Silly things your mother did (lighthearted)

@OneTwoStep

Before we went into school if we had toothpaste or marks on our face she would lick her finger and wipe it off

I hated it!

But now I often catch myself doing it to my daughter! 🙈😂

I grew up in a house where we never closed the curtains in the bedrooms and my mother had blinds in the sitting room with 'for show' curtains which were never used. Still now I cannot bear to sleep in a room with the curtains closed!

Mumberjack
I was brought up with the never close curtains or blinds during the day thing too.
Then I married someone who never had them open if he could possibly help it!

Now I'm divorced and do what the hell I like with them 😂

My mum is 75 this year and the main ‘silly’ thing she does (in my view) is instinctively views anything convenient as lazy somehow. Fitted sheets (she went to boarding school where they made their own beds from the age of 8, and she still uses flat sheets with hospital corners), tumble driers, dishwashers, duvets instead of layers of sheets and blankets....all of which I love and use!

My mum is only in her mid 60s but honest to god I think years of blindly following her own mums rationale makes her seem so much older! The amount of unnecessary work involved in straightforward tasks...!!!

Irons all underwear (“to check iron is hot enough”)
Clothes get ironed then aired then put away
Never have curtains or blinds closed during the day because of what neighbours might think
Ditto never putting lights on during the day
Many other bits of nonsense

But best (or worst) is that I was never allowed long hair as a child. I was told first that my hair was too thick for it to grow (it’s really not) but more because I’d get colds and sore heads with long hair.
Turns out my mum was told this growing up. Maybe something about not drying in time for bedtime back in the day, I don’t know, but seemingly my gran was convinced my mum would end up unwell any time she grew her hair. Fucks sake 😂

@Pudmyboy Yes, l'm originally from Northumberland.

@katseyes7 and @knittedfairies were your relatives from the North East? Just that you said 'mam' which I think of as from the North East. My stepmother was from County Durham. Wondering if the 'pattern to the street' thing is from the North.....

An odd one.
My mother loved watching Wimbledon, every single year she'd sit down for the two weeks of it and watch it all day long. It was one of the highlights of the summer for her.
As a child she would tell me seriously it was possible to win a match of tennis without hitting the ball because if the other player hit it out or had a net ball or fluffed two serves you could win due to the points you were awarded. I remember repeating this in school and the other child laughing at me as though I was really thick or was making a joke.
To this day I have no idea where she came up with this.

My dad was the one who insisted that the patterns on the curtains should face the street. He wouldn't eat hot and cold food together on the same plate (for example new potatoes with salad) and plates had to be practically melting if used for hot food.

My mum thought if you touched a lightbulb that was switched on, you'd die instantly from electrocution. I don't mean getting hurt from touching a lightbulb that had been switched on for a while and was hot.

Our hallway/staircase light had two switches to impossible to tell from looking at the switch whether it was switched on or off. So whenever she had to change that lightbulb, someone had to be stationed with their hand on the switch ready to switch it off should she put the bulb into the socket and the light immediately came on.

My mother made, what she thought was a very chic 70s recipe - Chicken Supreme. It consisted of cooked chicken cut into pieces, with white sauce and rice. She thought it was so adventurous and modern. We hated it as it was bland beyond belief.

I used to like that....but I liked really bland food as a kid. I'm not sure if I would like it now.
And it was the law that if you were ill she had to pop down to the corner shop to get some (orange, fizzy) lucozade and recovery meals were tomato soup and a frozen fillet of white fish (obviously cooked!!)

This is really interesting, I've just read the whole thread and all my generations seem to be out of sync!

I was talking to my eighty-seven year-old mother last week and she was expressing incredulity that her grandmother had Winter and Summer curtains, did all of her laundry in one day per week in a copper with a mangle, kept a Best Parlour into which only a select few were ever allowed..

Given that my mother's mother was born in 1908, (my mother's grandma must have been at least twenty years before), it was really interesting to hear all this about your own mothers and grandparents carrying on all these traditions.

My mum says she remembers her own mother saying she wasn't having any truck with all that curtain stuff and the Front Room was to be used for sensible purposes whilst still being kept nice. it was used for Sunday play, piano practice and homework when tests or exams were looming.

It's just so interesting that you are reporting all these things and I thought they were from way more generations ago!

RareRachel - I LOVE chicken supreme and rice! I have a very dodgy tum and cannot eat anything spicy or onions or herbs or chinese or indian. My very favourite comfort dish is creamy chicken with rice.

@RaraRachael do you not have a fat pot?

So many of these I both grew up with and now do

Ice cream tubs for leftover food storage/picnics
Old clothes for dusting
Vests always
Tights - bare legs BAD I do not follow this

So many more, I do have a bunch of my granny’s old cook books upstairs somewhere so I’m totally going to flick through them to find the curry

RaraRachel My mother never had an automatic washing machine. Because she "didn't understand" them.
That was her usual excuse for anything she didn't want to have or do.
My remarks about not understanding the working of the internal combustion engine not stopping me driving fell on stony ground.

We didn't have central heating just a fireplace in the living room DM would heat our pants & tights against the fire to warm our bums school on the walk to school.

She was very superstitious too, we were terrified of the banshee as DC.

When l was planning on moving out from my parents' house, and into my own place, l bought a microwave oven. My mother wouldn't have it in the kitchen. I had to keep it in my bedroom.
A few years later, when my husband and l upgraded to a combination oven, we gave my parents my old microwave.
The next time we visited, there was no sign of it. My husband found it in the conservatory (unplugged) with a blanket lashed round it with bungee ropes. Soon after that they gave it to a neighbour, having never used it.

ChocolateSantaisthebestkind My best friend had two brothers, and they always stood up when someone came into the room (or the house). They even did it when her dad came in from work. I couldn't believe it that they did that for their own dad.
Her family were Mormon, the loveliest people, she and her brothers had (still have) the most beautiful manners.

Left to live in a car with another man

PudMyBoy My mam and her sister used to put their curtains up with the 'pattern' on the side facing the street! Even as a child l thought that was strange.