2020 Fashion on the Ration Challenge

PipneyJane

Errr.....   Housewificus Domesticus, I am not.  I can cook like a dream - and I like a tidy kitchen - I can sew and I can knit.  I can even grow vegetables, but beyond a few regular tasks, don't ask me about the housework.  Oh, and I have the "gift" of being able to put a pen down on an empty desk and, within 30 seconds, it'll look like a tornado full of paper has hit it.

My regular tasks include washing up in the morning, after dinner the night before.  I set a 10 minute timer and aim to get it all washed up in that time.  (So long as it's in the sink before the timer goes off, it gets washed up.)  I'll leave the dishes on the draining rack to dry during the day, then empty that before cooking dinner.  Inevitably, I'll also fill and empty the dishwasher. (Washing up used to be one of my "impossible things".) 

I'm also chief cook, so any planning of meals or monitoring of supplies falls on me.  (This annoys me when I'm the one doing the long hours or the 2 hour commute and DH is home before me but has no idea about what to cook for dinner.  He knows 50% of my meal planning consists of looking in the fridge and the cupboards and figuring out what to do with whatever I find.  Surely he can do that???  Not without asking me first.  He will cook dinner, though.)

My biggest cleaning trick is to ensure I've got the tools handy, so I can't procrastinate about fetching them.  For instance, I'm trying to get into the habit of cleaning the bathroom on a Tuesday morning during/after my shower.  I use a microfiber cloth, which is stored under the bathroom sink, and I just have to remember to put it somewhere handy before I get in the shower.  Then, when I'm washing the shampoo or hair conditioner off my hair, I can also be wiping down the walls, taps, etc.

- Pip

TwibbleDee

The differences in culture are always fascinating to me.

I (and my older brother) learned how to sew because Mom sewed (because great-Grandma sewed; I don't know if Grandma did much).  Dad's sister posted a picture of herself when she was much younger in a suit and blouse that she had made; they grew up on a farm, and she went on to be pretty high up in a national bank.  That being said, Dad was the one who taught me to iron - because Mom detests ironing and refuses to iron unless she has to for a sewing project!

I got to college and had friends who had never even done the dishes and drove their laundry home to their mother on weekends.  They were sorely confused when I pocketed a button to sew it back on - to them, that meant that the garment was ruined!

TwibbleDee

PipneyJane said:

Errr.....   Housewificus Domesticus, I am not.  I can cook like a dream - and I like a tidy kitchen - I can sew and I can knit.  I can even grow vegetables, but beyond a few regular tasks, don't ask me about the housework.  Oh, and I have the "gift" of being able to put a pen down on an empty desk and, within 30 seconds, it'll look like a tornado full of paper has hit it.

If we get to the point where one of us is staying home, it'll be hubby.  He's OCD, good at housekeeping, and married to a hot mess.  He's forever trying to restrain my mess to my "nests", but it keeps escaping!

PipneyJane

TwibbleDee said:

The differences in culture are always fascinating to me.

I (and my older brother) learned how to sew because Mom sewed (because great-Grandma sewed; I don't know if Grandma did much).  Dad's sister posted a picture of herself when she was much younger in a suit and blouse that she had made; they grew up on a farm, and she went on to be pretty high up in a national bank.  That being said, Dad was the one who taught me to iron - because Mom detests ironing and refuses to iron unless she has to for a sewing project!

I got to college and had friends who had never even done the dishes and drove their laundry home to their mother on weekends.  They were sorely confused when I pocketed a button to sew it back on - to them, that meant that the garment was ruined!

Some mothers make rods for their own backs.  

I remember helping mum with the housework when I was small, before starting school.  As we got older, there were things she handed over or just stopped doing, which we'd have to do for ourselves or go without.  Laundry, for example.  I have a burn on the back of my hand from ironing my school uniform when I was 6 or 7.  (My mother was like yours and hated ironing.  My dad taught me how to iron shirts.)

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

My parents managed to produce two girls who couldn't do anything - but I was the lucky one and gained from lots of time with grandparents, so at least I learnt the skills, if not the habits. My sister was very very good at decorating - in her later years when she was pretty much never ever sober, I saw her, on multiple occasions, pick up a coffee-mug and see it had left a ring of coffee on the white-painted window-sill, and instead of getting a cloth like most people would, to wipe the gloss paint clean, she went and got a tin of paint and a brush and proceeded to clean up the tiny amount of coffee by re-painting the window-sill... and their big treat at Xmas was to have a huge Chinese takeaway delivered for Christmas dinner. 

I left home unable to cook except one 3-course, 6-person dinner party menu, and I could do a fried breakfast and make a good salad dressing. I taught myself from booklets on mediaeval cookery and a facsimile first-edition Mrs Beeton, so I can only cook if it includes meat and serves about 40 people... 

And yes, my sister made a deliberate decision never to have her daughters' clothes mended, ever. If anything lost a button or the hem came down, out it went. She also didn't give the girls pocket-money because it was 'too difficult' to have two lots of 50p to give them each week, but because she didn't want them to lose out, the deal was that if they wanted anything, she made their dad buy it for them. Not the best training, but such is life... 

It's very easy, of course, not having children, to know *absolutely everything* about the best ways to bring them up. I definitely know a bit about two quite good ways *not* to bring children up!  

catherinekate

The cleaning talk puts me in mind of the mental load comic, if you haven't seen it:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

I went to a modern state girls grammar (left in 2000) and learnt some dressmaking (well, we made an apron and a skirt). My sister went to a comprehensive and sewing was "textiles" - she did some artwork with felt and glue, and nothing more. How things change.

I own three pairs of jeans which I've been wearing during lockdown (I'm usually more of a skirt girl). Two pairs have gone through at the knee within a week of each other. I think I will patch one pair and say goodbye to the others, which are really a bit too small. Oh dear, time to look the coupons out.

catherinekate

PS although not the point of your post, Laura, I would LOVE a Chinese takeaway Christmas dinner. I'm sorry your sister had such a difficult time.

TwibbleDee

If we're at home, we normally make bacon cheeseburgers on Christmas Day.  Hubby and his family don't particularly like turkey or ham or anything else that we would normally make.

Maybe I should try prime rib this year...

PipneyJane

@Laura_Elsewhere, I have a copy of that facsimile Mrs Beaton cookbook.  I also have a facsimile copy of the needlework book that was published in her name.  I bought both for my mum at various times when I was a teenager and reclaimed them after her death.  I'm certain I'm the only one who read them cover-to-cover.   I used to devour cookbooks, looking for inspiration and a connection to exotic places.  (Scandinavia, for example.)   

Although she taught me the basics, my mum was a disinterested cook - she cooked because she had to, not because she took any pleasure from it.  I mainly learned to cook from recipe books and trial-and-error.  When I was a student nurse, I'd phone home to tell them I was coming home for my days off and dad would inevitably ask me what I'd like to eat for dinner.  My response was always "what would you like me to cook?".  (I'd finish my shift at 3.30pm, be home around 5:30pm and, inevitably, be in the kitchen by 6pm, cooking dad whatever he fancied.)

Umm.... I actually have a spend to declare.  I've spent 7 coupons on a kilt from Celtic Sheepskin.  It's this one, in the tweedy "Navy Charcoal Tartan".  Pure wool, fully lined, and made in Scotland.  I had a voucher for a £10 discount, too, and the money came from my Clothing/Makeup Account.  Given it's colours, it should go with a lot of things already in my wardrobe, hopefully including my tweed jacket.  (NB:  I'm trying to "buy British" where possible or, at least, European, so that my Pounds might impact the local economy.)

In other news, my contract has been extended until after Christmas; I'll be back in Finance and off "the project".  One of my Finance colleagues had an accident last weekend, while on holiday, and is quite badly injured, so I am stepping in to help.   (She is in Intensive Care.  We don't have any other details yet.  She is lovely, and we're all worried about her.) 

- Pip

thriftwizard

That would explain why my mother's grandmother never taught her to cook; she remembers waking up on her first day of married life in 1947 in a blind panic as she had quite literally never fried an egg in her life, and my Dad was used to a cooked breakfast. Cooking has always been a ghastly panic-stricken ordeal for poor Mum & she's very grateful, at 94 & about to go into a very lively care home, that she's never going to have to do it herself again. Great-granny had grown up in a castle (albeit a very dilapidated one) and presumably had had a servant or two pre-war, as she'd married the manager of the local paper mill; Mum's account of her one-and-only attempt at the National Loaf is hilarious. I suspect now that she was very dubious of her own cooking skills, and thought her "help" would soon be back after the War, hence she made no attempt to pass any culinary skills on to her orphaned teenage grand-daughter. Interesting!

ETA - sorry, was replying to posts on the last page!