Signs that standards are seriously slipping.

I don't think Mum cleaned it often - it was always the children who got roped in to do that! Mum looked after my cousin too and she remembered being roped in to polish as well.

Yes, Silvo.
Newspaper on the kitchen table and that smell which I didn't like very much. It probably polished half of the surface away because it was mainly all silver plate.

Ooh Callistemon did you use Silvo? We cleaned brass with Brasso. It made your fingers black. Newspaper on the table. Mind mum didn't do it that often she had a healthy disrespect for housework. She always said she saw too many lovely pieces of highly polished furniture hanging out of bombed houses and thought about the women who had spent their lives polishing it

trisher

We always had to clean the silver; that sounds terribly posh, but we weren't. Each piece had a story, given as wedding presents.

How refreshingly honest!! ???? I’ve done this many a time.

I loathe dusting to this day as my sister and I had to go round the house every Saturday morning with the old Lavender polish for the furniture, mantelpiece and windowsills and we used Windolene for the obvious, plus mirrors.
I hardly ever dust like that now so standards definitely have slipped. It hasn't killed me. Guess what? I don't care.

That made me laugh trisher! There were four of us and my mam did the same! And Lino.....duo remember Dual polish? Is it still available?

When I was little my mum used to let me and my brother put on my dad's old socks and play skating round the lino floor. Took me ages to figure out I was doing the housework and one of the socks had floor polish on it!!

I am with you on that one, Liz
46 I too worked at a top London
Hotel in the 60s, quite shocked at some of the things that went on, made me very wary to this day. x

whywhywhy your post reminds of when I was rushed into hospital for an emergency appendix op. Staff sent my Dh home to pack an overnight bag for me. The ‘face flannels’ he packed were two grey-looking dish cloths that had definitely seen better days!

fluttERBY, your post about Katherine W reminded me of a relative of dh, in the nicest possible way a devil-may-care type, who turned up late to a family wedding saying sorry, but she couldn’t find her (only) bra. I forget whether she finally dug it out of the washing basket, though.
Her kids had a pony that used to wander into the kitchen and help itself from the fruit bowl. Needless to say, it was not a shoes-off house!

Thank you for the laughs! I forgot to take a face cloth on holiday once and used a pair of clean knickers to get washed, or maybe they were dirty and they got washed anyway, haha!

What a wonderful thread.
And doesn't it show how different we are. What one thinks is a convenience another considers appalling.

Today was not the best for me and this has cheered me up no end. Thank you all.

Not entirely sure there is fundamental law about degrees of cleanliness Welbeck, let alone ‘ strict separation of more clean and less clean’ ! And as to why you would worry what your parents would have thought mystifies me.

Have you never slid down the bannisters in your knickers welbeck?
You've never lived!

well i'm not finding this funny.
it astonishes me.
i have no temptation to do such a thing at all.
i am not a good housekeeper at all, but some things are unthinkable. mine are sins of omission re cleaning etc.
my parents would both of them have been horrified by such a notion. and both their families of origin. we were brought up with basic and fundamental laws, such as the strict separation of the more clean from the less clean. i thank god for that. literally.
most of you will probably mock that. i bless my parents' legacy. i could never live up to their standards of hard work.

Missiseff, how can we be spreading germs in our own houses?? ?

Methinks I muddled my Minky with my manky...
Thanks gorgeous Gransnetters for a great many guffaws.

With a husband has a keyworker my house is spotless.My husband gets changed at work than comes home in clothes just for travling home.Soon home into garage we have door poarch goes through into garage changes again than as bath before joining the family.He has just been given his new rota up to October

Great thread. Several full on splutters of laughter from me, just what we all need.

I can’t believe the outrage of some people! For goodness sake, how dirty do your knickers get? Mine are still spotless after wearing and obviously the OP doesn’t use the crotch part, just the bulk, no need to be quite so Lady Bracknell about it!

Thank you Ninarosa you gave us all a good laugh, and a new idea, both of which we need at this unusual time .

25Avalon please tell us more dirty Chambermaid tales!

To quote Hyacinth Bouquet " Someone has to fly the flag of finesse "

Thongs or applegatherers?
My nan used to wear the latter. Pink and blue ones. lol