Old Style Skills

RAS

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

Sadly we are not allowed to do that sort of thing anymore, nor put in double glazing ourselves and we are lucky that they still allow us to change a socket and light fitting without the council stazi getting involved

Not entirely true - you have to be a competent person and the defination of that is sometimes taken to mean Gas Safe or whatever. It is not but it is sensible to get someone qualified to check work after it is done.

X and I wired the whole house using a book aimed at people squatting or in short life properties and I did my current one when I moved in. I got someone professional to double check the wiring before it was connected to the mains. It was not only safe but to a higher standard than he had seen in professionally wired properties, not least because I did not try to cut corners. I also installed sections of cable for future expansion rather than trying to save a few pence reducing the amount of cable used.

However, as a result of doing this I learned how easy it is for someone to wire a circuit incorrectly and sadly a lot of house fires involved recent incorrect wiring modifications.

One of the problems however is that I could dismantle and reconstruct a convector heater as a teenager because the essential components were quite simple and relatively standard across the sector. Nowadays not only do the model would have been rendered obsolete years previously but the components would no longer be available, so the repair would be impossible.

VJsmum

I have been without my dishwasher for 3 weeks.

It's back today.

I'm celebrating.

:T:T:T

:rotfl:

Oh and i can knit, sew, garden (ish), clean - if i have to, cook from scratch, make jam, chutney, chicken stock and cakes. My DD can cook, and iron (for a fiver :cool:) and DS is just starting to learn these things.

Most of these things I do by choice rather than necessity because i like decent food and enjoy things like knitting. I do know what it is like to have no money and don't want to go back there, but if it came to it, i could cope. My mum taught me how to do the basics in cooking, a University friend taught me spag bol, chilli, etc (I taught her to roast, make pastry, make shepherds pie). Delia taught me the fancier stuff.

I think the most important thing is the willingness to learn.

valk_scot

CH27 wrote: »

That is so true!
I'm 43 & when we bought our house almost 20yrs ago interest rates were high.
We had a second hand cooker, fridge, washer & sofa.
We made do & replaced stuff as we went along. We didn't get into debt it.
Now people seem to want to move from their parent's home into an equivelant house without realising the sacrifices made over the years to have that home & it's contents.

Yeah...we bought our first house together in 1988 when interest rates were 16% (!!!) and we had to put down a 20% deposit, plus all costs. I remember they would only loan us 2.5 x our lead salary plus 1x the secondary salary and I also remember the huge fight we had to put up to have my salary recognised as the lead salary, given that I was earning quite a bit more than my OH at the time. (He'd changed career track.) We furnished the place with odds and ends from our parents' houses too, lived on beans and vegetable curries, biked everywhere because we couldn't afford to run a car or even the bus fares and bought our clothes from jumble sales, except for work clothes. Hubby's dad used to buy him a new suit every year as a combined birthday/Christmas present, my mum used to buy me boots for Christmas. We never went out at all and holidays were spent cycle-camping. Oh, and we didn't switch on our central heating for three years, and it was a drafty old flat, belive me!

I think that was when I really got into Old Style actually, and even though times did get better, I never really got out of it.

charlies-aunt

Growing up in the country in the 1960's was very good for learning OS skills. My dear old Mum and Dad were both really hands-on and practical - partly from natural inclination and partly because we lived in nowhereville. Our tiny village was miles from anywhere and very few families had cars . . . indeed we were considered a being well off as Dad had a motorbke and sidecar

It was a natural thing that everyone mucked in together and shared their skills that they had with neighbours - my dad could do most things - sweep chimneys, make tools, garden like an expert as well as being able to cook, sew, knit, patch and darn... the only thing he couldn't or wouldn't do was kill non laying chickens for the pot - the neighbour did it in payment for having his chimney swept.

Children were also expected and keen to learn handed down housekeeping skills - I can still pluck, draw and dress any kind of game, chop sticks, saw logs, hang wallpaper, sweep a chimney, bake, bottle fruit, make HM jam and wine, pickle, plait onions, make rosehip syrup, elderberry & clove cough mixture, gather and make bundles of sticks for fire lighting (bavins), make evergreen and willow wreaths for Christmas, knit, sew, patch, darn, make basic garments from paper patterns, do basic brickwork and dry stone walling, cook just about everything from scratch Hard work and long days but happy times

Other skills - preserving eggs in isinglass, salting beans, break up salt and sugar loaves with a heavy rolling pin, rendering down fat, breaking big chunks of coal into useable sized pieces, making a straw and earth "pie" to store potatoes, hand grating suet - I guess that these will be lost to the next generation.

My childhood hoidays were spent helping my parents with farm work - hand hoeing sugar beet/swede - and potato picking was still being done by hand at that time - following the plough with a large metal mesh basket in the crook of your arm, scratting about in the churned up earth for spuds, collecting them in the basket until it was full then tipping the baskets into a sack - it was backbreaking stuff but tattie-picking gangs earned a high wage and most farmers would let them back on to the field when it was finished to glean any that had been missed for their own use so it was a popular job By the early 70's the farmers had brought in potato picking machines which revolutionised the work


Must stop reminicsing - I'm starting to feel ancient! :rotfl:

Patchwork_Quilt

My Mum and Grandmas were all very good at crafty things and make do and mend. I think these things go in by osmosis as I wasn't taught all of them but I knew they were possible and that ordinary women could do them.

That's the difference - confidence and having to apply yourself if necessary. I'm sure all our youngsters will be able to do it if they have to.

Steel_2

I don't remember being specifically being sat down and taught old style skills by my parents. I just seem to absorb stuff from all over the place. Both my parents are dismissive of my old style skills as they view it as poverty - they had to do it when they were younger because they were poor. I see it as freedom.

I remember my paternal grandmother trying and failing to teach me to crochet. I watched her cook but never really took part. My mother knitted and I did ok at the very basic stitches. She did very basic sewing - hems, buttons, waistbands, I watched but never really tried my hand at it. She did basic cooking 'for her family' she termed it, but clearly took no pleasure from it - just like her mother took no pleasure. My father used to get me to help him decorate and help out around the place - I was the son that he never had.

When I left home and lived alone I learnt more on my own, but I don't think my real education began until I was in my early 30s.

I can cook instinctively and for pleasure now - pinch of this, handful of that, just like my paternal grandmother did so I definitely got something from her. I do jams and chutneys, grow a bit of fruit and veg, bottle and preserve. Can tackle pheasants, fish and rabbits when they cross my path. Dab hand at baking and pastry. During really lean financial times learnt to cook tasty meals from almost nothing. About to embark on the world of brewing shortly to help cut down the weekly bill for our cider consumption.:D

I can still knit basic stitches and patterns and am teaching myself cable at the moment. I can now crochet and patchwork. I can do all basic sewing and alterations of clothes. I can darn although it's not a strong point, but enough to patch small holes in woollens and socks to make them last longer. Can also make curtains, cushion covers, quilts, recover chairs when they got holes in them. I do basic shoe repairs.

I taught myself to change plugs, rewire lamps. I can do basic repairs on some electronics that involve soldering. Managed to fix my own Dyson when it stopped working. Can add new bits to the inside of my computer if I need to. Can paint and decorate and do basic wall repairs. Also repair brickwork pointing and some basic carpentry. I like restoring old furniture.

Hubby can plaster, tile, do electrics and plumbing, lay bricks, paint and decorate, electronics, chop wood. He's an ex-mechanic so we fix all of our own cars and he can restore classic cars from nothing but a bare chassis. He can also mould and repair fibreglass. Sweeps our chimney. Fitted our kitchen. Fitted our conservatory. He'll turn his hand to anything and so will I.

As VJsmum said, it's a willingness to learn.

salome

Hi
I married in 1977. We couldn't get a mortgage as our wages were too low, neither did we qualify for a council house because there would have been room for my husband and I to live in either of our parents houses, something none of us desired. I shall be eternally grateful to my husbands parents for the help they gave, and getting us set up in our own home, and my parents for help in decorating it, as the house was too bad to be mortgaged, and needed a lot of tender loving care.
All our furniture was 2nd hand, except our bed, which was bought from a bargain place at a ridiculous price. I didn't have a washing machine for 6mths, and used to take our washing to my mums to do once a week. Neither of us could drive then, so we took it in a shopping trolley, and bags between us.
I fell pregnant with the 1st 4wks of being married, and had to give up work due to bad sickness, so we were a one wage family quite quickly. That's when my love affair with knitting began :-) I could crochet, but there were no decent baby patterns about at that time for crochet, so I taught myself to knit. One of the best presents I ever had was one Christmas, my gran bought me a pack of baby wool, a pattern and some needles :-) I could knit by then, and I spent that Xmas day, knitting up the pattern, and loved using the jumper for my daughter, and the many that followed after :-)
I learnt to cook mostly when we got married. It was either that or starve lol. I did do cookery at school, but hated it. Loved it when I had my own kitchen though, and enjoy it still now. I can sew, but only basic, and don't do it a lot. I did make my to eldest two's clothes though when they were small.
When my eldest was born, she was dressed mainly in the clothes my SIL gave me that my neice had. Her pram and cot were 2nd hand, and when beds were needed, the bunk beds my husband and his brother had were put into use again, and haven't long been retired to the recycle centre lol, they did a good many years of service.
We could only afford a black and white telly to rent for the 1st couple of years, felt we'd really made the grade when we could afford a little more to rent a colour one. No question of being able to afford to buy.
We didn't have a freezer until we'd been married about 3yrs. Nearest freezer shop was in our town centre, we didn't drive, and we lived a fair distance, and up lots of hills away, but we'd either walk in, depending, taking a shopping trolley, and OH would have a haversack on his back of food. Plus shopping bags (our own, bags were not free then) we also had a baby and toddler in tow as well :-)
We never felt without though, and had great fun. We would have our neighbours in one Saturday night, and we'd go round theirs the next week, and we'd do up a little buffet spread. Us wives would enjoy seeing what new and wonderful thing we could find to amaze each other each time it was our turn to cook :-) We'd sit and watch telly together or have involved discussions lol.
Times are what you make them really. We can all point fingers at the government, or whoever we want to blame, but I've seen people in the most dire need, but be the happiest people ever, because they make the most of what they have, and enjoy it :-)

x

euronorris

Steel wrote: »

As VJsmum said, it's a willingness to learn.

Sooooo true! My Dad was never that keen on teaching me DIY as he didn't want us kids messing it up. But.....I was also sooo interested in DIY, that I was relentless in asking him until he caved (hey, I was the girl who asked for a toolkit for her 10th Birthday). So am quite confident in most things now.

I think it can be difficult for parents though sometimes, to let the kids try stuff out like that.

Lizling

It looks as if I was quite lucky in terms of what OS skills I learnt at school. I was at school from the mid 80s to late 90s, so maybe it was just before the useful things got taken out.

From primary school I learnt basic hand sewing. I remember making glove puppets and loving it We learnt running stitch, back stitch, cross-stitching and hemming. We cooked scones and flapjacks (or rather helped the teacher cook them, I think!) We did pottery and then painted and varnished what we made. None of it was really very good of course, but I think I’ve still got a pencil box somewhere. We went cross-country running in the woods, with frequent stops for the headmaster to tell us about the trees and fungi and what they were called and how they could be used. Looking back on it, I think he mainly needed to catch his breath, but still it was great!

In secondary, we learnt how to wire and plug and change a fuse in first year science. We learnt basic cookery skills like the best way to chop an onion and when to use a serrated knife in home ec, and were then left pretty much to our own devices to cook things we chose ourselves (e.g. cook a healthy main meal, bake a dessert, or prepare something you could take on a picnic). In textiles, I remember using a sewing machine to make cushion covers, but I’m really bad with a sewing machine and didn’t choose that again as my technology option. Both cooking and sewing were compulsory for us, but only for a few months each.

I still learnt more from my parents or on my own as an adult than school, but credit to schools where it’s due!

euronorris

I think it varies depending on the area Liz, as I was in school at the same time as you and I wasn't taught the same things.