HOUSEHOLD TIPS NOT FOUND IN WOMAN'S WEEKLY

[Stanley]

In old mill pics you'll see blokes wearing white overalls. They were originally blue but it was a matter of pride for the housewife that her man's overalls were scrubbed clean and bleached each week so they soon lost their colour.

[Stanley]

Covering food for storage, even if it is only a clean cloth, is still a good basic principle even with modern fridges. Remember the crocheted covers weighted with beads for the milk jug?

[Cathy]

Makes you wonder how many billions of dollars have been made from plastic containers and cling wraps.
Remember when Tupperware brought out their oh so clever food containers, and now we have untold choices.

[Stanley]

Tupperware parties?

[Tizer]

That made me wonder what the origin of the name Tupperware might be...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Tupper

[Stanley]

Good job he didn't live in Yorkshire with a name like that!
The standard wrapping for sandwiches was either greaseproof paper or a tin box. Miners used special snap tins and of course in Tiz's corner of the world they wrapped bait in pastry and called it a pasty!

[Cathy]

If my kitchen rubbish bin looks 1/2 full I get a piece of newspaper, fold it to fit across the top of the rubbish and push it down into the bin. It's amazing how much room is still left and will do it again before the bin is full. I only put 1 bag of kitchen rubbish out for collection per week. Recycling material is dealt with seperately. (My kitchen bin is 30cm across by 40cm high.)

[Stanley]

I have very little non-recyclable waste, probably one small bag a fortnight. I have an arrangement with my neighbour and put it in their bin once a fortnight. I don't understand all this fuss about the loss of weekly collections.....

[Tizer]

The information in the news at the moment is suspect, it's not an independent survey and there's some odd interpretation going on.

[Stanley]

Some jerk in the cunning wheeze department thinks that having your bin emptied once a week is a vote catcher.
In the days of open fires and pigs and poultry being kept at home, food waste was a resource and was converted into fresh food at home. Almost everything else went on the domestic fire including empty tins. The ash pits at the backs of houses were just that, everything had been sterilised before it went in there.

[Tizer]

Some jerk in the cunning wheeze department thinks that having your bin emptied once a week is a vote catcher.

Well the jerk appears to be the shadow communities and local government secretary, Hilary Benn, who made Freedom of Information requests to all British councils (or someone did on her behalf) and then interpreted the data for the Daily Mail as a way of beating Cameron over the head. For a start, not all the councils responded and therefore the reports are not justified in implying that families are having to wait an average of 12 days to have their rubbish collected `despite promises from the Government to restore weekly bin rounds'. And what's the point of quoting an average of 12 days? I'll bet no-one has their bin emptied every 12 days, much more likely some are 7 days and some 14 days. It's daft way of interpreting the data. The Government points out that Benn's report treats garden waste as if it should be collected weekly and this skews the data.

[Stanley]

I still don't understand why waste bins become toxic if not emptied weekly. Perhaps some people put stuff in bins that I don't know about. Think back to your youth, remember the number of flies there were about then? I think I've only seen two in the house this summer. That could be a good way of measuring the efficacy of modern waste storage and disposal.

[Stanley]

Used tea leaves scattered on the floor trap dust when you are sweeping out. There was often a tin in the corner of the slopstone with holes in the bottom for collecting them.

[Cathy]

That's a strange one Stanley, are we talking wet or dry tea-leaves, and are we doing this inside the house or outside on the pavers??

[David Whipp]

Damp ones... and inside with us...

[Stanley]

David is right. When I was a lad schools and public buildings used a proprietary product to do the same thing. It was infused with disinfectant and was used damp to trap the dust. The precursor of the 'Shake and Vac' treatments used on carpets....

[David Whipp]

When I worked at the woodyard, we'd scatter damp sawdust to slake the dust when we swept inside the shed.

It was quite cheap...

[Stanley]

Exactly the same principle David.

[Stanley]

I often think that the sight of our town street-sweeper Mark sweeping gutters, picking litter and emptying street rubbish bins is one of the last things that is the same as in my youth. If you go back earlier than this to 1900 and before the advent of paved street surfaces when the gutter was swept and the result scattered on the road again to maintain the profile. This included all the horse muck, phlegm and drippings from the night soil carts. When it was dry weather, the dust drifted about and contaminated any food not covered. How the hell did we survive?

[David Whipp]

Quite a lot of folk didn't, Stanley...

[Tizer]

Quite right, David. It's easy to forget that toughening up some killed off others. If we want to go back to `eating dirt' we have to go back to accepting a high rate of child deaths. You have to distinguish population from individual. Hardening up a population means sacrificing the weaker individuals. Not an attitude I associate with socialism!

[David Whipp]

I think Stanley's rightly proud of being a survivor.

[Moh]

I used to enjoy Tupperwear parties - still have lots of it.

[Stanley]

How about the Ann Summers' parties Moh?
The dirt off the streets. I don't defend the low levels of hygiene but only point out that with all the dangers, better immune systems developed and the results persisted until my time. Yes, I'm proud of being a survivor and my immune system, inherited from my parents and massaged by a hard healthy life serve me well now. That's why I don't have a fear of 'germs' like most of society today. I look back at what I survived and just do sensible things like keeping the sink and the lavatory clean... As I've pointed out many a time, the microbe climate in my house may not be ideal for everyone but it's mine and I'm in tune with it.
In those days there was a constant low level of infection but people were accustomed to it, some succumbed but many survived and left us a valuable legacy.

[Cathy]

Moh i still have tupperware colandar/strainer, it must be 35yrs old and I use it several times a week. It's bright yellow