Snippet 20

Does anyone remember the way all rubber bands were saved .. or was it just my mum that used to place them around the light switches.. you know those big round brass ? ones.. there'd usually be a good couple of inches worth of rubber bands on a switch..lol She also did the sheets thing and the flour bag linings for the boys shorts.. and one year mum made my sister and I patchwork dresses. Then she made patchwork quilts for our beds.. basically rows of squares backed by whatever fabric was on hand and with a thin blanket in the middle for warmth.. we used to have fun remembering where each square came from..lol

My MIL still saves every bit of string, every plastic bag and anything else you can name..lol She uses butter wrappers to line cake tins too

then you got cakes with coloured printing on the bottoms from the paper..lol My old nana used to keep the cakes of soap in the hot water cupboard as she said that if the soap was dried out more then it lasted longer.. just thought about Solvol as I was typing about the soap..lol

I can remember my father entering a competition to come up with a slogan for Solvol lol, but he didn't win. A neighbour used to make new cakes of soap out of the old leftovers. She never used them, just bought more soap so that she had leftovers to use. Can anyone remember the first time you used shampoo? We bought a one-wash sachet each from Woolworths a couple of years after the war. It was the first time I had heard of it, and felt so special.

we used lux flakes for washing clothes and lux soap for baths

We had the copper & mangle & then progressed to the wringer washing machine but can't remember the Lux flakes. Think it was the yellow bar soap & the scrubbing board thingie & for whites the blue bag.

My nana (& I helped) used to clean the old country Schools windows with a bucket of warm water & newspaper.. boy.. didnt they come up clean.. and all that recycling.. do you think it was a sort of 'had to' situation ??? because some people lived in the country & only went to town say once a month.. the 'Big Day Out'..lol.. & yes.. mum used to 'turn' the sheets.. and my sisters & I wore the hand-me-downs.. we only had a couple of pairs of shoes each..ok.. maybe 3.. one for school. one for best & one for casual..and if we were lucky ??? we shared a pair of gummies..lol

used to hang around the IGA store as a kid.. I used to re-pack the cooking stuff into 1 lb bags.. things like raisins, sultanas and peanuts etc.. lots of other stuff too of course. I think just about everything came in bulk in those days. I never got paid though unless it was in the way of a few lollies or something like that. .. it was just something to do. The shopkeeper also did the mailrun and would sometimes take 1 or more of the local kids along for the ride including me .. I cant imagine that being allowed these days though.

Ooooooo.. I remember the mail run sometimes that was the only way I got out to nana's farm..lol

My Mother would clean my white sock, in a pan on the stove with persil till they were white on a cold moring would have the stove door open to heat the kitchen

have a story about a wringer washing machine too. I was about 4 and decided one day to help mum do the washing.. picked a hanky out of the water and proceeded to run it through the wringer.. oops !! didnt know that I was supposed to let the hanky go.. ouch big time !! my arm went through the rollers almost up to my elbow.. I still have a ridge that runs halfway up my arm.. the flesh was squashed flat and never did fill out again..

I remember when I was a kid we lived over the road from the sea, and there was an old Dutch man Charlie who grew tobacco. He use to have a dinghy and he'd take his net out and set it and then when it was time to bring it in, us kids would go and give him a hand to bring the fish in.

Born in UK, emigrated here in '67; I was evacuated from Birmingham to Nottingham at the beginning of the war - they didn't lock their doors either, the milkman came with his can right into the kitchen and scooped the milk out into your jug. Weekly bath, Sunlight soap, rationing, air raids, remember them all.

I remember my young brothers going to the back door of the butcher's shop in Aro St and being given free saveloys. I remember them walking to Oriental Bay and being too tired to walk home so one of the boat owners gave them some work to do to earn their bus fare. I remember ice-blocks before they had commercial ones. There was a little local shop near us in London, and the owner made them in little cylinders and they were just like frozen lolly juice where you could suck all the flavour out, and you'd have to come back in a couple of hours if they weren't ready. Happy days.