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

We had the old underwear as dusters and cloths. Thought it was only us!! Lol

@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 actually wish someone would post a recipe for that, it sounds delicious!

@Fluffyandsilly

My mum is early 70's. She has always been bonkers and remains so!

Like @carlaCox 's mum she's always mithering about trousers (and sleeves come to think of it) being exactly the right length. She doesn't understand that I don't really give a fuck if a sleeve is a bit long. I'll just roll it up.
She is obsessed with airing washing in the airing cupboard once it's dried. WHY?
She is very superstitious about a lot of random things . She would also absolutely freak if anyone put new shoes on a table. Or brought peacock feathers into her house.
We lived near to a gypsy site as kids and used to have to hide from them if they came knocking to sell us lucky heather as she was convinced they would curse us.

Woe betide anyone who goes to my parents house and doesn't want a cup of tea, or a bit of cake, or biscuits or 'you'll have a sandwich won't you?" a bit like Mrs Doyle from Father Ted.

I also remember an example from a boyfriend's Mum in my teens after staying over at a boyfriends parents. His Mum was really upset he hadn't decanted the milk into a jug at the breakfast table and had just plonked the milk bottle on the table. This was "common" apparently .

I can remember my mam making me hide behind the sofa when a gypsy knocked at our door and she has a similar thing about new shoes on the table.

Heaviestdirtyestsoul
drinking out of chipped cups is a no no bacteria can get in your mouth. Apparently can cause tooth loss. Or so my mam said

Not my mum but DH’s also irons pants and Tea towels. I find this really strange and pointless.
My own mum has a normal accent which she uses day to day but when she’s on the phone to her best friend she reverts to a hilariously common accent and dumbs her vocabulary down. If she’s speaking to anyone of a higher class she’ll use a posh accent. It makes me laugh but I wouldn’t change her!

Lined the shelves with grease proof paper 😂😂 in the first lockdown I lined every shelf with sticky back plastic .

Will never forget the day I came home from school to find my mother scrubbing the sofa upholstery with two full loaves of bread, one in each hand.

It was to get the dust out of the grooves, apparently.

She'd make me drink a full glass of milk before school on days when I had a test or an exam–I'd go in feeling bloated and sick but calcium is good for the brain, didn't you know?

And then she was always catching animals - whether they needed catching or not There was often a hedgehog, or a squirrel, or a bird in the house, because she'd seen it and decided it needed to be rescued – even if it was perfectly healthy.

She once caught a hedgehog the way you catch a bug – with a big Tupperware over the top and then a piece of cardboard slid underneath...

Putting a couple of tea spoons of granulated sugar into Coca Cola to take the fizz out

Most old wives tales have some logic. Ironing kills bacteria.
walking under ladders, things drop on your head.

My DM irons everything. I iron nothing

Silliest thing she did? Tried to bring me up believing that men were superior - women should provide for their needs, men will always lead, they can do no wrong. Hmmmmmph.

I do this 😂😂😂 I’m in my 30’s🙈🙈

[quote ParkheadParadise]**@Puffalicious
St Anthony is for lost items.[/quote]
Ahhh so it is!

I take it from your name you also had a Catholic upbringing. We call Parkhead the Fatherland . When I lived in Dennistoun I could see its lights from my 3rd floor flat.

@wildchild554

I always remember a nice sunny day where a serious of unfortunate events occured, first of all a frog managed to wedge itself somehow under my mums foot in her sandle at which point he started panicking and flapping her arms around instead of just tipping it out or pulling her foot out. Then later our alsation was chasing a wasp, it stung my mum on the knee and then our dog accidentally bit her trying to get the wasp, not a serious bite though. Then later she managed to drop a hot pie on her foot burnt her foot, so had her foot in a bucket of water and was insisting on trying to sort of walk around the house cleaning instead sitting and resting with it in the bucket. The last one I had to take a picture as it was so funny what she was doing, still have it somewhere.

That's one of the funniest things I've read!

@Contemplatinglife omg you’re the only other person I’ve seen mention that ever! My wee granny did that to my red kola and cream soda (Barrs, none of that cheap American stuff that fits your guts though. A spoon or two of sugar in to take out the fizz so it didn’t upset my stomach.

I’ve kept several dentists in business over the years...

@50FootWave I throw pasta at the kitchen tiles, I heard it means it's done I'm 31, not handed down to me by my mum

@RJnomore1
I loved Barrs cream soda.

Me too, haven’t drunk it in years now.

@RedLlama

My Nan used to save the bags that the cereal was in to put sandwiches in when we went on picnics. The lunch box would be a walls ice cream tubs, the old blue ones with the white lids. She used to wash out any ice creams tubs or anything similar and use them for storage. When she died and we cleared the house I swear there were hundreds of the things. Cereal boxes used to be cut up and used to write the shopping list on

I've recently ( in an effort to recycle) started using washed out cereal bags for storing home made bread in freezer. Works well. Someone mentioned Kaolin poultice which I remember being used at home .It worked well to ' draw out' thorns or on a wound which looked like it was becoming infected. My mother's warning was to wash fruit before eating, sensible advice of course, but her reason was always, " because you don't know what some old man was doing before he picked that".

No washing on New Years Day or you will wash someone away.
No new shoes on the table, I tell hubby off for this.
I'm 34 and will always listen to my Nan

Yes to the sliced up Mars bars and repurposed knicker dusters here too!
Rearranging the configuration of the three piece suite (!) for summer/winter. Assume this comes from growing up with no heating and needing to sit closer to the fire in cold months?
Forcing us to wear underskirts with vests attached!

Did anyone else have double glazing in the 70s/80s that was basically a second set of sliding panes fitted an inch apart from the original windows? Much long winded faffing for mum on the designated cleaning day carefully removing them for cleaning both sets!

My mum seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with making all our clothes smell like pot pourri. Scented drawer liners, hemp bags full of lavender, air fresheners in the wardrobes, all the time. They'd appear by stealth as well, we'd just be going about our day, open the pyjama drawer and WOOF the smell of patchouli and cinnamon would come wafting into your face.

I remember one of my brothers having a MASSIVE tantrum when he was about 16 because mum had put new scented liners in his drawers and he was going on a date and everything he tried on stank of old lady

There was also a military style regime when it came to washing clothes. IIRC, the process would be -

• take clothes out of clothes basket, sort into piles exactly as the labels said to wash (often meaning just 2 or 3 things would go in the machine)
• once washed, put on spin setting to squeeze excess moisture out
• hang everything on the line to dry or on the clothes horse
• after line drying put some things in the dryer (but for some reason never jeans or towels so they'd be stiff as a board)
• put clothes on coat hangers to put in the airing cupboard for about a year
• iron the clothes

Took forever to get a shirt washed.

She's absolutely horrifed that all I do now when I wash clothes is separate darks/colours/whites, stick it on 30 degrees (or 40 if smelly/stained), put everything in the dryer and then put away in drawers. I iron once in a flood. This seriously displeases her - like I think she'd be less disappointed if I took up a cocaine addiction.

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows

I never put towels in the dryer either. They take way too long to dry. And I like the scratchy feeling personally.

My mum would never use a dryer in a million years, however.

"The lunch box would be a walls ice cream tubs, the old blue ones with the white lids. She used to wash out any ice creams tubs or anything similar and use them for storage."

Oh God, yes, we did that in my family too.

I still find it hard to throw out a box or a jam jar.