Odd things - do you remember your mum doing these in the 60s?

[Waltons]

Putting a drop of water on a tin can before opening it, because if an air bubble came up through the water, the can might be blown? (I think that was the reason?)

The only bottle of olive oil in the house was absolutely TINY, and labelled "Olive Oil. BP". I think it cost a fortune, and was kept in the first aid cupboard. For earaches, perhaps?

You can still get kaolin and mophine. My mum was always giving it to the dogs when they had poorly tummies!

I've still got a little bottle of olive oil for earwax. In fact, I was prescribed it just the other day!

We had one of those spin dryers like the ones you sometimes get in swimming pools. This was late 70s.

And I'm still partial to a Vesta meal. Especially the paella, which I have to get from Amazon.

And for those of you with chest freezers-wtaf? We didn't even have a fridge.

Yes to dripping sandwiches. And sugar sandwiches. Glad someone else remembered the orange juice in a small bottle cos I thought I'd imagined it.

My mother had a roll-on, and a sort of long knicker garment that held her in. She had a strap-on back support too, which was supposed to help her posture.

The only sanitary protection was Dr Whites, which were mysteriously kept on the toilet cistern up high in the outdoor toilet. Dr Whites were kept on by threading them through a piece of elastic.

Wicker baskets! My mum had one on wheels. Dbro and I used to wheel each other round in it

We also had a massive trike aimed at kids way older than the two or three year olds that have them now.

Does it actually have morphine in it?

BalloonSlayer my granny had one of the push button tea dispensers too. There's one for sale HERE on eBay if you want to re-create those tea making moments

My mum still save butter papers for cake tins and dripping for roasties! The wall mounted tin opener is no longer with us though.

My mum always had a cup of lard on the side, minced meat herself and used a mangle.

And had a twin tub till ten years ago!

I was born in 1969 but remember a lot of these from my childhood.

I grew up in a northern mill town. My mums aunt didn't have a fridge and she also had the original mumsnet chicken too. My mum did her shopping on a Friday for her. That chicken was cooked on a Sunday and lasted my aunt the whole week and was never in a fridge. She was 93 when she died..

My mum had an AEG twin tub which came from makro in the early 70s and was still going strong after the millennium.

We had the olive oil and Andrews liver salts which were kept in the bathroom along with vosene shampoo and my matey bubble bath..

My mum had her quarterly perm and streaks at the hairdressers and would always have her curlers in if they were going out later that day.

Most of the weekly shop was done on the market. Ice cream was either vanilla, raspberry ripple or if we were lucky neopolitan, in a cardboard box and then in a brown paper bag.

I can prob think of loads more too

It says there's still morphine in it. But it now looks clear on the photo on the boots website. I remember it been white and leaving a chalky crust round the lid. So formula must have changed.

Ice cream came from the kiosk round the corner wrapped in newspaper to keep it solid. We had to nip up there on a Sunday after lunch and look sharp about it too

Clarkes summer sandals in white that had to be kept white by using a tub of whitening stuff with a sponge on the end.

My dad used to polish our shoes every night, they shone so brightly you could see your face in them .. relic of his army days I suppose.

Anyone else remember their mum getting gift sets at Christmas that included bath salts or those weird bath cubes?

Granny was keen on knitting and crochet, everybody in the family has a barbie type doll with a crochet crinoline dress to cover the spare toilet roll.

My granny also raised 4 children in a central Edinburgh tenement, no bathroom but they had an inside toilet, she still had the range for cooking and hot water but considered it a great convinience to have a gas cooker fitted and a geyser over the kitchen sink for washing the dishes.
Her bed was in an alcove in the kitchen, the bed recess, with a curtain for privacy.

4711 perfume or eau de toilet water was used on a hanky for headaches

And I can mind my cousins and myself daring each other to sniff the smelling salts kept beside the olive oil.

My grandmother had wonderful skin. She would not use soap on her face baby lotion ( the bright pink stuff) was used on a bit of cotton wool. She also applied the Olive oil to her face
She'd dose us with malt extract and cod liver oil

My mum/gran/in fact most women I knew used to hide the toilet roll under one of these for some reason:
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And Beechams powders if you were poorly. A Beechams cured everything from bellyache to the common cold.
And Gibbs toothpaste, a solid block in a round tin that the whole house rubbed their wet toothbrush on.

Green shield stamps! So exciting when you got a full book - was there a catalogue you ordered from?

Lovely thread. Lots of memories.

I remember hair conditioner in a little tube like an ointment. You rubbed a little into your hair before combing it out.

Also, our hairdryer was a big bag you put on your head, with a tube attached to the machine bit that sent hot air to your head.

Hair was washed once a week.

So many of these bring back memories!

When my sister and I sold our parents' house a couple of years ago, the tea canister thingy was still attached to the wall - hadn't been used in years though.

My mum had a bowl of dripping till the day she left the house. It made food taste delicious.

Yes to the tiny bottle of olive oil. We also had a thing called "blue" that was used to get out stains in laundry. If you got a bee sting, the blue would be rubbed on.

My mother didn't even have a twin tub. We had a woman (we loved her - she babysat for us too and never entered the house without chocolate for us although she didn't have much at all) who came in twice a week to do the washing by hand. When she was finished my mother would give her a tot of whisky. Then we got a top-loading washing machine that worked perfectly for 25 years. They don't make appliances like that anymore.

My mum and her sisters all had exactly the same hairstyle from about the 1950s till they died. A perm every 6 weeks and then a set with rollers once or twice a week. It means they kind of look the same in all the photos. And yes to the girdle too - and my mum used to keep hers behind the pillow of her chair and would put it on if there was a visitor "hold on opening the door till I put on my girdle".

I remember decimilisation too - and saying "five new pence" for years instead of "fivepence"

Also did that trick of calling the number so you could pretend your friend had called you. And my mother's voice "This is a TRUNK call you know"

This is a great thread.

Crispbutty - I remember so many of the same things - Andrew's Liver salts and tiny bottles of olive oil, Matey bubble bath, and cardboard-wrapped Neapolitan ice cream. We used to buy it from Mace stores and have to hurry home or it would be liquid before we got to eat it.

Kaolin and morhine = yep
Olive oil bp = yep
Vesta chicken supreme = yep
Milk of magnesia = yep
Trim phone = yep

Seeing the High Chaparral in colour for the first time. All vegetables were tinned, at uni someone asking if I liked courgettes and me being genuinely baffled.

"
I remember my mum going to the hairdressers to have a wash and set once and week and didn't wash it in-between. Weekly baths and just strip washes in-between. shock'

Yes!

We used to either run downstairs and get dressed quickly in front of the gas fire, or we'd leave our clothes next to the bed and pull them in and get dressed while still under the covers! We also had a paraffin heater that would sit at the bottom of the stairs and stink the house out. Was later replaced by a Dimplex on wheels.

My mum didn't perm her hair in the sixties, but I remember her in rollers and I remember her back-combing her hair as well.

We had Virol, which I loved on toast, and Milk of Magnesia for stomach trouble. We used to buy meat and fish from the Open Market and my nan would always buy me some cockles in a little cup. In the kitchen we had a thing for making chips where you'd put the potato in and press down on a handle and it would be forced through a grid of square blades to come out as chips. Also a mincer that attached to the edge of the worktop with a big clamp and you turned a handle while forcing the meat into the top and on to a sort of corkscrew thing that turned inside. The end of the sunday roast would usually be turned into shepherd's pie that way. I was fascinated by the mince coming out through the little holes.

We didn't have a washing machine for years. We used to go to the launderette or wash by hand and then put in the spin dryer which was a fearsome and noisy machine that travelled across the kitchen floor by itself!

Having no idea what a "shower" was.

DM used to go shopping wearing a headscarf and carrying a wicker basket. Haven't seen either item for years. I've got my grandmothers square wicker basket, still use it.
We had a copper in our laundry, cotton sheets and towels were in there before being put into the washing machine, but ours had an agitator thing in the bottom and a wringer on the top. I can still hear the noise it made.
When we moved into our new house in Australia in the late 60s we still had an outside "dunny" and the dunny men came every week. That was a treat in the height of summer.

I still useWrights coal tar soap for the downstairs loo. I think it is an artificial scent now, but it smells like my Grandparents house and makes me irrationally happy.

I remember the big bag of potatoes in the shed, half a lamb, scary pressure cooker, etc. And I remember Dad coming back from a trip to Italy (very exotic business traveller!) with Parmesan and Mum being completely bemused by it.

But most of all I remember the crumpet man who used to come round the streets on a Sunday afternoon selling crumpets and muffins. I'd have my Sunday bath and get into my pyjamas and dressing gown and Dad and I would watch the muppet show and eat crumpets. Such a brilliant childhood memory.

Yes to frost inside the window panes and then the parafin heaters would be lit. They really stank.
Paisley wider downs on the beds that sometimes had spiky feathers poking through.
Fruit and vegetables in a big delivery van parked on the green from Chris, Stan the bread man came daily with a big wicker basket on straps round his neck and blue tits pecking the silver tops out of the milk for the cream. Did we save the tops like Green shield stamps I don't remember?
First supermarket Keymarkets.