When I was growing up, my mother was not the most domesticated of creatures (when domesticity was considered a valuable commodity!!), and her culinary skills left a LOT to be desired.
However, now that I am in my middle-ages, I realise that for all the ‘stuff’ I have rejected, there is much that I have adopted from her and made my own.
My mum used to take all of the soap-bars out of the package, and put them amongst the linen in the cupboard to ‘season’. She claimed that it not only made the towels and sheets smell nice, it made the soap last longer (when it was finally used in the bath/shower) as it hardened. And, by golly, she was right!!
My mum used to shake all the clothes vigorously before she pegged them on the line, claiming that a good shake removed the need to ‘iron’ them in most cases. She was right again. It really works.
When I was a kid, my mum used to buy Australian Salmon (aka Bay Trout) and serve it doused in flour, sopped in beaten egg, then shallow fried 'til golden on both sides. It was always bloody delicious, especially when served with home-made chips and a side-serve of salad. Apparently though, this fish is on par with a piranah when it comes to saleability!! It is invariably the cheapest fish at the monger ($4.00 per kilo whole as opposed to $12 for flounder or $16 for schnapper which tastes like nuffink), so most people buy it (I’m guessing) to feed to their cat or summat.
But I still buy it, and do the flour and egg treatment, and sit back and burp fondly and loudly. It’s bonzer munger.
Thank you mum. You really screwed up when you tried to make Chop Suey and you invariably burnt the lamb-chops. The house was never really ‘clean’ but it did smell nice when we opened the linenpress. All the same, you’ve given me good stock to work with.
All cutlery must face the same direction in the cutlery drawer. I’m no Martha Stewart. My house is often messy, my stuff is usually disorganised and hardly anything else Mum tried to drill in stuck, but my cutlery always, ALWAYS faces the same direction in the drawer. That is, the cutlery that is actually washed, clean and put away.
A fun game for visitors: Turn a spoon around and put it back in the drawer the wrong way and watch me twitch!
All our cutlery also faces the same way, except for the teaspoons that get mangled every which-way in the ‘t-spoon’ section of the drawer. I’m also obsessive/compulsive about putting the cutlery INTO the dishwasher so that all the same units are in the same slot so they can be pulled out (by their handle/s) and bunged into the cutlery drawer with minimal fuss.
Me’ mum didn’t teach me that though. We never had a dishwasher when I was growing up…I’ve only got one in the last 6 months, and it’s a mixed blessing I must say.
She taught me that when another driver gets angry, it is much more entertaining to wave enthusiastically than it is to act angry back. Drives 'em nuts when I apparently mistake their anger for friendliness.
I’m still UNlearning a lot of things my mother taught me. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized I did not necessarily have to wash all the floors on my hands and knees. I am now the proud owner of a mop. (Yay!)
I can’t think of a lot of housekeeping tips I took away from my mom, although our house was always very neat and clean. Both of my parents are a little bit perfectionist about that sort of thing.
The most important things my mom taught me were more in relation to interpersonal skills and life philosophies: always be polite, especially to those you love the most; everything in moderation - don’t be dogmatic; children are people, too - treat them with respect; have fun and laugh often; be scrupulously honest (in relation to business transactions, finding stuff, etc.).
My mother taught me to always use the bathroom BEFORE I left the house.
Now, at 43, I still go to the bathroom before I leave the house, even if I just went 10 minutes ago, have absolutely no need to go, or am suffering from severe dehydration… just to check, I might have three drops to squeeze out, and god forbid you should have to go when your out on the road!
I always try to square up the corners of the bath towels before hanging them back on the rack. Because of my mom’s training, I don’t like seeing damp towels just kind of crumpled up and shoved onto the rack.
I also tie plastic shopping bags into a knot before putting them in our storage bag in the closet for reuse, so you can easily grab just one or two bags without them getting tangled up. I didn’t realize this was idiosyncratic until I was at my dad’s house (my folks are divorced) and was helping him put away groceries and he said “You tie the bags in knots just like your mom!” And he asked me not to do it because he preferred not to have to untie them afterwards. I realized it had never occurred to me that it might be preferable to some people not to tie knots in the bags.
I double-loop the teabag string through the mug handle when I make a cup of tea, just like Mom, so the teabag label won’t fall into the tea.
If only all the other housekeeping things she had tried to impress on me had stuck, my house would look a lot nicer than it usually does.
However, I’m sort of glad I never picked up her habit of arranging bills in her wallet so they are in numerical order and all the presidents are facing the same way.
My mother-in-law does the knotted bag thing, but her reasoning is so that the kids don’t get them and stick them over their heads, suffocating themselves. She is a total fanatic about it. Any time we go over to her house, the knotted bags are brought up at least once. She tells me all the time to make sure I’m knotting my bags. It’s really bizarre to me - she must have had some sort of traumatic experience with the bags at some point.
My Mom taught me to work hard every day - leasure time was wasted time. She still hangs all her laundry on the line, for example, rather than use the dryer she has had for 30 years.
I certainly see her point intellectually, I just never actually get around to DOING it.
She also taught me not to be a smartass - good point, still can’t quite get myself to actually impliment the advice.
I should note that, as she is now in here 80s, she is using the drying, going on cruises and is a bit of a smartass sometimes.
I’ve inhereted my mom’s complete and utter fear and loathing of public restrooms, which she inhereted from her mother. I even feel weird using the restroom in my office which is spotless and cleaned throughout the day.
the knotted plastic bag is a new one for me, but the silverware and the bills all facing the same way? that’s old hat.
my late mother made sure i knew how to:
set a full-on formal dining table with six place settings, three different stemwares and at least three different plates before i was halfway through grade school.
how to properly supervise a party from about the same age. her adage was,* ‘if you’re having a good time, you aren’t doing your job as hostess.’ * since then, i’ve learned to relax a bit, but i’m still ‘on duty’ pretty much for the run of the festivities.
how to multi-task household chores. now, i freely admit here that before she passed away and i had to run my own house, i was a total slacker. i knew how… but i couldn’t be bothered.
fastforward a couple of decades. i’ve become my mother. like vacuuming the carpet or wiping down the kitchen floor as dinner simmers on the stove while running a load of laundry.
one of my best girlfriends, bless her, still can’t figure out how i can do *‘all that’ * at the same time. :eek:
NEVER TOUCH A BIRD FEATHER – THEY CARRY DISEASE!!!
Years later I see a picture of her with a big feather stuck in her hair, a feather she had clearly picked up on a hike. “Well, I told you when you were a kid; as an adult anyone can make their own decision.” Too late, it’s ingrained.
Mom’s not very domestic but Dad taught me a very neat packing trick - roll your clothes rather than folding them. You can fit a lot more in a suitcase and they don’t get as wrinkled. People are amazed at the amount of clothing I can fit into a suitcase.
It was ingrained in me at a very young age that it’s better to be a half hour early than one minute late. Anytime I have a job interview or doctor appointment, I’m always there about 10 minutes early. I get to work almost 20 minutes early every day. If there’s a traffic accident that slows me down and I get to work at exactly 8:00, I get anxious.
My dad left me with more. He’s been dead for about 3 years and last summer I had to park on my parents’ lawn when she had a party and I told her I was afraid to park there, as if dad would yell at me from the grave.
Another one of dad’s things was not cutting a pat of butter from the stick crooked. It had to be cut straight up and down or he’d flip. Now, if I see someone has cut our butter crooked, I have to fix it. He REALLY hated it when I’d take the scrape butter from the top when it was still too hard to cut into.
Until I had a child, I used to sleep until 10:00 am on weekends. Now, if I sleep past 7:00 am, I feel like I’m sleeping the day away. Thanks dad.
The butter thing really made me laugh, both my parents were fanatical about “messing up the butter” when I was a kid. Now I still will take a stick of butter from the fridge and put it in the microwave to soften it up…sometimes melting it or getting it too soft. Every time I do, I hear my dad’s voice, “DAMMIT WHO DID THIS TO THE BUTTER???”
What is it with butter!? Same here, except the wife does it to me now. And we always have pounds and pounds for baking, so if she is measuring she is gonna take a fresh stick anyway!
At first look at the title I thought it said, “suck” instead of “stuck” and the first thing that popped in my head was cooking because even though she taught me things she couldn’t cook. She couldn’t get the timing of different things right and something always ended up burnt or under-cooked. I eventually figured it out though.
She taught me how to do all the household chores. Early on she started making my brother and I do our own ironing and laundry and stuff.
I have forgotten all the laundry stuff and I just throw everything in together, but the ironing thing has impressed a girlfriend or two.
