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

*flavours

My mum used to iron everything but I think it was just an excuse to watch telly in the afternoon as she'd do her ironing sat down in front of it.

@RainySaturday
I can only do ironing if theres something (usually quite bland/mindless) on tv. This morning, homes under the hammer or escape to the country are fine as you dont really need to concentrate!

Oh just thought of something else

My mum use to put butter in my ready brek

Not my mum but my dad starting cooking this gopping casserole type dish with frankfurters in it. I can taste it in my mouth thinking about it and this was in the late 80's. I suspect it has a similar origin as the raisin curry thing....

God it was so awful.

Long T shirts only. " you'll catch a chill on your kidneys"
Not allowed to watch Eastenders. Common.
Everything has to be aired before being worn or the world would end 😂

My mum is in her 90s but was never religious or superstitious but she does have her funny ways, mostly regarding housework. She has summer curtains that are taken down in september, washed and pressed and put away and replaced with winter curtains. She is horrified that I have the same curtains up for years and would never consider washing them, too much of a faff. She also ironed everything, including underwear. Crazy.

The curry recipe I remember was on a recipe card that came from the milkman - I think lots of housewives collected them in the 1970s

I also remember my DM saving butter wrappers and plastic food bags that she washed and kept in a drawer with the fiddly paper covered wire ties and folded bits of used and washed foil.

Unplugging appliances including the TV is still done every night in her house and all internal doors have to be closed in case there is a fire. As teenagers though we commonly took plugs off hairdryers and curling tongs so we could jam the all the wires into the single socket at the same time as the record player so we could listen to music while doing our hair - much greater risk than so many of the other things listed!

We were also not really allowed to watch ITV as it was considered common, as was eating in the street, or shouting in public. No branded goods on the table, everything had to be decanted.

We had to wear slips under dresses and skirts and were chastised if we were not wearing tights. Bra straps shouldn't be seen. Going out with wet hair was considered life-threatening (these days I don't even own a hairdryer).

We were only allowed sweets on Saturdays. Always roast on a Sunday at 1pm sharp but on Sunday's we were allowed a small glass of wine with our meal from the age of around 5 years old!

Unlike others on her who were warned about cold surfaces, we were told don't sit on radiators, they give you piles - I now worry whether I am going to get piles from the heated seats in my car!

Always had to wait an hour after eating before swimming else we would get cramp and drown. I tell my own children this although now I am questioning if it is true.

Mine was definitely odd.

She had a clock on the wall in the kitchen which someone had brought back from a holiday. It was a ceramic tile with a Dutch windmill design. Nothing wrong with that. But it was on the wall, still in the plastic 'box' it came in. To 'keep it clean', apparently.

She put sheets of newspaper on top of the kitchen worktops. Which were cream. Again, to 'keep them clean'. Clean apart from covered in newsprint....

Her finest hour was when she rang me and said that her 'carbon myoxide'(!) alarm in the living room kept going off at teatime (5pm). Never any other time. So l got her handyman, who had fitted it, to come out and check it.
He checked the meter, took the gas fire to bits, couldn't find anything wrong with either. So, being a decent man, he said he'd pay half towards a new one. It was a mains one, too, not a battery operated one. So he got a new one and fitted it free or charge.
She then said that one was 'going off' as well. At the same time, every day. Without fail. Both he and l were bemused.

Until..... she rang me and said that when she was dusting, she'd knocked a small travel alarm clock off the coffee table which just happened to be underneath where the carbon monoxide meter was situated.
And the alarm on the (old analogue) clock happened to be set for 5 o'clock. Which was what the 'alarm' had been. Presumably it had been going off at 5am as well, but of course she didn't hear it because she was upstairs in bed then. She didn't realise the alarm was set on it (God knows how long it had been, she'd never been up at 5am in her life) she just wound it up every couple of days.
I never dared tell the poor man.

Deadringer My mam and my aunties did the 'summer and winter' curtains thing!
Years ago when swags and tails were all the rage, my cousin spent an absolute fortune on curtains for her bay window. She said "I hope my mother never asks how l wash them, because l don''t. They get a run over with the hoover attachment when l do a blitz.'

And like PP, everything was unplugged at bedtime. Everything. I don't know if she still did that once we had video recorders. I doubt it, because she had no idea how to set the clock.
And if there was a thunderstorm. The tv aerial was taken out of the wall socket as well.

PussGirl My husband does the 'soup cocktail' thing! Oxtail and tomato is a particular favourite.

PudMyBoy My mam and her sister used to put their curtains up with the 'pattern' on the side facing the street! Even as a child l thought that was strange.

Left to live in a car with another man

ChocolateSantaisthebestkind My best friend had two brothers, and they always stood up when someone came into the room (or the house). They even did it when her dad came in from work. I couldn't believe it that they did that for their own dad.
Her family were Mormon, the loveliest people, she and her brothers had (still have) the most beautiful manners.

When l was planning on moving out from my parents' house, and into my own place, l bought a microwave oven. My mother wouldn't have it in the kitchen. I had to keep it in my bedroom.
A few years later, when my husband and l upgraded to a combination oven, we gave my parents my old microwave.
The next time we visited, there was no sign of it. My husband found it in the conservatory (unplugged) with a blanket lashed round it with bungee ropes. Soon after that they gave it to a neighbour, having never used it.

We didn't have central heating just a fireplace in the living room DM would heat our pants & tights against the fire to warm our bums school on the walk to school.

She was very superstitious too, we were terrified of the banshee as DC.

RaraRachel My mother never had an automatic washing machine. Because she "didn't understand" them.
That was her usual excuse for anything she didn't want to have or do.
My remarks about not understanding the working of the internal combustion engine not stopping me driving fell on stony ground.

So many of these I both grew up with and now do

Ice cream tubs for leftover food storage/picnics
Old clothes for dusting
Vests always
Tights - bare legs BAD I do not follow this

So many more, I do have a bunch of my granny’s old cook books upstairs somewhere so I’m totally going to flick through them to find the curry

My mother made, what she thought was a very chic 70s recipe - Chicken Supreme. It consisted of cooked chicken cut into pieces, with white sauce and rice. She thought it was so adventurous and modern. We hated it as it was bland beyond belief.

She would never have anything from a microwave because "She'd heard that it gave you cancer". She liked a nice warm scone, but if offered one on a rare visit to a cafe, she would refuse and then say in rather too loud a voice, "It'll be microwaved - I've heard about those"

@sashh

My mother always called a corkscrew a screwdriver. We just got used to it.

N ITV children's shows, but she watched Coronation St. As an adult in my 50s if I visited she would watch and try to update me with the storyline, I have never watched it, I only knew some characters from when I was living at home.

She always did supermarket shopping on a Saturday, when we were little it made sense, she couldn't drive and my dad worked long hours.

I was trained from a young age to pack the white wine in with the frozen veg so it was chilled by the time we got home.

A very wise women.

@RaraRachael do you not have a fat pot?

RareRachel - I LOVE chicken supreme and rice! I have a very dodgy tum and cannot eat anything spicy or onions or herbs or chinese or indian. My very favourite comfort dish is creamy chicken with rice.

This is really interesting, I've just read the whole thread and all my generations seem to be out of sync!

I was talking to my eighty-seven year-old mother last week and she was expressing incredulity that her grandmother had Winter and Summer curtains, did all of her laundry in one day per week in a copper with a mangle, kept a Best Parlour into which only a select few were ever allowed..

Given that my mother's mother was born in 1908, (my mother's grandma must have been at least twenty years before), it was really interesting to hear all this about your own mothers and grandparents carrying on all these traditions.

My mum says she remembers her own mother saying she wasn't having any truck with all that curtain stuff and the Front Room was to be used for sensible purposes whilst still being kept nice. it was used for Sunday play, piano practice and homework when tests or exams were looming.

It's just so interesting that you are reporting all these things and I thought they were from way more generations ago!

My mother made, what she thought was a very chic 70s recipe - Chicken Supreme. It consisted of cooked chicken cut into pieces, with white sauce and rice. She thought it was so adventurous and modern. We hated it as it was bland beyond belief.

I used to like that....but I liked really bland food as a kid. I'm not sure if I would like it now.
And it was the law that if you were ill she had to pop down to the corner shop to get some (orange, fizzy) lucozade and recovery meals were tomato soup and a frozen fillet of white fish (obviously cooked!!)

My mum thought if you touched a lightbulb that was switched on, you'd die instantly from electrocution. I don't mean getting hurt from touching a lightbulb that had been switched on for a while and was hot.

Our hallway/staircase light had two switches to impossible to tell from looking at the switch whether it was switched on or off. So whenever she had to change that lightbulb, someone had to be stationed with their hand on the switch ready to switch it off should she put the bulb into the socket and the light immediately came on.