What did our mums used to do?

[CantFindTheBeat]

I'm 55

I spend so much of my down time titting around on MN.

I have a great job. Great friends.
But i waste so much time on social media and probably trying to distract myself from reality when I should be doing something productive.

I remember my mum cooking, reading and working but never wasting time.

What do you remember? MN and the like are surely pleasure and curse in equal measure?

@Glitterblue I don't envy her all that housework etc but she sounds lovely.

My Mum never worked outside the home from the day she got married. She smoked a lot but never drank.
We lived abroad in an expat community where the men worked but the women generally didn't, but weren't really housewives either. We had servants -- nannies, cooks and 'sweepers' (cleaners) although not always all at the same time.
She drove everywhere and ferried us kids around quite a lot.
Other than that she spent her days at the company 'Club' either by the pool with my DB and I or chatting with her friends (she did have lots of friends) and her evenings at social things with my DF. Monday nights was tombola, Tuesdays and Thursdays there would be films showing at the Club (no TV except in Arabic), and at weekends there would often be dinner-dances.

She was very glamorous, I remember her looking like a pint-sized Grace Kelly in sunglasses, pedal-pushers, blouses knotted at the waist and a headscarf tied around the head and neck rather than under the chin. Or going out in formal cocktail frocks and stilettos.

She read voraciously, mostly hard-boiled detective novels, and listened to the BBC World Service.

I had my children pre-internet. I read books and newspapers and mail order/store catalogues and scrolled through Teletext/Ceefax. My own mother had her children in the 1960s and knitted, watched specific things on television in the evenings, and took us "visiting" a lot in the daytime.

I can remember my mum washing blankets by hand, and I felt that it was really too much for her even though I was only 6 or 7. I know that it wasn’t done too often in the fifties because the intense effort absolutely wiped my mum out, but she never complained, that’s the way it was then and she lived into her late eighties.

Letter writing

Oh and of course Radio 4. Haven't listened to that since I left home- so earnest and middle class.

DM read books, watched TV, knitted, and played patience in the evenings. Often she did the first 3 simultaneously - no idea how, but if you questioned her she knew what was happening on TV and could tell you about what she was reading.

We lived with my DGM for a while, and she spent her evenings watching soaps and reading tabloids - she loved the drama and gossip!

Watched all the soaps and knitted.

Did a lot more cleaning than I do. Running errands, shopping, watching TV. reading, knitting and sewing
My mum was a SAHM but I know she used to quite like playgroups and school as she could chat to the other mum's for ages.
I think my mum had more time to support her children and talk to us though. I don't do enough of that. Not just because of MN but even so...

A lot of reading the newspaper, sewing on buttons, darning, crosswords, cutting recipes out of magazines and the newspapers, and pasting them into endless files, meal planning, sewing curtains, sometimes clothes, reading library books, writing letters, listening to the radio (radio 4 and radio 3), listening to music, watching the News every night.

There was a lot of stuff that happened around apples. Straining them through muslim to make apple jelly. Coring and peeling them to make into stewed apples in kilner jars sterilized in boiling water. Also a lot of jam and marmalade making.

Mum worked full time but still managed to keep the house spic and span. Spent a lot of time cooking, cleaning, baking, gardening, lying on the sofa having a nap after dinner. Not sitting down much really. Still the same now she's retired.

Lots of homemade food and sewing etc, not sure how they managed it really.

My mum was a SAHM , she did a fair bit of cleaning , went shopping a lot and when we were young used to go to my Nans a fair bit ( she had a pub ) to help . By the time I was in secondary school she had learnt to drive and used to spend a lot of time ferrying us to our horses and often went to the yard when we were at school to do jobs .

My mum was an avid reader and did the crossword in the paper every day

My mum would be certainly getting all her jobs done
but also reading papers and magazines and doing the crosswords, watching TV she'd 'taped' from earlier. Listening to the radio whilst doing nothing else. Like sitting with a cup of tea and just listening, which often led to calling in to the radio to answer a quiz question or request a song. Chatting on the land line or out in the garden with the neighbours or spotting someone walking past that she was wanting to speak to, she'd run out and have a chat with them. We loved on a street that you'd walk along to get to church or the local shop so there was a good betting she'd catch who she needed to see. Her downtime alway felt so relaxed, I loved coming in to the living room when the lights were soft and the music low and everything was calm,includong my mum, and tidy. My house feels so frantic in comparison.

This was my mum completely! She also used to watch dramas like Miss Marple and Poirot and write stories and books.

My mother worked full time as a district nurse and spend most of her time, when she wasn’t working, with me and my sister. She taught us to play the guitar and to ride. She also taught us to speak Swedish - how mad is that !.

Read newspaper, books, magazines, cook, iron, watch tv, listen to radio programmes, listen to us, conversations with us; was a counsellor so great to talk to about worries etc, and doing her paid work, having dinner parties, seeing friends, shopping, going to the opera, theatre, restaurants etc with my dad and sometimes my sister and I.

At some point she must have been painting and writing because after she died I found her work was all over the house, including songs she's sent in to the Beatles and had the replies from the publishers

This is fascinating. I wonder if she ever had anything published

Well we didn't have much money, and no modern appliances and my mum is 75 now. I would say she had to basically do everything by hand so that's probably what she was busy doing. I have a dishwasher, dryer etc plus I buy alpt of pre-made food; I have a cleaner and my H wfh so I think I have it a million times easier than her. Tbh I feel sorry for her!! Now having my own DC I often wonder how the hell she managed

Knitted. Sewed. Played the piano.

Usually reading or watching tv/movies. Chatting with my dad if she wasn’t stonewalling him.

Lots of MLM shit like Avon and Amway
Watched tv
Avoided being a parent

DM was like clockwork. I knew what she would be doing at any point in the day.
Morning: tea in bed, up for breakfast, hurl the back door open regardless of weather, watch us all shiver. DD always lit the fire before she got up. Feed the hens, collect the eggs. Radio 4 on (Home Service in those days) and baking, washing or ironing would happen. Occasionally shopping, but most of our stuff was delivered. We had a lady called Vera, who would clean the house, also peel potatoes and polish things. Get lunch ready and boil vegetables for at least 2 hours.
DD would come home for lunch, so in the dining room, with a tablecloth and everything, but it had to be over before the World at One, because: The. News.
Afternoon: Vera and DGM would wash up, and Vera go home.
DM would Take Off Her Apron and read the newspapers and do the crossword. Paperwork until it was time for the Afternoon Play, or to,have the gaggle of ladies round to sew or knit things for the Poor or the Poor Children in Africa or the Missionaries.
Afternoon Tea would be served with bread and butter and cake. If this wasn’t happening, she would go and Get Her Hair Done.
Evening: DD would return and read the newspapers with a drink, whist DM prepared dinner. And more The. News. DGM would wash up and then they would watch something on “the television set”.
They would always be in bed by 10 pm, which was regarded as terribly late.

As I got older, all this used to drive me mad with boredom, but DM seemed to be happy with it. She did eventually get an automatic washing machine to replace the twin tub but always cooked from scratch. Gardening happened at the weekend, with a man whose name I can't remember now, and DGF, before he died.
She wasn’t a big phone user, perhaps because it sat in the hall, so I can't imagine her on MN. She wouldn't have coped with the swearing and the Sex threads!

We had a big spring clean too, but there again, DM had DGM and Vera on board.

Child of 1970s Sydney here. My DPs worked full time so were often tired and tetchy after hours, but DM, who was English, absolutely loved all those '70s Britcoms. To this day I can tootle the theme tunes to The Liver Birds, Man About The House and Some Mothers Do 'ave 'em without ever having watched an episode. The tunes were my cue to slip off into the darkened kitchen and twiddle the radio dial until I found something by ABBA.

My mum was miserable during those early years in Sydney, so I was grateful to those Britcoms for putting a rare smile on her dial.

I seem to remember lots of 'coffee mornings' where local mothers would visit one house and drink coffee, eat cake and chat - so sort of MN in real life.

My mother also spent a lot of time smoking and drinking tea.

She didn't learn to drive until she was in her 40s so didn't do errands, at two places we lived there were mobile shops so shopping was going out on to the street or sending me to the shop for her cigarettes.

There was also a lot of valium around in the 1970s.