Civilizing details that you missed during childhood- share here

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of mine were cleaning related. I grew up poor in a home that was never clean. I knew that homes were supposed to be clean and what they should look like from visiting friends, but I just didn't know how to make them look that way. I tried my best and kept my room pretty tidy.

-I had no idea that sheets needed washed more than once every few months.
-I didn't know that most people didn't hang up their wet towels and use them again and again and again until they started smelling sour or like mildew.
-I had no idea that you should dust before vacuuming and that you needed to start top to bottom. I mean, yes, it's common sense but it only kicks in after you trial & error it on your own and then think, wait, this would be easier if I started up high and went down.
-I also didn't know how to vacuum! Mainly because we didn't own one 99% of my childhood. My mom always used a broom on the carpet before the landlord came for their yearly walk-thru and that was that.
-I didn't know how often you were supposed to clean things either. We never had weekly cleaning chores or even monthly cleaning chores. I remember spending the night at my friend's house when I was 10 and when we woke up that Saturday morning, her mom recruited me to help with the weekly cleaning chores and my friend explained that every Saturday she had to do x, y, z before she could play. I remember being SO amazed because everyone pitched in and within an hour, the house was so tidy and smelled great. I tried to get my siblings on board, but their attitude was very "why?" so, I started doing my own weekly routine in just my room.

I cannot stand any clutter now that I'm an adult. Everything has a place. I suppose I'm a bit of a minimalist, but only because any visible dust on items bugs me and reminds me of my dirty childhood home.

This sounds so much like my DH’s family. He is so clean now because of it but even to this day he gets forgetful about sheets. Visiting my MIL is hard because her place is so so so dirty and she’s a lifelong smoker so the house is so…tarry and smelly. It’s just not how I grew up at all. We had weekly chores like your friend. Our house was fairly clean and never got out of hand.

I guess on my end For some reason my parents never were on us to brush and care for our teeth. I didn’t start brushing 2x per day until I was in my later teens, embarrassingly, and probably only did 1x per day in older elementary. I mean my parents brushed 2x per day but just didn’t make a deal about us doing so. Bizarre. Luckily my teeth haven’t suffered too much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So a washcloth for every shower? 14 per personnper week?

My butt has its own bar of soap.
We each have our own bathroom.
I don't use soap on my face I use face wash mousse.

We use about 20 per week. Face, shower, quick wipe of face if you come in from outside and feel itchy? They barely take up any laundry space and we just throw them in with the weekly towel load.

I didn’t grow up this way, but once you go washcloth you can’t go back. DH converted with me and DD was raised as a washcloth native.

Sounds Japanese. Many use a fresh towel each shower time.

I’m not Japanese but I’m the pp you’re replying to and I love all of the cute novelty washcloths you can get there. DD collects ones with her favorite characters.

Oddly, we found that Japanese hotels were rather stingy with their washcloths, so I remain unsure how central washcloths actually are to Japanese culture.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:As I’ve gone through adulthood, I seem to encounter ways of doing things that aren’t even polite or fancy but just the basics that no one in my family of origin seemed to know about. Now I’m wondering what I might be missing as I raise my own child. What did you only find out about as an adult? (And thank you to all of my roommates over the years who helped raise me)

Some of my gaps:

-didn’t grow up using washcloths. We owned them but only because they came in sets of towels. I guess we just smeared soap around. I used to break out a lot and even developed cysts on the back of my thighs from clogged pores until I realized all of my roommates used them but me.

-not washing hands in the kitchen. We washed our hands after the bathroom or after coming in from outside in the laundry room sink. My mom doesn’t even have hand soap in her kitchen. She might rinse meat juices and stuff off her hands but otherwise she doesn’t wash her hands before prepping food. I only learned it was a thing from working at restaurants in high school.

DH’s gaps:

-didn’t grow up using napkins at the table. When I asked what he did if someone ate something messy, he said you’d grab a dish towel and then put it back!

-grew up washing everything all together in one load. Eventually everything looked pilled and gray regardless of original color or fabric. I intervened when we met in grad school because I couldn’t handle watching nice work pants get tossed in with linty towels and cleaning rags.

-didn’t know about mattress pads or pillow covers, so they get sweat-stained and grimy. Changing the sheets at his parents’ is a scary experience.

Washing hands in the kitchen is highly personal preference. Personally I strongly emphasize hand washing and sanitizing and am overall a germaphobe, but **despise** people washing hands in my kitchen sink and do not permit it in my house. The kitchen sink is for food preparation and meal clean-up; hand washing should be done in the powder room or other bathrooms. Why would I want people's hand germs introduced into the kitchen? Also, hand washing splashes water all over the kitchen counter which then needs to be cleaned.

How on earth do you cook? Like you cut up raw meat and then go to the powder room to wash your hands before touching other stuff?

I think this poster means you only wash hands in kitchen sink if you actively are making food in the kitchen or cleaning the kitchen. And I totally agree! It drives me crazy when kids or dh use it to wash hands for no purpose.

Obviously, the purpose is to clean their hands.

Then it should happen in a bathroom, the place for body/hand/face cleaning.

So if they enter the kitchen from outside and need to wash their hands, you prefer them to walk further through the house with their dirty hands, possibly touching other things, rather than use the kitchen sink… because??

You don’t have to touch anything to walk twenty feet to the bathroom.

What if the bathroom is occupied? Shall the person just stand there with their filthy hands like an idiot rather than using the germ infested sink in your kitchen?

(You sound psychotic, for the record.)

[Anonymous]

I didn’t learn about maxipads until I was in in high school and a friend told me (I used paper towels, because my mom used tampons and wouldn’t buy pads for me). I never learned to use tampons until college. But that was kind of just neglect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t learn about maxipads until I was in in high school and a friend told me (I used paper towels, because my mom used tampons and wouldn’t buy pads for me). I never learned to use tampons until college. But that was kind of just neglect.

Omg. How often did you change the paper towels?

[Anonymous]

So many things.

My mother never told me anything about personal hygiene.

For years and years I thought I was supposed to use a nail clipper just once on each fingernail and it should look perfectly shaped. I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong because my nails always seemed wonky.

Then one day I saw a friend clipping her nails and using the clipper a few times on each finger and a lightbulb went on.

When I got older and saw an actual nail care kit I couldn’t believe there was a larger clipper for toenails. Not to mention the 10 other unidentifiable objects.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a designer I understand the overhead light thing and my mom usually didn't use them, but when overhead lights are on dimmers it's really all a wash re: the softness and color.

We never used pillow covers or mattress covers. My spouse is a maniac about bed making so we use them now and I get it.

My spouse also came from a wet wipes family: they're at every toilet. They insist they are necessary. Can't say I use them, but we have them.

We did use washclothes but I don't like them and don't use them as an adult. We do provide them for guests if they want them.

My family taught me nothing about nature or wildlife or how to enjoy it. I didn't know about how to dress for the cold or for the outdoors. Never understood outdoorsy stuff or saw a trail marker. Didn't know female cardinals weren't red. Thought deer were scary and dangerous. Thought there were two animals called a possum and an opossum.

Luckily, I can say we're raising our children with so much we didn't have and we had a lot!

Erm there actually are two different animals, one called possums and one called opossums. The possums are in Australia. They are different, not just different names for the same animal.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I remember when elbows off the table was a trend. It was the 70s maybe from this jingle? We had to learn about it from a jingle, y'all.

Yeah, this no-elbows-on-the-table thing was taken to a bizarre extreme. And it was never a real rule of etiquette. It's rude to eat while your elbows are on the table -- you don't want to be shoving food in your mouth in that posture. But to put them on the table before eating, between courses, after, or whatever, is perfectly acceptable etiquette.

In a pub, perhaps.

But nothing but your hands and wrists should touch the table in an upscale restaurant or as a guest at someone’s house, particularly if it is a formal meal in their dining room. Lounging with your elbows or arms on the table just isn’t done. It is slovenly.

You know a lot less about etiquette than you think you do. Elbows on the table are fine in an "upscale restaurant" when there is no food on the table. Same with regard to "a formal meal in [a] dining room." Nothing inherently "slovenly" about it until you start eating.

False. You’re no longer sitting upright resulting in slovenly posture.

Etiquette is not proof you are a better person

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:No one in my family ever used a fork and knife to eat (fork in the left hand, knife in the right). We just ate with forks in our dominant hand, and eating Euro-style is very unnatural and fancy to me.

I didn’t know we’re supposed to send a thank you note after receiving a gift.

I thought meat should always be very, very well done.

This one is me. I work internationally and I always feel very awkward, but I'm too uncoordinated to shift to Euro-style on cutlery.

I grew up using cutlery American style as well. I've always had the sense that European style is more refined, but it feels awkward to me so I don't bother with it. How many people here use American vs. European style?

We use American, like most people do here, but I actually don't think the European style looks more refined. It looks (to me) like you're in too much of a hurry to put your knife down.

I think people are mixing up American vs Continental style cutlery usage. In the American style you cut with the fork in your left hand and then put the knife down, transfer the fork over to your right eat tines up. The Europeans don’t do the fork switch and bring food to mouth tines down, with the knife to assist as necessary.

I think either looks fine; what I notice is how people hold the fork. To me it’s such a tell when people grip their fork with their entire hand and hack at their food. No matter where you work or live, what you drive, or where you went to school, I assume of you hold your fork like that and stab at your food, you probably didn’t grow up a particularly refined household. It’s not that I judge, but I can’t help but notice.

We eat European style and I guess I don’t pay too much attention to how others eat. Your description made me laugh though - it sounds like the people drop the knife so they can shovel the food in with their dominant hand. I’ll be watching for it now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t learn about maxipads until I was in in high school and a friend told me (I used paper towels, because my mom used tampons and wouldn’t buy pads for me). I never learned to use tampons until college. But that was kind of just neglect.

Aw, friend, I’m sorry. I knew about them but my mom was menopausal and crazy and expected a month’s supply to last 1-2 years. I didn’t have pocket money, couldn’t walk to a store, and they didn’t have free supplies in public spaces the way they do now. I would have to fold toilet paper over and over to make homemade maxi pads. It was horrible and then my mom would accuse me of wasting toilet paper, so I had to steal it from public places.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t learn about maxipads until I was in in high school and a friend told me (I used paper towels, because my mom used tampons and wouldn’t buy pads for me). I never learned to use tampons until college. But that was kind of just neglect.

I didn't learn about tampons until 12th grade and couldn't get them until I was away at college. I had to use the same pads my mom used, which (I later learned) were not the right ones for my body, because she was convinced tampons would kill me with their toxic shock syndrome. I stole a tampon from the bathroom of family friends we were staying with on a trip when I was in 12th grade, so I didn't have the advantage of the pamphlet. Do you KNOW how hard it is to sit in a chair when you've shoved a tampon, still in its applicator, straight up your body?

I couldn't understand how people went swimming with pads.

[Anonymous]

I didn't know until I moved into our current neighborhood that you left the outside front door light on all night and on the weekends you always turned light on at the front of the house when people may be entertaining guests.

A few weeks after we moved into our neighborhood, an older lady stopped by with the neighborhood directory and a nice potted plant. She gently explained to me that this was "done" in our neighborhood. By golly, I walked through the neighborhood the next Saturday night and saw that most people were following the practice she described.

I began to do it and I noticed as new people moved in, they seemed to automatically do it. No one had to tell them.

I was raised in a "turn out the lights, you are wasting electricity" house, and I had no clue of this practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when elbows off the table was a trend. It was the 70s maybe from this jingle? We had to learn about it from a jingle, y'all.

Yeah, this no-elbows-on-the-table thing was taken to a bizarre extreme. And it was never a real rule of etiquette. It's rude to eat while your elbows are on the table -- you don't want to be shoving food in your mouth in that posture. But to put them on the table before eating, between courses, after, or whatever, is perfectly acceptable etiquette.

In a pub, perhaps.

But nothing but your hands and wrists should touch the table in an upscale restaurant or as a guest at someone’s house, particularly if it is a formal meal in their dining room. Lounging with your elbows or arms on the table just isn’t done. It is slovenly.

You know a lot less about etiquette than you think you do. Elbows on the table are fine in an "upscale restaurant" when there is no food on the table. Same with regard to "a formal meal in [a] dining room." Nothing inherently "slovenly" about it until you start eating.

False. You’re no longer sitting upright resulting in slovenly posture.

Let me guess -- you are one of the people who sends a handwritten thank you note to people who have handed you a gift in person.

Some of y'all really need to learn the actual rules before trying to explain them to other people, lol.

“Y’all” is really all I needed to see.

+1 NOKD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As I’ve gone through adulthood, I seem to encounter ways of doing things that aren’t even polite or fancy but just the basics that no one in my family of origin seemed to know about. Now I’m wondering what I might be missing as I raise my own child. What did you only find out about as an adult? (And thank you to all of my roommates over the years who helped raise me)

Some of my gaps:

-didn’t grow up using washcloths. We owned them but only because they came in sets of towels. I guess we just smeared soap around. I used to break out a lot and even developed cysts on the back of my thighs from clogged pores until I realized all of my roommates used them but me.

-not washing hands in the kitchen. We washed our hands after the bathroom or after coming in from outside in the laundry room sink. My mom doesn’t even have hand soap in her kitchen. She might rinse meat juices and stuff off her hands but otherwise she doesn’t wash her hands before prepping food. I only learned it was a thing from working at restaurants in high school.

DH’s gaps:

-didn’t grow up using napkins at the table. When I asked what he did if someone ate something messy, he said you’d grab a dish towel and then put it back!

-grew up washing everything all together in one load. Eventually everything looked pilled and gray regardless of original color or fabric. I intervened when we met in grad school because I couldn’t handle watching nice work pants get tossed in with linty towels and cleaning rags.

-didn’t know about mattress pads or pillow covers, so they get sweat-stained and grimy. Changing the sheets at his parents’ is a scary experience.

Washing hands in the kitchen is highly personal preference. Personally I strongly emphasize hand washing and sanitizing and am overall a germaphobe, but **despise** people washing hands in my kitchen sink and do not permit it in my house. The kitchen sink is for food preparation and meal clean-up; hand washing should be done in the powder room or other bathrooms. Why would I want people's hand germs introduced into the kitchen? Also, hand washing splashes water all over the kitchen counter which then needs to be cleaned.

This is such an odd attitude, particularly for a self-declared germophobe. The kitchen is where I am most disciplined about hand washing because it is important to food safety. Do you cook any meat?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Okay, will someone please make a post about how books in the living room or family photos are tacky? I remember these being inexplicably controversial items.

Books in the living room is tacky? What alternate universe is this from?

The universe where they belong in the library.

I have a library and I still have books in my living room… though it’s called a drawing room.

I'm not so affected as to call my living room a drawing room but I do have a library and still have books in my living room.