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

lifted something heavy about 6 weeks after giving birth to me, ended up in traction in hospital (did her back in).

Once when we were kids she had a cleaning frenzy - spotted a large black spider behind the washing machine - didn't touch it or see if it moved - apparently for next 30 minutes she was putting a glass over it and cardboard under it until she realised it was plastic - one of our toys?!

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 .

@unmarkedbythat. I'm glad you can
laugh about it!! You're lucky to get on with your brother 😊

My mother used to iron absolutely everything and criticised me for not doing so. When I said I didn't need to iron the duvet cover she said that I had to in case the doctor had to call round! I can just imagine him broadcasting it to our whole town that Rachael at Number 25 had a creased duvet cover

She tried using fitted bed sheets but couldn't get on with them as they were "Too hard to put on" - she also tried to iron those too.

My mother was horrified that my brother threw away the kitchen bin liner with the rubbish, as she would use one several times.

She also washed clingfilm - although it never 'clinged' again after it was washed. It was so embarrassing when friends came round and saw clingfilm pegged out on the washing line!

Dad was a mechanic then engineer and get covered in grease and car muck. When mum washed his filthy coverals, she used to iron them!!!

Cold rice salad which included glace cherries, tinnned pineapple, peppers and various other odd ingrediants- very 1970's

My nan (now 100) used to tell us not to eat apple pips, because a tree would grow in our stomaches and cause intestinal issues!

Don't swallow cherry pips because they can get trapped in your appendix and cause appendicitis!

Also, mum and nan both sewed up the chicken!

Every Xmas she would forget the bread sauce was in the oven, and would remember it only while we were eating pud & mince pies. 😊

Apple pip warnings -yep

My mum was another who had a ridiculous laundry routine that involved ironing everything (apart from socks and bras), then putting it all in the airing cupboard for two days, before putting it away in drawers!

She always cleans hard to reach places, like behind the washing machine, before going away. Apparently this is because if anything happened to her, she would not want people to think she was dirty!

My mum was a disinterested cook so we got used to some surprises, the best being on Christmas Day when she decided to cook the pudding in the oven. Dad got the drill out and we shared a handful of sultanas between the five of us

I'm laughing, but as a pp said, a lot of this is generational -- like the obsession with ironing everything and putting things for lengthy periods in airing cupboards before they could be worn is from the days before central heating and tumbledriers, so it was impossible to get everything properly dry in wet weather, so the ironing was still part of the drying process, as was finishing it off to 'get the last bit of damp out of it', before you could wear it safely!

And the having nicely ironed bedclothes 'for the doctor' is from a day of ingrained forelock tugging to your betters, the doctor being the only one who was likely to come inside your house. I remember my dying grandmother, in considerable pain, still insisting on changing her nightdress and having the sheets changed before the doctor arrived. This was the woman who, when widowed and living on thin air, half-starved her own small children so that they had one set of 'decent' clothes for church on Sundays, and made them continue to wear shoes far too small for them for months, because they couldn't go barefoot 'like the tinkers'.

Back in the 50s when I was a child, my DM used to do ten things at once (typical Taurean) and in the kitchen she put a plug in the socket that took 3 or four other plugs. She had one plug for the iron and one for her sewing machine, one for the washing machine etc. Trying to remove one of the plugs proved difficult so she decided to pull out the original plug. It was stiff so she got the tin opener to prise it out of the socket. It was all metal and as she dug it in, was electrocuted and thrown to the floor. She luckily came to no major harm, unlike the top of the tin opener.

No liquid soap for many years, in fact I think only in the last 5 or so and my mum is in her eighties. As it reminded my mum of working in a hospital.

No toasters, the ones we had never used and indeed I was given the one I have.

My mum is very capable in the kitchen but regards things like slicing the Sunday roast or opening a bottle of wine as a “man’s job”so always asks my dad to do the honours

Sliced olive sandwiches on cheap Kingsmill bread (quite forward thinking for early 1990s)

A pice of kitchen roll neatly placed at the bottom of the biscuit tin.

My mil insisted that you couldn’t do any laundry on New Year’s Day as you will wash your husband away.
My dh is still here.
She also wouldn’t have ivy in the house at Christmas as it was bad luck.

My gran in the ‘70’s would make us milky coffee and always sing out
café au layee as she brought it to the table.

My mum had a plastic bag hanging up in the garage into which she would put items of old clothing to be cut up and used as dusters. If I couldn't find a T-shirt I was wanting to wear, I would look in the bag and it would usually be there.

What I find strange is that my mum has developed some of these since my brother and I left home, and more so since she retired. She now irons everything, whereas I'm pretty sure when we were at school we had those shirts that claim not to need ironing, and that we were just instructed to 'give them a shake' - but in more recent times she told me off once for not ironing a pair of dungarees for a one year old! She's also become particular/obsessive about many small details of the house, such as the organisation of Tupperware or arrangement of magazines on the coffee table; again, the house was in comfortable chaos in my childhood. I always thought these things were generational and you did them your whole life or never - I'm not sure if she always thought she should but didn't have the time when we were kids and her and dad both worked, or if she's now developed this sort of thing to fill her time?

My fav as a child was that we were not allowed to watch ITV or "commercial television". So no Magpie.
Even funnier, she worked full time but we never switched over.
Even funnier, she is now 80 And spends her days surfing sky tv.
She denies the whole thing.

@TwoLeftSocksWithHoles

My mother was horrified that my brother threw away the kitchen bin liner with the rubbish, as she would use one several times.

She also washed clingfilm - although it never 'clinged' again after it was washed. It was so embarrassing when friends came round and saw clingfilm pegged out on the washing line!

That’s brilliant

@SpiderinaWingMirror

My fav as a child was that we were not allowed to watch ITV or "commercial television". So no Magpie. Even funnier, she worked full time but we never switched over. Even funnier, she is now 80 And spends her days surfing sky tv. She denies the whole thing.

I thought this was just us! ITV was common we were only allowed to watch BBC as children. Also my mother made solid rice pudding every Sunday and told us it was just like ice cream....

TwoLeftSicksWithHoles if we were all like your mum our oceans wouldn’t be full of plastic. There is reason in some of this madness.

TwoLeftSocksWithHoles

My mum used to lean out of the window and shout, “Cooeee!” at neighbours. I was so embarrassed.