Unusual household chores

Gregor Samsa

I get my kids to tidy up, set the dinner table, hang up washing - normal stuff. But it got me thinking about some of the weird household chores I had to do as a kid.

One was chopping wood. From a young age (8 or 9) I'd be sent out into the back garden with a hatchet to chop sticks for the fire. I grew up in a terraced house on the northside of Dublin in the 70s and 80s, and I've no idea where the wood that I was chopping came from - they weren't full logs, just big chunks of wood that had to be chopped down to size. I had callouses on my hand from it. Used to enjoy that job, actually.

Another was emptying mouse traps. We'd regularly get mice coming into the house (old terraced houses with wooden floors, and there were empty fields behind us at the time). Not sure why my dad didn't do it, but my mother was absolutely terrified of mice, alive or dead. So from a very young age (about 7), I'd be sent to empty the trap if one went off. I remember one time the mouse had bitten hard around the little metal loop that you push the bait onto. I was trying to pull the dead mouse off the trap by the tail, and he just kept stretching and stretching until he was about 3 times his normal length - like a furry Stretch Armstrong toy. I didn't want it to snap and send mouse guts all over the place, so I ended up having to smash his little teeth with a screwdriver to get him off. I can't imagine asking my kids now to have to do stuff like that.

But I think the most bizarre chore that fell to me was catching magpies in our living room. This would happen 3 or 4 times a year. We had a really big tree in the front garden, which magpies would nest in. Every spring, as the fledglings were learning to fly, they'd hop from the tree to the roof of the house, and make their way up to the chimney. There was no bird guard on it, so often they'd fall down, and end up in the front room. When my mother would hear the commotion of a bird flapping all around the room, violently bouncing off the window trying to get out, I'd be called for. I had made my own butterfly net, out of a wire coat hanger and that orange sacking that big bags of onions used to come in, so sometimes I'd use that to catch the bird. Other times I'd go in with a coat and try to throw it over the bird and scoop it up gently. Then I'd bring it out the front and let it go to it's distressed mother, all while my distressed mother stood by the door, doing that little panicked dance like she badly needed to go to the toilet.

These all seemed like perfectly normal things to have to do at the time - just everyday tasks that I was expected to help out with.

Did you have any weird household chores you had to do?

YellowLead

Mine aren’t weird, but I chopped wood too. Grew up on a farm so shoveled sh*t, brought the cows in, spread fertiliser seeds with my hands, loaded up trailers with hay, fed calves, watered vegetables etc. Had a lot of inside jobs too including shining stuff with brasso.

I try and get my son to do stuff but he does feck all in comparison to what I did, which I like to remind him of lol.

We had bats hibernating in our house, sometimes they’d freak out and flap around the room in circles like crazy, scary stuff.

cj maxx

Not unusual but picking mushrooms from a meadow down the fields, setting snares for rabbits, taking any rabbits not eaten to a neighbour on my bike for sale, picking blackberries for jam, catching and turning, ,then footing and clamping then bagging turf, and taking the bags the 3/4 of a mile to the road then on the 15, maybe more , miles home on the top of a silage trailer , packed to the gills, home then unloading them,( I loved the bog ) . Maybe take a spin on the bike if we were getting oil to make sure there were no guards/customs on the road.All in all ,nothing strange .😀

Graces7

I was always first home from school from five years old ...tasks were added as U grew older .Before the others came in I had to peel the potatoes for the evening meal, lay and light the fire.... set the table.... Oh and when we had a coal delivery it was my job to count the sacks as the men delivered them - in full view of them. Sweeping up after the privet hedge had been cut..

ablelocks

had to kill mice/rats in a stables

shining stuff with brasso - had forgotten about that. huge copper canopy over the fireplace had to be done every week.

built a grain silo one summer in the loft of a hay shed. there's a german man now who probably recounts the time he was sent to ireland to learn english and spent 3 weeks building a hand made silo and going home fluent in cursing, but not english

raised 2 lambs in our kitchen - then they were sent to the butcher and one sunday my dad says i wonder is this Maisy's or Daisy's leg?

picking **** stones after the land was reclaimed. every day for weeks and weeks of a summer

doing the hay by hand another summer - machine cut but there was only short few days of good weather so no farmer was able to come and turn / save it. we did everything the old fashioned way and learnt how to turn it and pike it. All 10 acres of it

wire fencing - installing it, repairing it, moving it, moving it back to where it was in the first place.

o1s1n

Wouldn't say unusual but definitely not something kids do now, it was up to me to keep the coal bucket beside the fire full will coal from the bunker out the back.

Used to hate having to go out and get it in the winter months. Would come back in freezing looking like something out of a Charles Dickens story.

Crocodile Booze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118898527#Comment_118898527

Yeah, the Brasso was my job. It was a used as a verb: e.g go out and Brasso the brasses.

Absolute murder in the house if you used too much Brasso btw.

Space Dog

Sweeping the footpath/street gutters outside the house.

Cleaning the windows - can't picture any parents telling their children to clean the windows nowadays...

That's in addition to more common chores such as doing the dishes, drying the dishes, hoovering, gardening...

dxhound2005

On three different occasions over the years, starlings found their way through the bird guard on the chimney, and finished up behind the enclosed gas fire. It is a normal chimney, as the it was an open fire originally. Everything would be quiet for a while, until they started fluttering and scratching. Obviously I couldn't let them die, so I had to get the gas man out to open the fire, and I caught them in a bag. €70 a throw.

The third time he said it was hawks chasing them, and they dived in through the guard, even though it looked like there was no room. Replaced it with what is called a Chinaman's Hat guard and no trouble since.

ablelocks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118898572#Comment_118898572

with our kids, there are jobs to be done because they live here - tidy rooms, hoovering, laundry, bathrooms, kitchen, dishwasher etc - we try to allocate those but it's getting to the stage that we'll have to do up a proper rota now that they are older and messier. whoever said it gets easier must have sold their own kids before they got to teen years

then there are jobs that get rewarded - wood chopping, painting, washing windows, cutting lawns, powerhosing gutters footpaths etc

I am in my bollix going to let them get away with doing nothing.

my youngest daughter told me today that she's the only one in her 6th class that has to tidy her own room! ffs, what kind of kids are being reared today!

Jim_Hodge

I opened this thread to list the unusual chores I did as a kid but after reading all that are listed already it seems they weren't unusual at all as others did them too.

Maxface

Was sent to the shop from a young age. No issue buying cigs for the parents at a young age. Was happy if there was a few pennies left where I could buy a few things. Struggle these days to get the same value from the same pennies.

ohnonotgmail

lighting a coal fire first thing in the morning. Can't imagine too many primary school children doing that these days. I got really good at starting it without the use of firelighters, just tightly wound newspaper.

HeidiHeidi

Washing windows, shining the shoes for the entire family on Saturday evening for Sunday mass, doing the brasses, chopping the topiary hedge with deer heads, antlers and all, painting the very ornate railings (not that often, thankfully.

Down West to help save the hay and turf for the relatives for a week after our actual holiday in Lough Key, used to have to get water from the well and parish pump when we were very young.

If you tried telling kids to do that kind of stuff today, they'd be on to Childline!!

cj maxx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118899264#Comment_118899264

I'd forgotten about getting water from the ( own ) well. Dropping a bucket on a rope and carrying it up to the house. I used to be soaked when I got there.!!!!!

Capt'n Midnight

Pa had sent me out to get an extra pail of air...

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118903681#Comment_118903681

For someone who grew up in leafy D6, I can tell you it was some shock to the system every year 🤣 - no running water, hairy bacon, and milk straight from the cow 🤢

byhookorbycrook

Brasso and Silvio were my remit . Hated the smell of both of them.

My parents used to supply eggs to a few small hospitals, so Saturday morning usually saw me in a store room, holding the eggs up to a light to check for cracks or worse again , having to crack 12 dozen eggs into a huge container. I became very proficient at ensuring that not a single morsel of shell got in the mix .

Other eggs were beaten and put into large plastic bags within a cardboard box and frozen. That ensured a constant supply of eggs all year round for the hospitals .

We used to raise turkeys too and I was often asked to keep the feathered wings for people as they used them to sweep up ash from fires - it didn’t matter if they got a little bit singed , though the smell of burning feathers was awful.

mrsdewinter

Let's see: not so much a regular chore but like many a child of the 1980s, I remember being got out of bed early on cold mornings to push cars that wouldn't start.

What became second nature was the rigmarole we had to go through when the boiler was in its last legs: turn on heat switch in hall, troop out to boiler room in garage, wait for boiler to give up the ghost, press some button, give it a few minutes. If it switched itself off again within 5 mins, say, remove front of panel, wipe clean some sort of photosensitive cell (?? I think??) and press the button once more in the hopes that the heating stayed on this time. All of this in the winter cold (no central heating on during summer months, obvs).

I hate the cold more than anything, so all of this was torture for me. I don't know about young people today but I think I would DIE if I had to do this now.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118904694#Comment_118904694

Everyone looking at the boiler with the type of anguished expression you normally only see around a death bed! 😂😂

In my own home, lots of chores but normal. It was the farmwork at granny's that was mad. Can't get over how utterly dangerous so much of it was. I'd imagine it's all much safer nowadays.

Strumms

The biggest pain in the ass chore was cutting the grass… we lived on a corner house on the apex of a hill and the left front garden had a big palm type tree so you’d need to gather up and bag all the discarded palms or they could wreck the lawnmower.

the lawnmower was about 35 kilograms in weight im guessing so for a 12 year old pushing it uphill through thickish grass was poxy… poxy that my parents after me working hard, or well, a bit in school all week had me out doing that on what was my day off, trying to speedily do it before 3.00 and the live football on telly….then when you’d get done having to empty the bag, then rake the cuttings and bag those…

im getting pissed off just thinking about it….

I was pretty lucky. Mowing the lawn was a paid chore.

Didn't get paid for all the summer days getting up at 4am to do the bread run with dad, though. Carrying 15 loads of bread in a tray through a shop at 11 years old.

gandalfio

Sgt Hartman

My chores were keeping the coal bucket full, cleaning up the dog poo, cutting the grass front and back, and going to the local shop for bits and pieces. I was quite a lazy teenager so I wasn't very diligent with the chores, which meant I would get a well deserved ear bashing from my Dad as a result. I would get £2 a week which I would usually spend playing video games in the Vic in Limerick, or I would buy a Nintendo video game magazine.

Ubbquittious

We used to have bees so just as I was going back to school we would harvest the honey. I used to remove the cover off the honeycombs with fork (https://www.mzfort.com/items/OT00129/1.jpg) and put in the honey extractor. The honey extractor was manual so you had to swing it around by hand, if you swung it too fast the frames would get damaged and you'd little bits of honeycomb mixed in with the honey. U had to be fierce careful to keep the door of the shed closed or bees would discover the honey and the whole place would fill up with bees reclaiming their stolen honey when you get back