S DELICIOUS. (Even if it isn't, uh, beautiful.) https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-05-14/coronavirus-butter-churning-candle-making