Name a chore....

My parents had a gas fire in their bedroom with a pull down gas ring. Aged six, I had to go in each morning, strike a match, light the fire and the gas ring, and put a kettle of water on it to boil. Once boiled, I had to pour th water into a tea pot to make their tea. I was terrified each morning that the fire would blow back, or that I would burn or scald myself, but I never did!

Do you remember those books that we had to stick savings stamps into? Co-op, Green Shield and Embassy cigarettes? Mum would save them up and it was our job to stick them into the books with a jam jar of water and a small brush. We had to take care not to overdo it or the pages would stick together. That was a job I didn't mind so much.

Oh yes Green Shield stamps. I used to love saving those. DH used to smoke in those days and he smoked Embassy cigarettes. There used to be coupons in the packets that you could save and get things from their catalogue. We had loads of household items from there. I dread to think how many cigarettes he used to smoke. He stopped many years ago thank goodness.

Gypsyqueen13 how fed up you must have been.
How lucky some of us were.

Yellowstoning the top, outside step after a good scrub, then outlining all the other steps with whitestone.

I didn’t have specific chores I had to do, but I remember cleaning silver cutlery with Duraglit, shelling peas and broad beans, ironing the occasional handkerchief, holding the skeins of wool while my mother wound it into balls, drying dishes, helping my mother make sandwich fillings for when my aunt and uncle came to visit. I was never sent to the shops by myself, because my mother liked shopping. I usually went with her to the village if I wasn’t at school. I wasn’t totally responsible for anything except my school work.

My father cleaned all our shoes and did the fires in the mornings. He did all the gardening, too. I never had to help with any of those things, though I do remember a failed attempt to persuade me to do some weeding.

Much later in life I asked my other why so little help in the house was expected from me, and she said “I could never get your brother to do anything, and I wasn’t going to have you doing it just because you’re a girl’”. An early feminist, my mother.

asked my Mother...not ‘other’.

Mum had seven children so we did a lot of chores.
We took turns clearing the kitchen after dinner ( tea). One person washed up. Another dried them, cleaned the table and brushed the floor. When it was my turn to tidy I used the floor brush to swipe all the crumbs off the table before wiping it. No one ever found out. I can't believe I did it. the table!

helping my dad light the coal fire in the morning about 6 am. and helping him polish and shine shoes also on a sunday...

Cleaning the silver with Duraglit on a sheet of newspaper.
Shelling peas and 'top and tailing' goosberries.

Marge yes! I can remember crying hysterically as my dad was so upset and being marched round to apologise to the owner of the paper. He was so lovely and told my father he had no right to make a child cry like that and at the end of the day it was just a paper! Lovely man.

Thinking about it now, my father should have put it somewhere safe, not left it lying about!

I bet nobody had a delightful rickety old tramride on a hard wooden seat-----with mother when she did her " big shop " a few miles away. Well I did !
The shop was called Pegrams and it was in Huyton,nr Liverpool.
I remember having to take care the eggs didn't break. We had to buy eggs if next doors hens hadn't laid any.

Then there was the trolley bus we'd get to the market for sheets and towels.
How ancient was this ?