What’s a household item that reminds you of your grandma’s house?

Oh crivvens! By the time I decided to respond I'd forgotten the topic and went down a rabbit hole about my mum as well. My first thoughts about my grandma were that she kept an immaculate home she had a smelly loose tile on her sink surround and a paring knife with a broken handle. I don't have a smelly tile...but my sister - house proud, me not so much - and I both have veg knives with broken handles.

I still have her bread board.

I never met my MILs mother but I do have her rocking chair

I have my gran’s jam making pan, must be eighty years old😋

I have my nannas recipe book, that belonged to her mother also, jugged hare anybody??

My colander, which belonged to my grandmother.

Seed cake

A mangle. When I was 6 or 7 I used to stand on the garden paths holding the sopping wet heavy cotton sheets while nannan slapped the water out of them and folded them ready for the mangle. A very precious memory.

Oreo

Everyone used to have a budgie called Billy or Petey.

My Granny’s budgie was called William - there were many Williams and we always wondered about his colour change!

Not an object, but I remember the slightly sloping bathroom floor with the black and white floor tiles

A brass fender surrounding the hearth in the front room and a set of ornate fire irons - poker, tongs, shovel and a coal scuttle. They weren’t used -purely for show. Guess who was given cloth and polish to keep her busy while the adults gossiped and drank tea in the kitchen!

I still have my gran's Sheffield Steel,proper riveted wooden handle bread knife about 80 years old. Best knife I have. I also have 2 ornaments I bought her . One when we went on holiday to Seahouses I was about 3,late 50's and one from Torquay when I was about 10..

Nannylovesshopping

I have my gran’s jam making pan, must be eighty years old😋

Got my maths wrong, jam pan must be just over 100 years old!

still have my gran's Sheffield Steel,proper riveted wooden handle bread knife about 80 years old. Best knife I have.

Not my gran’s but I have a Granton knife that was given to me as a wedding present sixty years ago. It is still doing sterling service. They are still made here in the city. When I go, DD will have it.

My granny was a devout Catholic so it’s the religious things I remember .
A large crucifix that had a sliding lid ,it held the things needed for the last rights.
A holy water font by the front door ,to be used to bless yourself with before leaving home.
The framed print of The Sacred Heart above her bed.
I also remember her marching us up and down the hall and stairs singing “The soldiers song”The Irish National anthem.
She sang the Irish Gaelic words she taught us the English ones.
I miss my granny even now over 50 years since she died but I don’t miss that sacred heart picture…scared the bejesus out of us girls.

Vases full of flowers from the garden.
Huge enamel bath.
My bed was so high as my grandmother never threw a mattress away, by the time my children stayed it was even higher , they loved it !
Her old fashioned bathroom cabinet smelled of iodine and kaolin.
Her bedroom smelled of her lovely flower talcum powder.
In tbe kitchen jam making pan, girdle for pancakes and tatties scones.
Big soup pot, always full of soup
Tins full of baking and a mincer on the well used kitchen table , no fitted units and 2 big sinks, she used one for clothes washing and other for food prep .
Pullie for drying clothes.

Yes, I forgot about the mangle. It was one that clipped onto the sink somehow. She used it for years. I also remember the iron she had for donkeys years that she plugged into the light socket 😮.

A beautiful polished inlaid wood stationery storage box of my grandfather's, in which I keep my writing paper, envelopes, and card for special printing.

Blimey. I really had to cast my mind back!

A few things. A tea strainer (only leaves back then.) Her big mantel clock that ticked loudly. Her lemony washing up liquid called Squezy. Her coal bunker and coal scuttle. She would go out to the bunker to get a bucket of coal for the fire.

Random stuff.

A gas water heater on the wall of my Nanna's kitchen above the sink. Her flat always smelt strongly of gas and it used to light with a big whoosh when the hot tap was turned on that frightened me no end 😄

The box of yellow and black Tabu talcum powder on her dressing table.
The big solid wooden lavatory seat (down which she had drowned unwanted kittens to my mother’s horror).
The piles of photography magazines belonging to my bachelor uncle who still lived with her, leading to my shock at seeing a nude with cello😁.

Re the comments about mangles - we have a brick-built wash house at the bottom of our garden, which still has the original twin Belfast sinks, mangle and even the boiler which was used for the washing. I can still remember my mum and my two grannies using it all to wash the bedsheets, mainly, when I was very young.

Witzend

I would still, have a glass dish that invariably appeared at teatime at my paternal GM’s house - full of orange jelly with mandarin oranges in.
Only dh broke it. 🤬
It was years ago and I still haven’t quite forgiven him.
That dish was the only thing I wanted from DM’s house when she died in the late 70s. Her teas were so memorable - besides the jelly, lots of things we never had at home, like Dairylea triangles and Wagon Wheels.

I had frozen peas for the first time at Nanna's house (my father's mother).
She also used to give me Hartley's Pineapple jam which we never had at home and she didn't water down the baked beans to make them go further!
I have her 1930s bureau, so useful.

Calendargirl

Redhead56

Brass ornaments my DH insists on keeping so I leave him to get the polishing done. A bar of soap in a soap dish that needs cleaning horrible outdated stuff. I prefer to use liquid soap it's far more hygienic in my opinion.

But think of the plastic containers, all chucked away.

Crikey, I think of the cheap little bar of soap at primary school, in an outside wash house, that classes of little girls all used.

We all survived!

Worse than that, in the girls' toilets there was a shared cloth for us all to share to dab our whatsits. Eeugh!
Same at Nanna's house actually...

Bleach.
My nan used to scrub her husband's shirt collars with it, then soak her knickers in it.

I never knew my maternal grandmother who died at a very early age. My paternal grandmother was so poor she had nothing anybody would want to keep

My memory of her was she would start cooking mince around 8.30 am for 12 pm lunch when that tasteless slop was served. Every time I cook a spag bol I think of those days.