Silly things your mother did (lighthearted)

@Eleoura My Grandma (97) maintains to this day you shouldn't eat tomato pips because they give you appendicitis...my Dad has still never eaten a tomato as a result of this claim and he's 62!

Frequently refers to people, places and things by the wrong name, and still does. She wouldn't ever "um" or "er" over a name: she'd just brazenly say what she thought was the name. It sounded silly when she was nagging me about doing my homework, misquoting the book's title.

She also lined drawers with paper; she would use wrapping paper for this, so it looked nice.

She told me that if I wore shoes without socks, my toes would disappear. But I was a very sceptical child, and I actively sought to disprove this, so she didn't bother with myths after that.

@Crankley Your story with the socket reminded me of my grandmother's approach to electricity: her house was an artefact of ancient wiring, and had an assortment of sockets, some of them round 2-pins. She believed in making things last, and flatly refused to have anything rewired; instead, she had loads of adaptors, some of which she had made herself (she had an aptitude for DIY). However, she did once admit that she cut through a live wire with metal-handled scissors, which were never the same again!

And yes to chucking salt over the shoulder!
I think the obsession with ironing everything was to get it properly dry so it would smell damp.

Our sandwiches were never wrapped.

They were just put in a Tupperware box with a slice of cake (homemade) and were eaten covered in cake crumbs.

Don't think mum ever used cling film.

@unmarkedbythat, have you ever watched Miranda? Her mum does that.

I salute magpies, don't put new shoes on the table, chuck salt over my left shoulder...I don't iron underpants and flannels though.

When you used to buy cheese or ham or whatever (at the counter in British Home Stores) it would come in a smallish plastic bag, the crinkly kind.
We used to have to wash these up and dry them so they could be used for our sandwiches in our school packed lunch. I can remember trying to dry them.
My mum always used to save every tiny bit of left over food. It would be wrapped in clingfilm and stashed in the freezer. Recently when my mum was ill, my sister and I had a clear out of the freezer and took great delight in throwing away dozens of little non identifiable clingfilm wraps.

Smiling mistily at this thread. I lost my mammy 6 years ago and I miss her everyday: she was an absolute angel and so clever and funny and modern but did do things the way she was taught. I definitely do loads of what she's passed to me: I wouldn't dare put the milk bottle/ jug of gravy/ tub of butter on the table, it's common; if anyone comes for a cuppa it's napkins, teapot, cake and 2 types of biscuits; curtains closed in the day = common house; no curtains/blinds at night= common house; i don't really ask my kids to do chores because " they'll have their own house to organise soon enough "; leaving your washing out overnight is tantamount to shame; the house has to be very tidy and clean if anyone visiting; before holidays house super clean to come back to and last thing before leaving is change the beds.

She also did things I wouldn't dream of doing: ironing bedding; cooking every meal despite not really liking it; baking for us kids coming home; babies need to be in white/cream for the first 3 months (she never said anything about my.multi coloured kids, though, she was too lovely); the classic Billy Connolly line of turning the TV off when the priest visited (I don't do religion); never speaking to other people on holiday, except for a good morning and a smile, despite being very sociable as ' you never know who they are'. I loved her so much.

Another vote here for no ITV allowed! Also, no soap opera (even on the BBC) because "it's just people arguing" and would encourage us to argue

@souvlaki
Yes your right, we also had a drawer full of old, brown paper bags, pieces of string and perished rubber bands. I guess it was caused by shortages during the War (WW2).

I have an uneasy feeling that it may be genetic as I think about what my own kitchen drawers contain

I love this thread.

Lost my mum years ago and so many of these she did but I'd forgotten. You've made me all teary. In a nice way.

Dad's big cotton y-fronts were used as dusters, and even now Dad is long gone, she still has his pants neatly folded in the cupboard under the sink, ready to do battle.

She also did the curry with sultanas and boiled egg - I might try that, it was lovely if I recall correctly.

She's very fond of backing up one of her bonkers theories (about covid at the moment) by telling me 'they' said so. When I ask who 'they' are, she waves her hand in the direction of the TV.

Oh and she still calls the radio the wireless and has a proper old record player for her vinyl LPs, even though my brother and I have bought her a CD player and a pre-loaded MP3 player - its not proper music if it isn't played on the gramophone.

My mum used to lean out of the window and shout, “Cooeee!” at neighbours. I was so embarrassed.

TwoLeftSocksWithHoles

TwoLeftSicksWithHoles if we were all like your mum our oceans wouldn’t be full of plastic. There is reason in some of this madness.

My fav as a child was that we were not allowed to watch ITV or "commercial television". So no Magpie.
Even funnier, she worked full time but we never switched over.
Even funnier, she is now 80 And spends her days surfing sky tv.
She denies the whole thing.

What I find strange is that my mum has developed some of these since my brother and I left home, and more so since she retired. She now irons everything, whereas I'm pretty sure when we were at school we had those shirts that claim not to need ironing, and that we were just instructed to 'give them a shake' - but in more recent times she told me off once for not ironing a pair of dungarees for a one year old! She's also become particular/obsessive about many small details of the house, such as the organisation of Tupperware or arrangement of magazines on the coffee table; again, the house was in comfortable chaos in my childhood. I always thought these things were generational and you did them your whole life or never - I'm not sure if she always thought she should but didn't have the time when we were kids and her and dad both worked, or if she's now developed this sort of thing to fill her time?

My mum had a plastic bag hanging up in the garage into which she would put items of old clothing to be cut up and used as dusters. If I couldn't find a T-shirt I was wanting to wear, I would look in the bag and it would usually be there.

My mil insisted that you couldn’t do any laundry on New Year’s Day as you will wash your husband away.
My dh is still here.
She also wouldn’t have ivy in the house at Christmas as it was bad luck.

My gran in the ‘70’s would make us milky coffee and always sing out
café au layee as she brought it to the table.

Sliced olive sandwiches on cheap Kingsmill bread (quite forward thinking for early 1990s)

A pice of kitchen roll neatly placed at the bottom of the biscuit tin.

My mum is very capable in the kitchen but regards things like slicing the Sunday roast or opening a bottle of wine as a “man’s job”so always asks my dad to do the honours

No liquid soap for many years, in fact I think only in the last 5 or so and my mum is in her eighties. As it reminded my mum of working in a hospital.

No toasters, the ones we had never used and indeed I was given the one I have.

Back in the 50s when I was a child, my DM used to do ten things at once (typical Taurean) and in the kitchen she put a plug in the socket that took 3 or four other plugs. She had one plug for the iron and one for her sewing machine, one for the washing machine etc. Trying to remove one of the plugs proved difficult so she decided to pull out the original plug. It was stiff so she got the tin opener to prise it out of the socket. It was all metal and as she dug it in, was electrocuted and thrown to the floor. She luckily came to no major harm, unlike the top of the tin opener.

I'm laughing, but as a pp said, a lot of this is generational -- like the obsession with ironing everything and putting things for lengthy periods in airing cupboards before they could be worn is from the days before central heating and tumbledriers, so it was impossible to get everything properly dry in wet weather, so the ironing was still part of the drying process, as was finishing it off to 'get the last bit of damp out of it', before you could wear it safely!

And the having nicely ironed bedclothes 'for the doctor' is from a day of ingrained forelock tugging to your betters, the doctor being the only one who was likely to come inside your house. I remember my dying grandmother, in considerable pain, still insisting on changing her nightdress and having the sheets changed before the doctor arrived. This was the woman who, when widowed and living on thin air, half-starved her own small children so that they had one set of 'decent' clothes for church on Sundays, and made them continue to wear shoes far too small for them for months, because they couldn't go barefoot 'like the tinkers'.