Do you remember? household items

liaise My mum had those double height washing lines too. It was hard work pulling a line full of wet washing up to the top. Remember one of our young neighbours who was pregnant asking Mum to help pull up her washing lines because she'd heard that raising her arms above her head would cause the baby to be strangled by its umbilical cord.

Our next door neighbour had a huge mangle (or so it seemed to me then) . She was a very fat lady and wore boned corsets that covered her from bosom to bum. She used to put them through the mangle. You would think they would have been damaged. For some reason in the summer she would do her washing in the evening.

My mum has a very useful but simple kitchen implement called a kitchamajig (I think that's how it's spelled).

Her house was built just pre-WW2. It has a pantry which has a deep concrete slab and a small north facing window. It's where things were kept cool.

When we moved into our current house, we had to camp for the first couple of days because the collection and delivery of our stuff took two days. It was August. I used the cistern of the downstairs loo as a fridge for the milk. The cellar probably would have worked too but that meant using a steep laddery stair for every cuppa. The cistern, fed with cold mains water, worked well.

Because it went in the dolly tub, of course!

We called it dolly blue. I have no idea why.

I remember Reckitt's blue - one of my aunts was partial to using it as a hair rinse when she was going out!

Does anyone remember the 'blue' tablets. Reckitts I think. I was allowed to put the blue tablet into the copper which was down in the cellar. The 'whites' came out beautiful and were hung on the clothes line which was on two heights. It worked on a pulley system. The sheets went at the top and the rest down below.

This made me think about the sheet changing day. The top sheet went on to the mattress and a fresh one went on top, this happened every week.

My granny did all her washing on a Monday in the dolly tub with a plunger. She'd run a big bar of Fairy Soap over granddad's collars before putting them in.

That and the mangle were in the wash-house, which when I look back was rather like a conservatory!

I remember the gas copper too, after use the water was used to scrub the kitchen floor. Also I can remember the bean slicer and mincer clamped to the table. No electrical gadgets then.
Carpet sweeper as the vacuum cleaner was not used all the time.
Here in rural France they still sell crossover pinnies in the markets, and no I haven't got one.

All the council houses had a thick stone shelf, maybe a concrete slab, in the larder cupboard - to help keep things cool. The larder had a vent to the outside as well, of course.

I haven't seen a toasting fork for a while.

There were shortages of sugar, toilet rolls and lentils in the early 70s.

When I got married, we had a gas fridge, secondhand. It never worked though.

@ Funny we lived in the country then, parents having lived before in Orkney, war postings, then Glasgow, Pa was a Bevin Boy.

An Army neighbour neighbour was imprisoned in Chaangi jail during the Japs overrunning the Brits.

I think there was a sugar shortage in early '70, and guess who had a stash of sugar, The Colonel, who had learnt his ways of keeping everything, and throwing nowt out.

Every thing could be barteded

Outdoor hens went off laying in the winter as the light started later and faded earlier. Commercial poultry farms now manipulate sunrise and sunset times and temperatures to con the chuckies into laying all year.

Eggs in isinglass kept for a long time.

We bough a fridge when we were married in 1963 - big extravagance. My parents bought their first shortly afterwards. Until then, perishables were kept covered, in a larder cupboard against on the coldest wall of the house. They were checked daily, and we never ate anything that caused any food poisoning.

I always wear an apron for cooking unless I am in my indoor 'scruffs'.
My mum had a cream maker and a mincer that she clamped to the table.
Her first washing machine was a Hotpoint Countess - a single tub with a wringer that swung around so you could ring clothes straight into the sink to rinse them. We had no fridge until I was 16 - just a larder.
How lucky we are now with all our labour saving equipment!

jollyg I have recently mentioned the bucket full of eggs in isinglass to my brother who didn't remember it. I can't think why it was done except that I think my mother used to say she bought eggs when they were cheap and used them for baking. We don't have such seasonal ups and downs in food prices and I do wonder if it was a throwback to the war mentality when things were scarce. There were always about six bags of sugar in the cupboard when I was a child "in case there's a shortage"!

I remember the runner bean slicers, also clamped to the side of the kitchen table.

I think my favourite item has to be the soda syphon, we had an off licence near us and Dad used ask me to return it and I was allowed to buy sweets with some of the returned deposit money.

Mum used to do the washing in the 'copper' which was like a water tank on a stand. She would fill it with water and wait a couple of hours while it heated via a connection to the gas. That was in the '50s then she got a Hotpoint twin tub which had a washer one side and an electric mangle on the other side ? Or does my memory deceive me. I had one when first married in '75

My mother had a crock filled with isinglass for eggs.

My grandmother had a tall jug she kept for putting the celery in every Sunday tea time.

I wear an apron if doing a lot of cooking or doing something which spits - such as a bolognaise sauce - that takes a bit of getting out of a T shirt! I also use it if making jam or bottling fruit as the juice can stain things.
We had a very early sandwich toaster bought at an Ideal Homes exhibition. It was two shaped circular plates which went together and you put the bread and filling between them and cooked over a gas flame!!! We didn't use it much at home but was very popular in my student block when I was at college and we were not allowed electrical gadgets - imagine that nowadays.
We had a gas boiler for the sheets too - lived under the draining board in the kitchen.

My mother had one of those cream makers Mini Mouse and I still have the jug base which is useful for cream( shop bought) because it has a lid.
I also use antimacassars and a tea cosy.I must be very old fashioned!

I have a posh Harrods PVC apron and a pretty floral one, a bit Kath Kidston, as otherwise I tend to wipe my hands on my clothes, but not on purpose.I also have a mincer that should screw to the work surface, but when we had our kitchen re-done, the worktops are too thick, so now I have to use the dining table, with a thick cloth between table and mincer. Lovely for left over roast lamb and shepherds pie. On one holiday, we met a decendant of the Spong family, who made mincers. Does anyone else remember metal curling tongs that were heated up on the gas flame? and the singed hair, phew!.

My OH tells of making horseradish sauce in his mother's blender - could never be used for anything else!

miniMouse I had one of those cream makers too. I used to use it with salted butter for savoury things because Lurpak unsalted was more expensive. You melted the butter into the milk and then pumped it through to amalgamate them. I finally ditched it. when I found a liquidiser did the same job without the pumping. These days I just use Aldi cream and hang the expense Thanks for the reminder.

I remember 'grating' horseradish through one of those metal mincers as a child, it was an outdoor job, really made the eyes water!