Silly things your mother did (lighthearted)

• peanuts
• really salty cucumber
• minty tomatoes
• banana slices.

it was something that i thought was normal when i was a kid. dh thought it was weird.

I've just seen someone mentioned licking a finger and wiping your face! My mum used to spit on a tissue and wipe our faces 🤮 I did it to her a couple of years ago and she was disgusted

Slathering bruises in copious amounts of margarine proclaiming it would "Help the bruising come out"

If she needed to return something for a refund she would only take it back in a carrier bag from the same shop because it was rude. So she would return items to Tesco in a Tesco bag, it was unthinkable to return a Tesco item in a Morrisons bag!

@Fuckingcrustybread

Yes to the sultanas and coconut but with sliced bananas!!

Another one by my DM. After food rationing ended in 1954 she wanted to try something more adventurous so decided on spaghetti bolognaise. Unfortunately she wasn't great at reading recipes.

I caught her just as she was about to put 12 strands of spaghetti into boiling water (for four of us) insisting that 3 strands each were loads as it swelled up during cooking. I made her read the recipe and she reluctantly increased the strands, fully expecting them to increase hugely in size and tumble over the side of the saucepan.

These are just hilarious!! My mum is in her 50s and I can’t think of a single thing!

I'm 43, my DM is 77...possibly relevant that she was a 'surprise' to her parents... my Grandad was a Victorian etc
Her 'quirks' include :

• men should always have the first choice of seat in the lounge. I used to refuse to do this and DM would utter dark mumerings about never finding a husband with this attitude.
• men should have approx 50% more food on their plates than women. Cheers Mum, a lifetime of disordered thinking there.
• the drawer of 'stuff' in the kitchen.... To this day I can phone DF and he'll be able to find for me the obscure battery size I need that was discontinued in 1997.
• plastic bags stored, folded, in another plastic bag.
• slips should be worn with all dresses and skirts

Ahhh some of these are so cute.

My mum taught me to iron by ironing underwear and teatowels.
She still irons teatowels... why??

House always got a deepclean before we went on holiday (to be fair, it's nice coming home to a clean house, so I do it too)

I put ready salted crisps on my mac cheese, gives it a nice crunch haha

My grandma alway put tomatoes in mac cheese, my mum refuses so as a result my dad covers his in tomato ketchup every single time.

Saluting magpies, this is something I picked up, she always played/s "what's going to go wrong" when she saw a solo pie.

My aunt still airs clothes before they go to the wardrobe, I discovered this when she was living with my grandad and I went to get a towel and encountered masses of clothes in the airing cupboard.

Saturday was washing day, the kitchen floor would have piles of sorted laundry on the floor every Saturday rather than just doing loads through the week.

Sunday dinner was always set up on the table for us to dish up ourselves, dad always had to carve the meat and open the wine.

I do miss living at home sometimes haha

According to my dear Mum, you should never wash your hair when you are having your period, always cut the buttons off a coat before sending it to be dry cleaned and nice girls should not use Tampax!

My DH’s DM had many rules but one he particularly remembers is that no TV was allowed the night that Top of the Pops was on due to “lewdness”. The particular red flag was Pans People who in her opinion could topple civilisation.

Us children were not allowed to watch commercial TV but she always watched Corrie. EVERYTHING had to go in the airing cupboard for three days before transferring to out wardrobes/drawers and she had a book to keep record. We were in BIG trouble if we took something from the airing cupboard before it had served it’s time.

Only “working girls” would be seen in public with bare legs “hosiery” had to be worn at all times unless in a swimming costume. I have pictures of me, at 16/17, on holiday in Spain wearing shorts and sandals with KNEE HIGH WHITE SOCKS. I stopped that practice when I left home at 18 and the first time she saw me without socks or tights on outside the house she called me a hussy (and I believe she meant it).

Just adding yet another memory (it seems very common) of doing my "turn" to polish the sideboard and dining table and going to the "polish drawer" to pick out a cloth.

Holding my dad's baggy old Y fronts in one hand and tin of polish (a polish tin of hard wax lasted years so no posh Pledge aerosols in our house!) in the other does not fill me with lovely thoughts. I don't think there was ever a real yellow duster in our home.

My mother's prized possession was the pressure cooker. I was terrified of it as I knew it was like a volcano waiting to erupt and one day it did but it was not the boiling contents which shot to the ceiling which scared me so much as the stopper which was like a bullet and anyone in it's path could be seriously harmed. I have been nervous of champagne and fizzy wine bottle corks ever since.

Ironed my father's pants - ?!? Why?

Don’t get me started on my (otherwise lovely and
PhD-level educated) mother on the rights and wrongs of menstruation.

I seem to recall a slew of books appearing under my pillow at regular intervals from about age 11. Supposedly stuff about puberty and sex Ed, but so obscure and twee that it just messed with what I thought I already knew.

Once I got my period and the festivities had abated (yes, she threw me an extended family dinner and made a speech), she gave me the ‘rules’.

No tampons, cos virgins can’t use them. Some sort of vague exclusion for horseriding girls. No washing my hair on my period (no reason given- but apparently disastrous health consequences if you did). No extra sanitary pads allowed in my school bag (?) so just wear two and toss the top one at lunch break.

Thankfully I had a very sensible (and amused) school mate who set me straight on all this baloney. And who offered to teach my mum too!

My mother always called a corkscrew a screwdriver. We just got used to it.

N ITV children's shows, but she watched Coronation St. As an adult in my 50s if I visited she would watch and try to update me with the storyline, I have never watched it, I only knew some characters from when I was living at home.

She always did supermarket shopping on a Saturday, when we were little it made sense, she couldn't drive and my dad worked long hours.

I was trained from a young age to pack the white wine in with the frozen veg so it was chilled by the time we got home.

It was obsessive cleaning rituals mostly. She was always "so busy" because with three children it was hard to maintain show home standards. I have many memories with my mum in the background pushing the carpet sweeper round.
Winter and summer curtains. Not trusting anything that seems too easy.

My Mum forgot to bring my wedding dress from her house to my Brother's where we were all getting changed.

I'd hidden it there so my husband didn't see it. Made my Mum and Dad fully aware of where it was and what to bring. REALLY made my Mum aware as she's the sensible one and Dad forgets things when he's stressed.

Anyway, makeup and hair done, on schedule no less! I go to get changed and big white bag full of the dress is nowhere in sight! She'd brought, her outfit, my dad's my BILs suit, my DSs dress, coat and SPARE COAT. But not my dress!

Whilst she had a full meltdown blaming everyone, I booked a taxi for my DB sent him to their house (40 mins away) and got to ringing the the registry office and party venue to see if we could delay. All the while telling a crazed mum to STFU, as she yelled some more, I have to fix this now.

A vodka later my DM and DD were sent to think about their actions in another room, DS and BIL sent to the registry office to handle it there.

I was fully prepared to call my DB back and get married in jeans and a t-shirt.

Apparently, my MIL asked my DH if he thought I was having second thoughts as no Mother would do this to their child....he laughed and said "no, this is the shit that goes down in their family". He wasn't wrong!

This was not the end of the events of my wedding day....but then you only asked about mothers!

She kept one room for "best" and we were never allowed there. My father went in there when his accountant visited once a year, much baking was done for this visit to offer him a choice of cake.
She was another one who wanted everything aired.
One thing that I now find quite disturbing was that she did not like my straight hair and took me for a perm when I was 7, I was not allowed to tell anyone about it. WE never had any spicy food at all, even onions were labelled "foreign muck".

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