Hello everyone, I hope you are all coping with the weather and the virus. At least it’s keeping people away from the seafront for a while. I dread to think what it will be like in Spring and Summer, the mind boggles. I’ve just read a letter in the paper saying that it isn’t people who are causing the rise in virus numbers. Where that backwards thinking comes from I don’t know. Anyway, I’m going for my Covid vaccine next Thursday. So hopefully the light is at the end of the tunnel when all the country has been ‘done’!
The Rubbish Drawer
Enough of that Chrissie, and onto something I saw on Facebook.
Someone asked if anyone had a rubbish drawer with all sorts of odds and ends in it. I’m certainly one, but I do try to fight the tide of ‘people’ standing back and throwing things in where they want. I’m not mentioning any names but it’s a very short list!!
I’m a bit of a hoarder, I’m the first to admit it, and usually save bits of pretty ribbon from whatever. Combs, hairbrushes, note pads, biros, scissors, cotton and needles and a million other things. I gave it a good tidy out a couple of weeks ago and made compartments out of cardboard to separate the different things. Biros, notepaper, paper clips etc go in one part, another holds scissors and hair things, another has a sundry amount of things that don’t go under a specific category.
Would you believe, our rubbish drawer is staying tidy, now that certain people can see where things go back to. Not forgetting my back scratcher of course, that goes in with scissors etc.
My lot fetch things out of the cupboard and if they manage to put them back, they dump them in the first available space, as near to the front as they can get them. So, I end up grumbling under my breath “why does everything end up at the front and why can’t they put them back where they came from!” I’ll never change them that’s for sure. After all, we all have little quirks and mine is tidy cupboards!
The Christmas Spring Clean
It led me on to think about the weeks before Christmas approaching when I was young. Back in the dark ages, my mum and everyone we knew started spring cleaning the house, weeks before. I’m not sure why, but curtains were washed, paintwork, everything that stood still got a makeover and a spruce up.
All the best china had to come out and be washed ready for the big day, along with the trifle dishes and anything else that needed washing. It took her ages and she usually ended up in a bad mood as she tried to fit everything else in. It was unusual for her to be grumpy, but she ended up exhausted and that’s an understatement as she had every thing to do.
Christmas presents, shopping, carrying heavy bags, that was her lot. But my dad was old school. He went to work and she did anything to do with the house. He made the coal fire and swept the hearth and when they were retired washed up, but not much else. But he never went shopping, hoovered or anything at all. But I thought it was normal, as that’s what most people were like back then.
Copying our Mothers
Of course, dozy me, with my mother’s words and actions in my mind when I was first married, did exactly the same. I ended up exhausted, just like she did. I have a friend who lived nearby, with a baby born three months before Jane so we were young mums together. She washed every wall through her house, pantry and everything you could imagine, wow did she work hard.
I wasn’t that bad I might say, but I washed curtains and did all sorts of extra things. As Derek was at work I used to fetch presents, sort the food out and do all the rest that we supermums had to do.
Out came my best china – a white background with red poppies on. I still have the whole set – still intact and I loved it – if you can love china. I have everything in one piece to this day (unusual in our house!). Teapot, cups and saucers, we didn’t use ten gallon mugs in those days, dinner plates, side plates, cereal or fruit bowls, milk jug, sugar bowl you name it. All of it had to come out and be its sparkling best for Christmas day dinner and tea.
Seeing sense!
After a few Christmases of being an idiot and copying my mum, I decided I was a silly fool. I was doing things that didn’t need doing and stopped doing them when I realised it wasn’t necessary. How many of you good people out there did the same, I wonder? Or was it a Yorkshire custom.
Now that I’m in my dotage (I’m not really) I have the laziest, easiest Christmas you could imagine. It suits me just fine. After all, we can’t live in the past forever can we!!
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