Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2015

vhalla1478

Good Morning Everyone,

I hope you're all enjoying the intermittent sunshine. I managed to do some more painting on my garden furniture and also to plant more seeds, including the ones that caused me three trips to the dentist - they better come up as they caused me so much aggravation!

I just thought you might like to hear about my DS's MMMing yesterday. I popped round to see them all yesterday evening (very amusing, six grandchildren of all heights from 13 years old to a 3 year old, all having a three legged race) and he has made two beautiful long garden benches out of old decking and matching planters. Plus he's used the metal drum of a defunct washing machine, plus the metal base of an old garden table to make an outdoor stove/fire. I'm very proud of him.

I remember those 19s11d tights, Hester. When I left school I worked as a trainee buyer in Oxford Street at Bourne and Hollingsworth and earned 8 guineas a week; yes, they were expensive comparatively speaking, although I think we got discount, but they lasted for ages. And someone mentioned the price of clothing. I know that my mother, who was a widow, struggled to pay for my grammar school uniform in the 1950s as it cost £80+ to kit me out. even school satchels were leather then.

Have a good day, everyone.

Viv xx

vhalla1478

Just reading back on everyone's posts. MrsLurchwalker, I remember having a furious argument with a salesman in an electric appliances shop when I wanted to buy a washing machine. He asked me to ask my husband to come in and sign the agreement. I actually stood my ground and pointed out thatI was paying what was then called supertax (45%). After a lot of toing and froing I was eventually 'allowed' to sign. Did I b...ery - I went to the YEB shop where there was no problem at all!

Viv xx

melodramaticme

I remember going to the market to buy stockings, there was a stall that sold them cheaply, but you had to sort through a whole pile of odd stockings to find a pair that matched. Sometimes the colour would match but the leg length or the foot size would be different, (they didn't stretch so much so you had to get the fit right) so you had to be really careful to get the right ones. I spent many a Saturday morning there:D
Soon after pantihose became all the rage and the stall closed down.

Does anyone else remember Amami setting lotion? and tight curl hair curlers that were bright green stiff plastic that you used at home instead of going to the hairdressers each week?
I think my mum went to have her hair done about once a month and in between would set her own hair. The smell was pungent!:rotfl:

Bigjenny

I remember Armami setting lotion.

I also remember my mum using Dinkie hair curlers, they were metal ones.

babyblooz

vhalla1478 I had a similar experience in Kurry's many years ago when I was earning a proper wage and hubby was still an apprentice. I popped in to buy a new hairdryer intending to to pay using our joint cheque book.

The fella let me look around and showed me the different ones and when I said 'OK I will take this one' he took me over to the counter and said 'I'll just pop this here and if your husband wants to come in and later and pay then he can take it' ... I couldn't believe it ... and said 'but it's a joint account' ... he just smiled benignly at me and said 'yes, but I'd feel better if he paid'. I was gobsmacked but I was too timid in those days to think about saying anything. This was in the early seventies.

BUT to this day I have never ever bought anything at Kurry's and I never ever will.

Hard_Up_Hester

When I bought my first car, about 25 years ago, I walked out of the first showroom as the salesman wouldn't look at me, he just talked to my husband.
I also experienced treatment like babyblooz when I went to buy a washing machine, I wasn't timid & I kicked up holy hell in the middle of the shop until they agreed to sell it to me. I then told them where they could stick it & walked out.
And when I was running my IT installation business I would get men phoning up to book an installation date who asked if there was 'a man' they could talk to. I used to reply 'Well the gardener is outside, the knows nothing about IT, but he has a willy if that helps!' I did lose a couple of customers, but not many. I also got some funny looks when I turned up on site & started running cables.
Hester

silvasava

Oh all these memories - Friday night was Amami Night - lol. Hair washing was done once a week then. I remember my Mum getting her first fridge - I think it was about £70 & my dad was probably earning about £6 a week at the time. Mum made lots of my clothes - particularly remember a lemon taffeta dress kept for 'best' but when I was finally allowed to wear it it was too small! Do you remember that every high street used to have a launderette too - not many now.
Bought my first pair of tights at the Ideal Home Exhibition & they were £1 - expensive out of my £3 wages but mini skirts were just coming in. Shame they were so short in the leg on me the crutch came just above my knees :eek::rotfl::rotfl:

melodramaticme

We had something called an Osokool, a kind of polystyrene box with a door and a shelf where we kept milk and sometimes meat, which came between the metal meat safe and the first fridge.
And the single tub electric washing machine with attached mangle, which replaced the washing board and sunlight soap which my grandmother used.

GreyQueen

:j I'm grinning from ear-to-ear and just had to share why.

I used to make blankets from pulled-out old sweaters, kintted into 8 ft long strips which were about 8 inches wide and sewn together, very thick, and donated them to Hoxfam. They were supposed to be sending them overseas to people who had nothing. The last one I did was about a decade ago and when I took it in, the shop manager was (I considered) very rude, said they weren't doing them any more but he'd take this one as a favour. I never made another, but there were something in the region of 30-35 made altogether, several per year.

Anyway, I bumped into the last one via this very forum when a poster called Pennypincher!!! stuck up a couple of pix of a 'wool' blanket she'd been asking advice about washing, and was so shocked when I saw it, I just about inhaled the mug I was drinking my tea from! Turns out, it had ended up being bought at a bootsale in Cornwall (I live nowhere near Cornwall) by someone for her and was now her treasured possession somewhere in the south-east.

So, I knew at least one of 'my' Hoxfam blankets was loose in the UK and I've just seen another one. In (get me) this month's copy of Country Living Rustic Style (page 99 if you want to look) and there is a page-wide pic of a bed with another of 'my' Hoxfam blankets on it!

Woot! I am officially Rustic (have long had my suspicions ). And I was only browsing the mag because I'd just gone into a supermarket with someone on my way back from a country walk and they wanted the loo....... bizarre.:rotfl:

THIRZAH

Greyqueen. I think they now sell the blankets at festivals like Glastonbury rather than send them abroad.