Unconfigured Ad Widget

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

What would Grandma say?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • What would Grandma say?

    I wonder what our grandmothers would make of all the labour-saving devices we have in our homes. I remember my grandad cooking on the side oven of the black-leaded Yorkshire range, and even my own Mum using a posser and scrubbing board a tub in the back yard, in the late 40s. Her first washing machine was almost a household god!

    I wonder what they'd make of our button-pushing housework ( sorry, I used that word!)

    Elisabeth

  • #2
    Both my grandmothers always paid cleaners to come in every day as long as I knew them, so it doesn't really apply in my case!
    KiteRunner

    Every five years or so I look back on my life and I have a good... laugh"
    (Indigo Girls, "Watershed")

    Comment


    • #3
      My grandmothers had rather variable luck in the h*******k stakes!

      My mum's mother (1892-1985) was the relatively lucky one............

      She lived at home until she was 24 and apparently her mother did all the work there. My gran was far too busy socialising to worry about doing things in the home!

      At 25 she married, but didn't have a baby for three years. She didn't have any paid employment during this time and would have been doing her own housework from marriage until she was 32, by which time she had two daughters (she didn't have any more children).

      At 32 she went with her husband and children to live in Cyprus where there was a mini-expat community. They employed two Cypriot ladies who helped with the children and did all the housework and the majority of the cooking.

      Aged 38 gran and her family returned to the UK. For the next nine years she had a "daily" who came to do the housework and gran did the cooking.

      By the time WW2 started there was no longer anyone helping in the house, but my mother and her sister were grown up, but still living at home. My aunt had high standards and expected to do housework "right through" every day. My gran just did the cooking.

      My aunt never left home, so she was in charge of housework and my gran did the cooking until she was too old and frail to do that, when auntie took over everything.

      My father's mother (1886-1959) got the shorter straw.......

      She worked in her father's pub until she married aged 20. She then had a baby every two years or so for around 25 years; 14 in total. Her husband ran a butcher's shop, but he expected his wife to work behind the counter too and she also did all the bookkeeping and banking etc (because he couldn't be trusted!), so she did that as well as bring up the children and do all the housework and cooking for variable numbers of people.

      After WW2 the shop was sold and they retired, but gran still did the housework and cooking for four (two children stayed at home) until her death. The doctor who looked after her in her final illness said she was just plain "worn out".

      Comment


      • #4
        My maternal grandmother died in 1958 and grandfather in 1968....

        I smile as I have envisaged myself trying to explain to them how we shop with the plastic card instead of money.
        Kathleen

        Comment


        • #5
          My grandmother lived in Airedale in West Yorkshire. She had a black-leaded Yorkshire range with a side-oven too and was for ever black leading it until it shone. She cooked the most delicious meals on it too. To do her washing she had a big copper in the corner of her huge kitchen which she filled with water and heated it up by burning coal underneath it. In the 'scullery' she had a mangle and a 'Peggy-tub', also a glass scrubbing board and washing would take the whole day. She was very posh though in that she had an indoor bathroom, but had to heat the water for the bath in the copper and fill the bath with buckets of water from it. She died in 1952.
          Stella passed away December 2014

          Comment


          • #6
            I well remember the old Poss Tub and Stick, and the big Mangle with the wooden rollers. I used to have to help Gran on washing day after School.

            Another thing was that, in Durham County we had a soft water handpump outside the kitchen door so I would wash my hair in the sink and then step outside and put my head under the pump to rinse out the suds.
            Grampa Jim passed away September 2011

            Comment


            • #7
              My Paternal Granny had all of those things and was actually one of the first in the family to get any new gadget. She was the first with a Washing Machine, Colour TV (and it had a remote control ) A Video, A Microwave, A Camcorder. Sadly Gran isn't with us anymore but if she was she'd probably still be ahead of the rest of the family with the new gadgets as my Papa was a real gadget man.

              Papa was Grans second husband, she was widowed just before I was born.

              My Maternal Gran is still with us and in her own home with lots of gadgets. Although with her dementia worsening I don't know how much longer she will be in her own home.
              With Experience comes Realisation

              Comment


              • #8
                My maternal granny who was the only one alive when I was a child, lived in a house when I first knew her, with a range in the front room acting as fire, oven and stove, and her kitchen had a copper for washing. But she did have an indoor toilet which must have been bliss after the three-hole earth closet in the garden she had known previously.

                I know if she saw the gadgets in my kitchen she'd say "Oh! I say!" and I can just hear her saying it too!
                ~ with love from Little Nell~
                Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

                Comment


                • #9
                  When I was seven (1972) I had to go and stay with a family whilst my mum was in hospital for a couple of weeks.

                  Several times we went to visit my friend's great-grandmother who lived in a small caravan in the corner of an orchard - her nearest neighbour was the farmer who owned the land, but his farmhouse was at least two miles away.

                  I don't remember her exact age, but she was over 90. I do remember that she didn't have a fridge or any electricity, just a two burner gas hob with a gas bottle underneath. I don't remember what lighting she had. There was an earth closet toilet near the caravan which we were too scared to use! She would serve us warm jelly with half a small can of Carnation poured over it. I'd never had condensed milk before and it nearly made me gag, but of course in those days if you were given something (esp an apparent treat!) you were expected to finish it! lol

                  Three years later we went on a school trip and on our return we were met with the news that great-granny had died. She still lived in the caravan. I wish I knew more about her now.............

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    My family were determined to get my Grandmother to embrace modern technology - over various Christmas's and birthdays she was given a video player, a CD player and a microwave among other things.

                    She never used them...perhaps because she had no CDs, no videos and never ate microwavable food.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I think the older relatives seem to get along ok with gadgets and find the middle aged ones struggle more :D

                      OH's cousin (actually it's his dad's cousin so his cousin once removed)

                      Well he is now 94yrs of age but has had his own computer, which he taps away on quite happily. since he was 90 :D

                      OH's Uncle bought himself a laptop last year and insisted on learning all about word documents and spread sheets etc. He actually went off and did a course he is 87yrs of age.

                      So thats the older relatives and then there are the younger ones to whom it's second nature to use a gadget of some kind and then there are people like my mum who struggles with her mobile phone :D
                      With Experience comes Realisation

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by BigShaz McCreadie View Post
                        and then there are people like my mum who struggles with her mobile phone :D
                        *tuts*

                        Your mum is not the only person who struggles with a mobile phone, you know :( pmsl......*searches for phone*.....*fumbles with phone*.......*puts phone back in drawer*

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I remember as a small child going to visit my fathers uncle (in the vicinity of Lynn the Forest Fan)

                          He asked me to go with him up to the top of the garden, I duly followed; he then started to draw water from a well and said 'I bet you dont have to do this at your house when you want some water do you?'

                          Lol he was talking to a little child who used to cry for her mother to take her out of the bath before she took the plug out because it made so much noise when the water ran out.

                          Like Merry - I wish I could talk to him now
                          Kathleen

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Circa 1950 our next-door neighbours were the height of modernity. They had a washing machine (socking great thing in green, like an overgrown food mixer with a lethal power wringer). Thinking back I'm surprised she didn't electrocute herself.
                            Uncle John - Passed away March 2020

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Uncle John ....I remember a similar era when I recall telling my mother about one of our neighbours who had a washing machine that she had put nearly a whole packet of Daz into it......
                              Kathleen

                              Comment


                              • #16
                                Daz, what's Daz? My mum used Rinso or Oxydol. Thinking back, this washing machine must have held about 5 gallons of water so it must have needed a lot of powder. It was in a washhouse (the back part of a very large detached garage).
                                Uncle John - Passed away March 2020

                                Comment


                                • #17
                                  My Dad's maternal grandmother helped look after Dad and his brothers. They took her to the cinema to see the first "talkies" thinking it would be a great treat. "Isn't it wonderful, Gran?" they asked and she replied

                                  "I've got to get home, I've got a suet pudding on the boil"!
                                  ~ with love from Little Nell~
                                  Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

                                  Comment

                                  Working...
                                  X