Mum really did know best

This is so lovely

My mother used to refuse plastic bags for loose fruit and veg when they first came out. Always insisted on the old paper bags as environmentally friendly. Sooo embarrassing as a child to witness the interaction!

I used todry clothes over lavender bushes when I lived in the south of France.. wonderful frangrance.. this book reminded me so much of my Mum too.. truly green

I have a tablespoon of my mum's .... it's worn away at an angle from all the stirring she did with it. I have just been using it and, once again, thought of her. She was very loving and I was so lucky to have her as my mum

Love this!

Lovely replies, thanks. Pascal30 I never saw anybody draping washing on bushes up our road so I thought Mum was a bit weird but obviously she knew more than me.

I wish we had thumbs up/down on here and I could thank you all individually.

My mum always put rice in the salt pot to keep it flowing and sugar cubes in the biscuit barrel to keep them crisp.

I have never stopped doing the some of the things mum did.
We have only just started using fire lighters as it is so hard to get enough newspaper these days.
I still write shopping lists on old envelopes, I tear up old sheets and clothes for rags.
I love the idea of drying washing on the lavender.

My mother also used to mend plastic buckets using a hot poker from the coal range and patches from other old buckets. I will never ever do that, the fumes were something else.

Lovely messages about lovely Mums.
I have items that belonged to my wonderful Mum. I was so fortunate to have her , she taught me about the things in life that really matter. Still miss her wise words and her unending kindness.

Difficult though my relationship with my Mother was I keep house in much the same way as she taught me.

primrose - yesterday I had a little weepy moment with my husband about my own mum. This came over me all of a sudden. She was endlessly loving and giving and I'm afraid to say I wasn't always appreciative of her many kindnesses which sometimes felt like interference.

I had come across an old jumper she'd knitted for me when I was first pregnant in my early 20s. It's a beautiful soft grey-lilac colour which I like now but didn't really love then...
I have nevertheless worn it a lot over the years - I had 5 babies.

It makes me sad that she isn't here for me to thank and cherish as much as she deserves.

If I'm half as good a mum.as she was I'm doing OK... I'm pretty sure I've been twice as annoying!
Being a mother with a heart bursting with love (and doing it "right") is harder than you'd think.
Thank you mums everywhere, and mine in particular. ❤️

Oh NotSpaghetti now you've made me cry thinking about my mum and how much I loved her and miss her.

What a lovely thread this is.

Still in convalescent mode from a particularly bad bout of bronchitus, reading this thread did make me cry - still miss my Mum although she died back in the early 80's. She loved me totally unconditionally, - not that she always made the best decisions for me. Also my wonderful Dad, very much unappreciated by me when he was alive. True working class stock, he felt that a mans job was to 'provide a roof over the head and food on the table' for his family. Found it so difficult to be able to express his feelings. Died in 1991, still increasingly missed. Decades in advance of other he was a great believer in using plants, etc for remedies for illness. Modern research increasingly proving he was so correct in many of these.

I do wonder if my children will have the same happy memories of me in the future and am sad for them that they will not have that of their Dad (His fault).

DanniRae - I wish I'd told my mum more often. I do know she knew she was loved but I think I could have been more obviously grateful!

When you are younger you often want to be independent and don't accept "help" easily.

tickingbird

What a lovely thread this is.

It is a lovely thread, it's made me feel a little tearful though, not unusual for me. I too use Mum's kitchen items, knitting needles, sewing box, etc.

What I really wish is that it would be possible to have a talk to my mum when she was the same age as I am.. as friends.. to really understand her.. unfortunately she's been dead for many years and when she was alive I didn't have those honest, open hearted talks with her.. Hindsight is often a sad thing and now I so value and appreciate how wise and kind she was..

It's coming up to my 11th year without my mum and I miss picking up the phone for advice and just a chat.
My mum always put a hard pea in the salt celler to stop dampness and she carried her net bag to put her fruit and veg straight into. My dad's parents lived near us and she always put her dinner on the top of pot of boiling water to keep it warm until she took dinner round to my grandparents every night. She was the kindest mum, who did without a lot just so we could have birthdays, Christmas, etc. We didn't have a lot, but she made us all feel so special and I miss her terribly.

My mum taught me almost everything I know about child care. She was a nurse in the war and a children's nursery nurse afterwards. I followed her "use psychology" approach, and also Vitamin C for colds, steam for croup etc with my children.

Lovely memories of mums. I still put a piece of apple in my brown sugar container if it cakes up. Just passed that wisdom to my daughter.
. My mum, and dad, taught me to enjoy the simple things in life.
My mum loved to look at the sunset and she would say 'come and look at this' as though it were the first time she had seen it.
I miss her so.

Oh dear, I’m crying now 😢😢

Reading all the lovely posts about our Mums has brought it home to me that it’s the actions and the simple things that we all remember not foreign holidays, expensive toys etc. I hope younger parents than us know that.

Things like old sheets draped over the washing line for tents, Mums bringing us sandwiches so we could have a picnic out there, teaching us ball games against the back of the house, giving us the first tiny apple off a tree or the first strawberry in the garden or giving us a little piece of soil for our own garden.

We lived on the coast and Mum used to take us down after school with other Mums and they would sit knitting while we swam and paddled. My Auntie was a lovely, kind lady who only died a few months ago in her 90s, but she was obsessed with house cleaning and used to be “too busy” to take my cousins down so often my Mum or her own elderly Mum would take them and her Mum would say “I wish she would just bring those boys down and forget her cleaning as that’s the abiding memory they will have of her.”

My mum worked so hard. Her own mother died whe she was 1week old and she was brought up by her dad and her aunt. She was always knitting cooking sewing baking and entertaining. Everyone was welcome in our house and left well fed at least. She brought up 3 daughters while my dad worked all hours in the steel industry. She taught me so much and we lost her in 2008 aged 100. I still miss her.

What a lovely thread, I’ve plucked up courage to write here as it has made me tearful too, thinking of all the loving things my mother did for me and how much more appreciative I could have been at the time. Her mother died the year before I was born and she told me how much she missed her, not having her help and advice. My mum died 17 years ago and I still miss her and think of her. I recently found a photo of her and my dad looking happy on holiday. I have put it in my bedroom so I see it daily. Thank you for starting this post. I’m fortunate to have happy memories of my mother.

I love this thread too. I had my mum to myself for 11 years then she provided me with a baby sister! Our mum was a woman of many sayings. One reminiscing session with my sister produced 50 plus sayings. Days seldom pass without one flits into my mind to cover the ongoing situation such as "This too will pass" and "Nothing lasts forever`'. These, in particular, came to me as medical colleagues rushed me into a surgical theatre for surgeery on an ectopic pregnancy. I have heard her sayings dismissed recently on a radio programme as 'trite' but they continue to help me on my way. I intend to use them as chapter headings in a memoir outlining an eventful life full of coincidences and challenges supported throughout by her words which have lived on for over 20 years since her death in 2000.