Name a chore....

I had so many jobs to do. My brother, 3 years older, had none. When my sister came along 7 years after me, in 1946, she was spoiled rotten, and never did chores either. I really resented her!
I still hate the smell of Dura-Glit wadding, used to polish all the brasses. The job I hated most was having to clean the oven after Sunday dinner, while everyone else relaxed. Doing it while it was still warm, I was told, made it easier! Then I had to wash=up the dishes, dry them, and put them away.

I never made my children do much, apart from keep their rooms tidy. Funnily enough, my daughter said, the other day, how mean she feels that she never offered to help me when I had 5 children to care for, and was often tired. Children don't usually notice things like that. They are so absorbed in their own activities.

As the eldest of eight I seemed to have more chores than the younger ones, especially the boys.
Some if my jobs included
Polishing the quarry tiles with Mansion polish every Sunday
Washing up
Minding the younger children
Going to the shop
Hanging out, fetching in the laundry
Peeling vegetables
Plucking a chicken that father had killed
Making beds
Helping to saw logs on the saw horse with a long two handle saw
My worst job?
Soaking my father's feet and cutting his toenails and scraping dead skin off his feet every Friday evening.
I wasn't exactly little, these jobs grew in number as I grew older.
Might be why I got married at 18 to escape!
We did enjoy our childhood though. My dad was a farmer and we lived in beautiful countryside.

Every Saturday being despatched across the fields at the back of our house to the nearest farm to get two dozen eggs. Ten years old and I had to go all on my own as Ma was busy fighting with the laundry and coping with our temperamental mangle.

Used to light the fire every day until the day I lit it with a 100 year old newspaper my father had borrowed from someone............

Ooh, Cambia - was the newspaper a very precious heirloom your dad had borrowed?

Sounds painful!

Going to the shop on my bike for a loaf of bread. I wouldn't have minded but the shop was a mile away, down a long country lane.

Forgot to add - calling next door for a pint of milk. It was a dairy farm and the farmer's wife gave it to us in a metal container. She always told us not to come too late as the cream was settling on top.

Horrendous thought now, but I used to light the coal fire when I got home from school, from the age of eight. I was even shown how to hold a newspaper against the fire to make it drawer quicker. How on earth I never burnt the house down I shall never know, as the paper invariably caught light.

My main chore was to fill the coal scuttle, it was too heavy for me to lift when full, so I would fill a smallish bucket and make repeated journeys.
Fortunately when I was ten, we moved into a centrally heated house, it was wonderful! I'll never forget the absolute joy of having a bathroom with a radiator rather than a paraffin stove!
The local dairy was in the next road to us, so we got our milk from churns on the back of their horse drawn cart. I loved getting the milk in our blue and white jugs. I still have the jugs, they're used for fruit juice in summer.
I was regularly sent to the 'offy', with an empty bottle, to get Cream Sherry for DGM and a bottle of Mackeson's for DGF.
Sunday mornings when DF wasn't on duty (Police), I'd be sent out to get the News of the World and ten Cadets (filter tipped) cigarettes.
How times have changed!

My dad is to make me cut the lawns with a push mower while he edged the border, wash and dry up each night and hoover downstairs on a weekend whilst mom was at work. Mom used to leave my clean washing in my bed and I was to put it away. Oh how I remember moaning and groaning but looking back it actually did me a favour.

Sitting out in the garden with a tennis racket ready to scare off any butterflies coming near my Dad's cabbages.
Doubt that it was very effective.

Scraping wallpaper off the living room wall on Christmas day, because it needed to be repapered before New Year. Everything in my mother's house had to be done before New Year. Pape4ing painting cleaning polishing dusting scrubbing. I still remember it even after 70 or so years.

This has brought back so many memories! DH and I have just spent a very pleasant half hour reminiscing! My favourite chore was being sent by my grandmother to get half a pound of orange pekoe tea. I loved to see the assistant pour the loose tea onto a sheet of paper, make it into a package and tie it with string. And I remember the lovely smell of coffee in the shop.

I used to clean the brass ornaments with Brasso. My mum was no fool and also had me clean our money (coppers) with Brasso, and the sixpences with a similar silver cleaner. My brother and I loved how the coins shone. Of course it was just a way of keeping us occupied on a rainy day.

But nannypiano, don't you remember - when the paper caught fire it used to get sucked the chimney. ?

Oh gosh! What a lot of unsuitable jobs children used to do. I remember polishing silver and brass, helping wash up, using a floor polisher as we had wooden floors, not carpets as we lived in South Africa. My worst thing was having to look after my baby sister, nearly 10 years younger than I was. Giving her a bottle, rocking her in her pram until she went to sleep... When I complained, Mum said "Its your duty, you are older than she is."
Why was it my duty? I was just a kid, I was not responsible for her birth, was I?

I think I was pretty lucky. That fetching the meat on Saturdays was the only chore I remember being given.

When I was very young I scrubbed the front doorstep for hours. When we moved to a different house I would wash the coal - it gave my mother some peace and quiet!

I had a magical childhood, we lived in Fiji and had a house-girl who did all the chores and looked after us while our mother played mah-jong and bridge. We returned to the UK when I was eleven and lived with our grandparents where I loved to shell the peas, put the clothes through the mangle and help clean the brasses, it was all a wonderful novelty. Then my parents bought their first house when I was thirteen and mum went out to work, everything changed. Every Saturday my sister and I had to polish all the furniture, sweep and wash the linoleum floors, ewbank the carpeted sitting room, wash the front step and prepare the vegetables for the evening meal. Our father worked abroad and the garden became my responsibility, every Sunday mowing, hoeing and edging while my sister helped our mother with the baking. We were never given pocket money but all our needs were catered for if not our wants.

Rolling long thin paper 'spills' for my grandfather to light his pipe from the open fire.

Also blackleading the fire grate every Saturday morning. I loved seeing it shine.

Mine was sweeping down the stairs with a hand brush and dustpan, using a duster for the uncarpeted sides.
That was my job too. As well as Brassoing the letterbox, numbers and big brass doorknow on the front door.

Nearly forgot - beating rugs on the washing line with a cane beater.

I cleaned silver, brass and copper too, from about age six, washed up long before that, and remember washing Daddy's woollen socks in a basin of lukewarm water on wash-days when I was three or four. I think one of the grown-ups checked they were clean and all soap rinsed out.

Rolling newspapers for the fire, yup. My sister hated it, I didn't mind.

Made the beds at weekends and during school holidays since I was nine.

Collected eggs in the henhouse when we kept hens.

Surely, some children these days still do some of these tasks?

jaylucy 50p a week!!!? How old are you? We never got any pocket money nor got paid for our chores. When my wealthy Uncle David visited us once (very rare) he gave me half a crown. My dad asked me "How much did Uncle David burp up for you then? " I told him and he nearly fell over.

Going to the corner shop for my dad's 'quarter of coco nut mushrooms' when he came home from work (might have got a penny for me too !) and having to go to the other corner shop (we had three in our small road) to ask for 'a loaf of bread till Friday'......when my dad got paid and my mum would send me to pay the bill ! .oh and to the newsagent on Saturday early evening for the #Green Un' (the early football results newspaper !