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?

Doing 'a shop' actually meant a round of trips to the butcher, the baker, the greengrocer, and possibly the grocer's.

We had a mincer that you bolted on to the table too.
All tea was loose leaf.
Everyone has sugar in their tea /coffee
We had a grocer's van that came round the streets.
Milkman delivred to everyone of course, also the baker did
Never came across pasta until we had a spag bol at a friends house in about 1980
We had a big hair dryer that you sat under (like kn the hairdressers) at home
Of course Saturday night was the night you had a bath, got clean towel, got clean sheets (flanellette or brushed nylon with a stripey green and white blanket and an eiderdown. Then wore your 'Sunday best' clothes for church the next day.
Nothing was open on a Sunday - it was always a 'day of rest'
Sunday dinner every week with rice pudding for pudding.

Loving this thread!

I remember eating a lot of angel delight, being dressed in cloth kits clothes that my mum made, slimcea (?spelling) bread, childrens parties where the girls wore long dresses and wore my nighty (probably what has given me a life long fear of being dressed "wrong"! turning the tv on to warm up ages before the programme

Bit of a random list!

I'd forgotten about walking up and down on the washing in the bath!

My mum bought some of those nylon sheets when they first came out but they made me wet the bed for some reason so we soon went back to the coloured stripy ones .

Speaking of party lines, I shared a house with a friend after we graduated in 1994, and it had a party line! Apparently one of the last ones.

Pixel - yes! I collected them (Brooke Bond tea?) I remember inventions and famous people. Got, got, need, swap.

CrispButty . I too am a 60's child from a northern mill town!

I'm glad others remember these things. It seems like another world now, but I'm still young I tell you!

Vesta curry was a special treat for us and yes we too had the chest freezer, the mangle, the paraffin heater in the bathroom. No telly till I was 5, a party line phone in the hall. I miss the gold top milk with super thick cream on top that froze on the doorstop. We had one of those huge radiogram things for years. Oh and boring Sundays when nothing was open and nothing to do but go to church, eat a roast dinner then wait for the Sunday evening kids serial to start. Of course you needed to change channel on the tv itself, the remote wasn't invented.

If you want to wander into memories of the 70s

Radio Luxembourg
Hunky Dory
Power cuts
Aqua Manda
Jackie
parrafin stoves

My dad's cigarettes were '10 No. 6'. That's still the first thing that pops into my head when I see cigarettes (have never smoked myself so have never had to ask for anything else).

Great thread. I remember the olive oil, we had a bottle of that and it was used for earache, dabbed on a bit of cotton wool. I remember being agog at the idea people actually ate it. I don't think you could have eaten this stuff though. It smelled awful and was nothing like the olive oil you can buy now.
I remember my mum making spagetti bolognese in the late 70s, and it was exotic.
We also had a pot of curry powder, it was years old. My mum would occasionally make a curry and the powder would come out. The curry was basically chicken, peas and onions, boiled up in Oxo and the powder added. I remember enjoying it though.

I was born in 1970 and use my pressure cooker a couple of times a week to make Soup! I don't find it scary, but that's maybe because my mum's never exploded!
My grand was areal one for "gadgets" though-she had the wall mounted can opener, the tea rocket, the fold up scales on the wall and pretty much every other gimmick going.
My mum was a Tupperware lady in between having my older sister and me, and a lot of it has outlived her 😞. I have and use some of hers. I vaguely remember her having a twin tub, but she started working part time when I was 4, so got an automatic then, to make life a bit easier. My non gadget gran had a twin tub till she died in 1993.

Collecting Kensitas Club vouchers for stuff you could order from a catalogue.

Keeping the wrapping from the plain loaves to wrap sandwiches in for lunches.

We never had exotic foods, dad was a farmer and we loved hand to mouth a lot of the time. I remember tasting pizza for the first time at a friends house and hated it . My mother called any curries/pizza etc 'foreign food'. She soon changed her tune when I introduced her to chips and curry sauce from the Chinese though ha ha

Brushed nylon bed sheets that glowed in the dark and crackled and sparked every time you moved in bed, especially if you were wearing a bri-nylon nightie!

Does anyone remember Brentford Nylons?

I've bought Kaolin and moraine from Boots, there is some in my cupboard.

DramaAlpaca re your memory of block mascara with the little brush what I remember about that is my aunts spitting in it to soften it then passing it round to all and sundry. They must have developed amazing immune systems.

And Pippa Dee Clothing parties?

We didn't have the half a sheep or whatever in the freezer although I remember friends getting them, but we used to drive about 12 miles to the local town to the "freezer shop". Mother used to buy things like frozen fruit salad (which had never quite thawed out properly, and usually the grapes were still half-frozen). One time mum bought a box of 24 frozen minced meat pies, and 24 chicken pies. I remember she decided to merge the two boxes and because they looked identical, we never knew what sort of pie we were getting!

Did anyone else have a gas poker to get the fire going?

My granny could never get to grips with 1960s technology, and she used to still use her dolly tub and posser for washing her clothes, and I can remember her ironing with flatirons – warming them on her electric stove.

Nobody I knew had a shower in their house but everyone had a rubber shower hose that attached onto the taps. Kneeling over the bath eyes stinging with coal tar shampoo trying to wash your hair!!!

My granny had a giant starburst clock about the mantelpiece and she had these black canvas pictures with patterns made out of string that seemed really modern at the time!

Windows that rattled when it was windy, and ice on the inside on cold mornings.
Being allowed to have a tiny fan heater on for 5 minutes while i got dressed, and squatting with my toes close to it, holding each piece of clothing to get warm before putting it on.
All kids always had vests in winter, some hand knitted ones and hand knitted school jumpers.
A sunday best coat, and having to be photographed in it after Sunday School, to send to my auntie.
Little purses with lots of beads in bright colours on the outside.
Spirograph being the most fun you could have on a saturday afternoon (well maybe that was just me!).
Compulsory, slightly warm, school milk, in small glass bottles.

Brentford Nylons - yes!

Don't know if this has been mentioned as I haven't managed to RTFT but did anyone else have one of those cream-makers where you poured melted butter (or, erm, margarine) and milk into the top and then sort of pumped it to produce ersatz cream in the glass flask underneath? slightly abashed that so many of my memories are food-related

Oh the mincer!
Id forgot about that!
And the ribbed metal container that you put milk in and shook til you got butter ( that may have been a hangover from the war but we were all showed how to use it)

It was considered alright to send young children out to play, often several streets away. My mum would send me to the shops on my own ( hence knowing the divi number)
My mum didnt walk me to school and back let alone drive me there. Nobody did.
We went to the nearest lcal school

Then at secondary it could be several buses away, depending on 11+ results but we were expexted to get there and back on our own

Not PC these days but as kids we all collected the gollies off robertsons jam. Every Sunday my dad went to the newsagents that his friend owned and bought his cigs for the week (players or senior service untipped) the Sunday telegraph (which nobody was allowed near until he had read it) and two bottles of Ben shaws pop. (He always took the emptys back too for 10p each)

Mum used to do her shopping at the local market in the week and kwik save, and we would go to Bury Market on a Saturday. And that is still the best market in the world.

Holidays were always in the uk. very few people we knew went abroad, it was a very expensive luxury. We usually went to a relative in Devon which entailed setting off at 3 in the morning, and seemed to take about 12 hours to get there in our Austin 1800 which was like a tank.

Love this thread.
We had a twin tub washing machine which got wheeled to the sink every Monday, wash day.
Mum had a pressure cooker which used to scare me.
The mincer that clamped to the table.
Wall mounted tin opener.
Olive oil for de waxing ears.
Cod liver oil every morning yuck!
Pop man every Friday.
Shopping at local green grocers, bakery, butcher.
Ice on inside of windows in the winter and getting dressed under the covers.
I remember mum going to Pippa dee and Tupperware parties.

Cedilla
Oh yes!
Id completely forgotten those

I just remembered another one, wearing a liberty bodice to keep warm.

My mum also always wore a headscarf.
She was always on a diet - I remember the PLJ lemon juice one which was supposed to put you off sweet things.
'Isometrics' were a fashionable exercise.
I have a memory of life size statues of children with begging boxes to put change into?