Everything but the kitchen sink

SEELEY LAKE – A family from Missoula coming to enjoy a day on Seeley Lake might load up the car with a cooler, beach chairs, sand toys, blow-up floats, fishing gear, snorkels ... At which point dad will probably say, "My gosh, we're taking everything but the kitchen sink!"

It's unknown just how that phrase, and its variant "...kitchen stove," "kitchen range" came about, but it has been in use since the early 1900s. A May 6, 1906 article in "Scribner's Magazine" carried the sentence, "She had on everything but the kitchen stove, and yet she looked well dressed."

In fact, early references include a number of instances where the phrase was used in connection with dress fashion, both male and female. The Feb. 3, 1914 "Washington Times" contains the description: "...Jerry was logged out this day like a circus horse. He had on everything but the kitchen sink and the door mat."

Fashion aside, the phrase was used in other contexts also. A fun article appeared in the "Outdoor World & Recreation" September 1913 issue. In describing that moment when one must get out of the canoe which has so conveniently transported ones belongings and instead must shoulder both canoe and backpack to transport them to another lake or river in the chain, George Palmer Putnam wrote: "Such was the invariable wail at a long portage, inevitable the world over, for trim down equipment as heroically as you will, and yet it seems as if you had about everything but the kitchen range and the grand piano when it comes to back-packing."

Another article that used the phrase in terms of weight appears in the Oct. 18, 1916 issue of "The Sun." The newspaper sports headline read: "Dillon Unable to Drop O'Neill, Hits Him With Everything Except Kitchen Stove, but Celt Lasts Limit."

The phrase experienced an uptick in usage during World War II, where like the boxing reference, it was related to weight and force. A Shell fuel company ad in "Life" magazine Jan. 24, 1944 read, "Out for blood, our Navy throws everything but the kitchen sink at Jap vessels, warships and transports alike."

The WWII references carried an additional meaning. The government needed a large quantity of metal to build ships, airplanes, tanks, bombs and guns for the war effort. In the face of metal shortages, the War Production Board instituted scrap drives. Some scrap drives became community events with people vying to see who could bring in the most junk metal. Neighboring towns competed against one another. Sometimes a scarecrow or Hitler figure was set up for scrappers to throw their metal items at, making visceral the use of the metal to help defeat the dictator.

A poster depicted a farmer and a businessman together pouring metal from a trashcan into a contraption labeled "war industries." Supply trucks, tanks and airplanes race or fly out the bottom of the machine. The poster reads, "You" -- the pronoun in red letters and underlined – "can help win this war. Salvage materials for Uncle Sam now! Every bit helps!" Another poster carries a picture of a Japanese and a German soldier in a boat looking terrified as a torpedo labeled "the junk on your farm" surges toward them. The poster reads "Make sure they're sunk – bring in your junk!"

Farmers hauled in old rusted farm equipment, housewives contributed pots and pans, even children gave up their metal toys for the war effort. Mattress springs and metal bread boxes, fenders and hubcaps, wrought iron fences and old civil war canons, all were grist for the war mill. In other words, everything but the kitchen sink, which in those days was generally made of porcelain and firmly attached with water pipes.

Indeed, the progression of the phrase from kitchen stove to kitchen range to kitchen sink probably has to do with how heavy and how firmly fixed those items were. Whether to describe over-the-top fashion or fights, back-packing or war efforts, the "everything but" phrase seems willing to adapt itself to any situation that needs to be magnified and over-exaggerated.