Silly things your mother did (lighthearted)

[RaraRachael]

Trying to lighten my current mood and started to think about things my mother did - and insisted that I do - as they were "the done thing" back in the day.

Turning the clothes inside out to put on the washing line in case a bird shat on them
Lining every shelf in your kitchen unit with patterned greaseproof paper
Stuffing the chicken and then sewing it up with a needle and thread

Suffice to say, I stopped these ridiculous traditions when i realised there was no valid purpose to them

My mum always cut Brillo pads in half; it gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I horrify my DM by not ironing everything, including tea towels, muslin cloths for babies, and underwear, and by not colour matching my pegs.

I also fail to eat fish on Fridays and a Roast on Sundays. And... We don't have pudding every day. (The children might have yoghurt or fruit, or something from the chocolate box.)

Mostly superstitious stuff, touching wood, saluting magpies and asking after Mrs magpie, not walking under ladders, tempting fate- turning round and crossing yourself after accidentally not doing some strange superstitious thing she should have. My brothers and sisters are all throwing salt over their shoulders, not looking in cracked mirrors, never drinking out of chipped glasses or mugs, smashing crockery to prevent things happening in threes- im perfectly sane nowadays thank you

My Mum used anything she could find in a salad, this included any fruit, (cheese egg and strawberry salad for example), any nuts or crisps (tuna salad liberally sprinkled with crushed up pickle onion monster munch). Basically anything lying around was fair game in Mum’s salad world.

I still line shelves! Especially the ones that hold food such as oil or treacle.

My favourite of my Mums was after ironing dry clothes, she would then but them in the airing cupboard before they went into into the wardrobes. Why!

If I didn't clean behind my ears, wipe my bum properly, brush my teeth etc, I'd get impetigo !!??

Oh my god sewing up poultry!!! Thought my mother was the only one who did that...

My mother used to use old underwear as dusters. Clean, obviously...

Ironed tea towels.

Look, my mother, whom I adore, was brought up in abject poverty in a household that didn’t even have an outdoor toilet, they just went up the field behind the house, and was taught to step down off the pavement and bless herself when the parish priest approached. Suffice to say that a lot of what she was brought up to think of as normal, from personal hygiene onward, really isn’t.

Aired flannels - bloody mad!

She used to make curry with sultanas and serve desiccated coconut and chopped hard boiled eggs on the side. I'm sure that the recipe came from one of those 1970s "exotic" cookbooks.

My mum calls things by the same name as everyone else and then adds "as I call it", as if she was the only person to do so. Like, "for tea I'm cooking cottage pie, as I call it". She got really cross with me last year for insisting that everyone calls the holidays where you're all on a giant floating hotel boat "cruises" and she was not unusual to do so. Bizarre.

Just to add, there was usually some form of meat in the curry, not just sultanas!!

My mum used old knickers as dishcloths as well

Throwing a strand of spaghetti at the wall (during cooking) - if it stuck, it was done.

No idea why she didn't just taste it!

@Heaviestdirtyestsoul and mine also salutes magpies and asks 'how's your wife?'

@Fuckingcrustybread

She used to make curry with sultanas and serve desiccated coconut and chopped hard boiled eggs on the side. I'm sure that the recipe came from one of those 1970s "exotic" cookbooks.

Ha, my granny used to do this is the 90’s. It was considered quite modern at the time

My mother used to use old underwear as dusters. Clean, obviously...

I don't use pants but I cut up old vests to do this.

@Fuckingcrustybread

She used to make curry with sultanas and serve desiccated coconut and chopped hard boiled eggs on the side. I'm sure that the recipe came from one of those 1970s "exotic" cookbooks.

I still make the sultana and egg curry for old times sake. My husband really likes it. I call it 'The 60's curry' We both ate it growing up. Sometimes I even add frozen peas to the rice!

My mum would always insist on unpicking and resewing the hem of any new pair of trousers or skirt to make it the perfect length. And woe betide anyone who put new shoes on a table or opened an umbrella indoors.

It would be interesting to know how old you & your mums are...

I'm 51, my mum is 78.

My Dads (old & clean)underpants were definitely used as dusters - much nicer cotton in those days that what they're made of now.

@Fuckingcrustybread. Yes sultanas in curry, but curry was completely different than it is now.

@unmarkedbythat. Does it annoy you? It would drive me bloody batshit!!

@LunaNorth - ironing tea towels is good from a hygiene POV, personally I do it because they looked neater & stack better. (Pillow cases too) clothes...errr....not so much 😂

@Shosha1. My aunt did that. She even had a thing (airing box?) that things had to go in before progressing to the airing cupboard! You'd get chills if things weren't properly dry! 🙄🙄

@raffle -I guess it was never boring! 🤣

@WitchesBritchesPumpkinPants it drove me bonkers for years, and then after the great "everyone calls it a fucking cruise", "don't be so silly, unmarked, it's not a widely used term at all" argument I decided I had to laugh at it. My brother gets annoyed by it instead now, he only really noticed it when I told him about the cruise thing and now he will send my random texts saying things like "you know those books that list phone numbers? Our mother calls them 'telephone books'" or "you'll never guess what Mum calls the person who brings her bottles of milk- the 'milkman' I mean who would call him THAT?!' and I get to laugh.

My mum ironed EVERYTHING - knickers, socks, the side panels of bras, tea towels, flannels, you name it. It then had to be aired, otherwise we'd get "the pains".
She insisted on an elaborate first-footing ritual every New Year's Eve involving my dad, a lump of coal, some fruit cake and whisky. (We're not Scottish.)
On no account could curtains be closed during the day in case passers-by thought there'd been a death in the family.
Most ailments could be treated with either a kaolin poultice, which involved boiling a tin of kaolin in a saucepan of water, or a cup of "hot Oxo" (admittedly nice).
She'd also find a new, usually "exotic" recipe, follow it to the letter, and if it was a hit, repeat it - but gradually cutting down the unusual/flavourful ingredients so it got blander and blander...then wonder why we'd gone off it.
She's remarkably accepting of the fact that I'm not desperate to follow her lead on these things, for which I'm grateful!

I remember watching a food programme recently where the presenter was in India and he said people think it’s a 70s thing, but it’s tradition to have sultanas in one type of curry.

Mum used to put sliced boiled egg on prawn curry, works brilliantly! A takeaway we loved did a fried egg under the byriani rice.

@unmarkedbythat

That is hilarious Although I imagine it's one of those things that's really funny... unless it's your own Mum saying it. (I know it would drive me nuts IRL!)