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Next time I visit DD I need to sew on DGS's badges from Beavers. DD can just about manage to sew on a button now but anything else is beyond her. My other DD has taught herself to sew and even bought a small sewing machine. I did try to teach them to sew when they were younger but they weren't interested so I didn't force it. I didn't learn to knit until I went to university and shared a house with two girls who knitted.0
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I think we may be missing a point, some things have slipped into history, how many of us could scythe the grass, repair a shoe using a last, repair a hole in a kettle? Light a coal fire, maybe repair a puncture in a bike tyre? Turn a collar?
All but the last one I could do once upon a timeEight out of ten owners who expressed a preference said their cats preferred other peoples gardens0 -
Faraway....look at the skills mentioned in this thread...
Tea-making...shopping...cooking...sewing on a button...understanding laundry symbols...telling the time...using public transport...
Are these REALLY skills that have slipped into history?...or are they skills that are relevant today?!
(oh and if pushed I reckon I could still lay and light a fire, and mend a puncture in a bike tyre)0 -
On a theme how to find, gather, process, season firewood and lay a fire and then light it, on from that keep it in overnight, on from that cook over it.....
He Who Knows has just thrown in how to change a fuse, know where to turn off water, gas, electricity, how to relight a gas fired boiler and adjust the pressure on a new combi boiler.0 -
I've found that younger people in an office don't know that when telephoning a local number on a landline you don't need the area code because they have only made calls on a mobile where you need the area code, so they keep keying in the area code for local calls on a landline every time.
Predicting the weather from looking at the clouds instead of using an app.
Not just building and cooking on the fire, but also identifying the variety of tree your logs came from.0 -
In my secondary school in the late seventies we were taught how to wire a plug (and made to draw a diagram of the inside of one including colouring in the cables). But I'd already been taught to do this by my mother. We were also taught how to write cheques, something I still do most weeks for a pal who runs a small business.
Some very basic skills are being lost and the consquences are blocked sinks and mess and expense.
For example, whenever I do youth hostelling, I encounter sinks which are blocked because folks cannot grasp that the first step to dishwashing is scraping any uneaten bits off the plate and into the bin. So many people, often mature and seemingly intelligent people, haven't managed to grasp this simple concept. I once watched the three mid-teen offspring of a family in a YHA kitchen make an unbeliveable fist of doing some washing up. The sum total of their task was to wash five mugs, five small plates with crumbs on them and five knives with butter/ jam smears. Three of them and they couldn't even do this without incredible difficulty.
I'm normally good at blank expressions but must of looked a bit surprised at a level of ineptitude akin to a six year old's, because one of them sheepishly told me that they had a dishwasher at home.
No sh*t Sherlock was my unspoken reaction, but I was thinking I hope to hell you never have to wash up anything really messy if this little task is beyond you! :eek:Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
John Ruskin
Veni, vidi, eradici
(I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
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My parents had a last when we cleared their house, but it's no longer a 'must-have' item on the wedding list, I guess.I think we may be missing a point, some things have slipped into history, how many of us could scythe the grass, repair a shoe using a last, repair a hole in a kettle? Light a coal fire, maybe repair a puncture in a bike tyre? Turn a collar?
All but the last one I could do once upon a time
When they learn to drive, they need to be shown how to check the oil and the various other fluid levels on the car, although the first test is 'opening the bonnet'. Three of us spent quite a while scrabbling round the work van the other day, even with the manual we could not find the release bonnet lever. A 4th colleague found it. DH came to pick me up and I set him the challenge of finding it: even knowing which side it was it defeated him!
Checking tyre pressures too.
I think some of the above are now covered in the driving test. I haven't ever changed a wheel on the car but would give it a go if I had to!Signature removed for peace of mind0 -
I am eternally grateful that I no longer have to lay a coal fire, turn a collar or do sides to middle for worn out sheets. TG these are no longer useful skills. Not too sure that we should lament the passing of clock faces either. Though come to think of it a digital Big Ben would be rather odd.0
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This thread is fun. It's not just millennials who are useless.
My gf has her father staying with her, and she recently left him home alone for 3 weeks while she went on holiday. She came home to a freezer of ruined food, as the kitchen ring tripped and dad could not work out the cause. 0 -
Ooh, I've got another one regarding my African friend who is 46...
I was showing him how I warm the mugs with boiling water before putting the teabag in them.
He said: 'I do not need to wash the cups again. I have already washed them!' 0
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