Nice People 12: Nice in Nice

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

... there was no help with childcare in the form of benefits at all and childcare was a lot cheaper than it is now....

I heard some 'report' some months back that childcare costs have risen because of benefits being available to pay for it. The cost rose to match the money available.

lostinrates

silvercar wrote: »

Without wanting to sound older than I am, I went back to work in 1995, there was no help with childcare in the form of benefits at all and childcare was a lot cheaper than it is now. There were a lot less nurseries and a lot less childminders. Most childminders were mums of young kids who didn't want to leave their own and were happy to have some extra money themselves. There was very little provision for wrap around care, little ones either went to nurseries with restricted hours or childminders. Nowadays there seems to be nurseries offering varied hours and nannies and childminders providing before and after school/ nursery care. It was also very difficult to find high level part time work.

*feeling old*

My mother was a single parent in a foreign country in the sixties, with a child who needed operations due to the injury they'd had as an infant. Child care was sometimes the other parent, when about, neighbours, other mothers. With me childcare was school, activities, and ' just keep out of trouble, ok? ' When I was younger they were au pairs, some of whom I loved. Sometimes I did keep out of trouble. I learnt the hard way other times. I think children now gain and lose. Safety is undoubtedly better. But, I loved my freedom so much. I achieved so much with it. Kids nowadays aren't deemed responsible enough to walk dogs alone or anything.

lostinrates

Oh dear, just been looking at the chicks. Not sure about karl lagerfeld yet, boy still looks likely, but coco Chanel suddenly looks like a boy. I love its colouring too, so will be gutted, its the nicest in both clutches. .

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

No, I didn't have to cash in the ISAs in the end. Just scraped through with what was in bank accounts. So I have money.

Ah, that makes a difference then.

silvercar wrote: »

Without wanting to sound older than I am, I went back to work in 1995, there was no help with childcare in the form of benefits at all and childcare was a lot cheaper than it is now. There were a lot less nurseries and a lot less childminders. Most childminders were mums of young kids who didn't want to leave their own and were happy to have some extra money themselves. There was very little provision for wrap around care, little ones either went to nurseries with restricted hours or childminders. Nowadays there seems to be nurseries offering varied hours and nannies and childminders providing before and after school/ nursery care. It was also very difficult to find high level part time work.

*feeling old*

Those sorts of childminders have been pushed out of the market by all the requirements to be registered with Ofsted and complying with thousands of regulations about "early years curriculum" etc. That's a big reason why childcare has got so expensive.

When I was a kid my mum worked just mornings, and my dad was able to flex his hours and not go to work until I'd left for school in the morning.

The girl down the road whose mother was a full time doctor had a nanny. There were au pairs and so on, but mostly, mothers just stayed at home until children were old enough to go to school. None of my friends had mothers who worked full time, and none of them had mothers who worked at all until their youngest kid was at school. And, of course, the vast majority of kids had two parents still living together. It was a different world from now.

lostinrates wrote: »

My mother was a single parent in a foreign country in the sixties, with a child who needed operations due to the injury they'd had as an infant. Child care was sometimes the other parent, when about, neighbours, other mothers. With me childcare was school, activities, and ' just keep out of trouble, ok? ' When I was younger they were au pairs, some of whom I loved. Sometimes I did keep out of trouble. I learnt the hard way other times. I think children now gain and lose. Safety is undoubtedly better. But, I loved my freedom so much. I achieved so much with it. Kids nowadays aren't deemed responsible enough to walk dogs alone or anything.

Neighbours, other mothers ... it presupposes a society in which there are lots of women at home with their own children who can keep an eye on an extra child some of the time. Now that most mothers work, all the neighbours and other mothers are out at their own jobs and not available to look after somebody else's child. I've noticed it as mine have got older. When they were little, I had loads of friends with kids the same age who were at home and could look after mine for a short while if necessary. As our kids have got older, we've all gone back to work, so now if I need somebody to look after DD when she's off sick from school, for example, there just isn't anyone I can ask.

Older siblings are all very well for younger children in a family, but what do you do with your first child while they're still little? And even if you apply 1970s standards of the level of supervision children ought to have, you still can't leave a 4 year old all day with instructions to keep itself out of trouble, let alone a 2 year old.

hjd

lostinrates wrote: »

If you were a clarisonic face brush who had been missing for a few weeks, where would you be hiding? Not in the bathroom, not under the bed. The places it goes are bathroom and bedroom......so.....kinda run out of ideas.

I'm worried it might have dropped down a hole in the floor.

In with the laundry?
Or could one of the dogs have got it and hidden it in a dog-special hideyhole?

silvercar

PasturesNew wrote: »

When mum was in Hospital for 6 weeks, I had to change school and was taken to nan's every day; dropped off early morning, picked up at tea-time. I went to a different school and my younger sibling spent the day with nan.

Nowadays, no-one would be allowed to change schools for a few weeks!

silvercar

PasturesNew wrote: »

I think I've cracked the shower/water issue.... tested several methods and loosely observed the results. I think I'm onto something. I now need to perfect the method... but it's "dangerous". Not actual danger, but it involves bleach, so hard to know how to do it/reach and not get a soaking.



I'll work on it.

You can buy Mr muscle daily shower cleaner. Spray it on, leave overnight and wash off. No elbow grease required.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

But does it work when you've not been using anything? That always sounds like something you have to use once you've got it spotless to start with. To keep it like that, not make it like that.

One of the problems with cleaning an enclosure in a hard water area is .... you have to use the offending water to rinse down the cleaning, taking you back a step. So that then means you need to rub it down/dry it immediately too .... and you can't do that with J-cloths as they're impregnated with stuff.... so you need some (old) rag.... except I've not got old rags as I've moved about too much to have retained that type of thing.... although I have recently collected my first "dry rag" which was some loose/baggy leggings where the 4rse/leg finally fell out of them spectacularly.

I like microfibre clothes or terry nappies for that sort of job.


I've been attacking limscale today with harpic power plus limescale removing loo cleaner. I used it in our very scaled up old loo, which scales up quickly, but has come up perfectly in all but two spots I coulntn't get at well, so I'll try again later in week.

I further insulted my klargestor by doing the sinks the old bath with this. We cannot use bleach very often, but every now and then I do like a good bleaching. I neat loo cleaner end the old bath then having scrubbed it like that filled it to soak in the diluted stuff for a bit. While I scrubbed the sink. Nothing will get the old taps clean, short of a chisel, but the bits that are exposed are shinier now.

Showers, my way is probably to risky for you. I strip, then clean the thing, any splashing on me can be easily washed off that way. And yeah, I know its bad for my skin, but .....its easiest way I've ever found.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've just been reading an MSE thread about it, with lots of methods ... microfibre came up there so I'll pick some up. I've never had/used those before. I know where to get some cheap.

The water here is superhard. I've always lived in soft water areas before.

A lot of solutions might be offered by people who live in soft water areas, so their problem isn't the same problem to solve.

I'm just being over-pernickety.... as it'll come down to a check out/deposit issue.

Our water is very, very hard.

I'm funny about cleaning cloths.
I like a particular type of value dishcloth, microfiber, terry nappies. I don't mind old kitchen towels. I like lots of them too, I don't like to keep using soiled cloths for too long.


I find thick / non value dis clothes to big/ thick to bunch properly in my hand, j clothes etc to thin to get elbow grease behind.

I also like a scrubbing brush, a tooth brush and the right bucket for my mood, plenty of hot water, replaced often.

I really want to get the knack of the steam cleaner, I know doozer girl loves hers. I want to like it for things like cleaning windows and places to tooth brush finds it hard to get into. I just don't get on with it.

Nikkster

My suggestion for descaling in the bathroom is Viakal. Comes in a spray bottle too.