It has got me thinking about all the things we rely on nowadays that when I was a child we just didn't have, but our mothers got on with the day by hand.
A refrigerator in the home, unheard of, we have a meat safe a box with a wire mesh door and if you were lucky a larder with a marble slab
A washing machine, mum used to wash everything in the sink using a wash board,
Oh yes and a dolly blue was added to the rinse water to whiten the linen
Makes me realise how lucky I am to have all these labour saving devises
Just one more thing coming back to having to wash up by hand, Mum used washing soda, not the easy washing up liquid we have today, but it softened the water and removed grease just as easily
Oh and thanks to the internet (internet what the heck is that, my mother would have said) I was able to google for all those pictures of the thinks my mother would have recognised.
2 comments:
You're right Mary - we have a lot of labour saving devices - but we also have busier lives because of them!
Every time we have a power cut I am reminded that we have become over-reliant on electricity ... not just for the lights, cooking, heating, but also for access (via the PC & the internet) for our bank statements, telephone bills, travel arrangements, shopping receipts ...
Oh and I still use washing soda to do my sinks and drains every month or so as well as newspaper for my windows!
Yes, we were reminded of how lucky we are a couple of times just recently - my mum's dishwasher broke down in December, and we had to wait a while for the new one because of snowy weather. She got such sore hands washing up by hand for a week (she has arthritis and the dishwasher is a life-saver for her!). Poor mum... But now she has a nice new one - yay!
Then, we had a big power cut one afternoon/evening, that went on from 3pm to 8pm. We couldn't cook any tea - all-electric kitchen and no open fire any more - luckily the town wasn't affected, so we phoned for a take-away (not so unlucky now...). We actually enjoyed our evening, playing board games together by candle-light. It was so much fun we decided to do it regularly.
I remember having no automatic washing machine, just a single wash-tub and a seperate spin-dryer. My friend's mum had no bathroom; the loo was a tiny cold room just off the kitchen and the bath was actually In her kitchen, with a board on top - she used it as a shelf the rest of the time. Her kitchen had the bath, a stone sink with wooden drainer, a geyser for hot water, an electric cooker and a "copper" to heat water for the bath. Am I lucky - Certainly I am!!
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