Civilizing details that you missed during childhood- share here

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up being the only person in my family using a washcloth, which I called "my emergency washcloth" and was carefully laid on the side of the tub for if/when I got soap or shampoo in my eyes. Otherwise they weren't ever used. I still don't use them.

The no soap at the sink thing is weird. I always start prepping a meal by washing my hands with soap.

I always just use dish soap.

That's for dishes, not hands. Come on, that's just basic washing science.

[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.

False. You can suavely lean on one elbow, gesticulating with the other hand. Perhaps holding a champagne glass as you do so.

Elbows off the table is a very old one. I can't remember all the words, but something like "Mabel Mabel strong and able, get your elbows off the table." Although it was only occasionally mentioned in our house. Five kids, blue collar, my mom usually had some kind of part time job and didn't have the time for focusing on the niceties.

I don't know why, but physical affection was scarce in my family. I have a vivid memory of visiting my grandparents when an aunt and uncle and their kids arrived, and one of my cousins--she was a year younger than me, and I remember her being maybe 8 or 9 years old--running up to my grandpa to throw her arms around him and him hugging her back and how astonished I was that 1) people really do that in real life and 2) my grandpa hugging her back, but I saw him as this stern man who would yell at us for climbing in the corn crib or building forts with hay bales. But those cousins were very "girly" and their mother (aunt by marriage) very warm and also feminine in ways my mother definitely was not (my mom always had self-esteem issues, I think).

I can think of skills I grew up with a lot of people seem to lack. Cooking, how to thread and use a sewing machine, canning fruit, pulling weeds out after a rain when they pull out easily, checking air pressure in a tire, tightening the opposite lug nuts when you have to change a tire (instead of going around clockwise or counter clockwise), connect jumper cables.

I was aware of the fancier things in life, mostly from books, but none of that was real until I left home. My brother, who stayed on the farm, is clueless about tipping. He took me out to dinner with his family on a visit, and when my niece and I told him to leave a tip he was going to leave a dollar on a $70 check until my niece (who is in college and works as a server part time) and I ganged up on him. He was genuinely surprised when we said 10 was the absolute minimum. I knew about tipds because I waitressed a little during high school although 10% was more typical in those days and not everybody tipped.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

This sounds like neighborhood pressure/conformity to me. I don't see how keeping your porch lights on is a matter of etiquette, unless you're expecting guests. I agree with the prior posters that it creates light pollution and wastes electricity. If you are concerned about safety, motion detector lights can address that. So if keeping porch lights is a custom, it's outdated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up being the only person in my family using a washcloth, which I called "my emergency washcloth" and was carefully laid on the side of the tub for if/when I got soap or shampoo in my eyes. Otherwise they weren't ever used. I still don't use them.

The no soap at the sink thing is weird. I always start prepping a meal by washing my hands with soap.

I always just use dish soap.

That's for dishes, not hands. Come on, that's just basic washing science.

You're serious??? For one thing, years ago I went to the ER because my brother dropped a large rock that hit my foot. Didn't break anything but it was heavy enough to crush tissue on the top of my foot (missed my toes, I was wearing flip flops at the time). ER doc specifically said to soak the foot in warm water with a little dish soap to try to stave off infection (got infected anyway as the crushed tissue started dying). For another, when I wash dishes in the sinki my HANDS are in the WATER that has DISH SOAP in it. For a third this is quoted from colgate-palmolive website (I use Ajax): "When used as a handsoap to wash away bacteria from wet hands, scrub your hands for 20 seconds and then rinse under clean running water."

I use lotion afterwards unless I will be actually touching food (mostly to avoid the perfumes getting on the food) and I have never had a problem with skin irritation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up being the only person in my family using a washcloth, which I called "my emergency washcloth" and was carefully laid on the side of the tub for if/when I got soap or shampoo in my eyes. Otherwise they weren't ever used. I still don't use them.

The no soap at the sink thing is weird. I always start prepping a meal by washing my hands with soap.

I always just use dish soap.

That's for dishes, not hands. Come on, that's just basic washing science.

https://www.epicurious.com/shopping/yes-its-okay-to-wash-your-hands-with-dish-soap-but-read-this-first#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20short%20answer%20is%20yes,no%20worse%20than%20bar%20soap.%E2%80%9D

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Not specifically an answer to OP’s question but this is related: how do you handle it when you become friends with someone who is missing a kind of basic piece of knowledge. If the person is the same age or older than me, I feel so awkward correcting them or telling them but have also felt like a jerk just letting the person keep doing something stupid, knowing eventually someone is probably going to point it out. Examples—friend who very confidently thought wine ages in the bottle so you should buy it and keep it as long as possible, even saving leftover uncorked wine. Co-worker who really needs to trim nose hair. Friend who, it became clear, does not tip for a lot of things normal people tip for (not on principle—I just don’t think he knows). Just curious—how do you decide whether to say something?

What do you mean? Wine does age in the bottle. That's why people have wine cellars. Of course once it's opened, the clock starts.

Oh god. Almost all wines are aged in a barrel with a very limited aging that can occur in the bottle. White wines are meant to be consumed within 5 years of bottling. Even the very best reds for continued bottle aging are not meant to be aged in the bottle past 20 years. People have wine cellars but they also know what wines go in a cellar and keep track of which ones need to be consumed before they are past their prime.

I think that a lot of people end up not knowing basic information because they are the type of people who say “of course…” and will never know what they don’t know.

Because those people have better manners! (I’m the type who will ask, but sensitive people receive that as a call-out so I have to make that judgment call first) What a “viscous” cycle

What are you talking about?

[Anonymous]

I can't imagine "Washing" without a washcloth. That's animalistic, it's 2025 people!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't imagine "Washing" without a washcloth. That's animalistic, it's 2025 people!

I think I read that many doctors recommend NOT using a washcloth because it's too rough on skin (sometimes one might need to, maybe after cleaning the garage or digging in the garden) and also recommend using soap only on areas like feet, armpits, genital area, maybe under breasts or in creases if people have fat rolls. I think this was in a thread in r/medicine. But it also depends on your skin (oily vs dry), weather (cold and dry vs hot and humid), age, and activities).

As for animalistic. . . . I have a husky. I bathe her a couple of times a year unless she has gotten into mud (one of her favorites toys!). Her fur is almost always immaculate--if we walk in wet weather muddy water will splash up on her belly and legs but a few hours later not a speck to be seen.

[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?

Oh boy. I seem to remember a DCUM Food thread where a woman was seriously stressing out over all the hand-washing involved in cooking chicken. Her process was something like: Get the chicken from the refrigerator, wash her hands. Open the package, wash her hands. Salt and pepper, wash her hands. Marinate the chicken, wash her hands. Put it in the fridge, wash her hands. Then ... into the baking dish, wash her hands.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

It wasn't me but I'm similar. If I touch raw meat, I don't touch anything else before washing my hands. I have a friend who is not so OCD as me about this and got herself (and only herself) horribly sick over Thanksgiving after preparing the turkey. I'll take the abuse for washing my hands too much rather than her miserable two days over a toilet.

She should open the package right away, so only one washing needed if she is touching anything else. But I would wash before touching the containers for salt and pepper and marinade ingredients. Put in the marinade, cover (or seal the bag, whatever you do), then wash before opening the fridge door. Wash after getting in the dish before touching the oven door.

My son leans OCD and sometimes he has helped me prepare meat for grilling (the only real cooking he does). He's kinda surgical protocols and worries about any drops that might land on the faucet, counter, etc etc. If I'm around he will insist on one person only touching the meat or chicken and the other person touches everything else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m the opposite, my mom taught me all these stupid little civilizing details such as “never pull up vertical blinds” and “no overhead lights” and how to fold towels on the hanging towel rack and use a nice pewter dish or towel-lined basket to set out things like bread at dinner , all while modeling horrific money habits and financial strain and moving us to a new apartment every 10-12 months and marrying and divorcing 3 times and not caring for the animals we adopted and on and on. All about silly stupid appearances and minor details while being an absolute mess.

My mom is a non-hand washer but ingrained all of the above in me. Add never, ever put a container on the dining table even if it’s just a family lunch. Also, pull the shades up as soon as you wake up or else people will think you are rude or lazy.

Once in a while DH turns on an overhead light in his office and I have to restrain myself from yelling at him. Our hands might be covered in germs but we can’t have people seeing that from the street and and thinking we are poor heathens!

I'm so confused. What is wrong with overhead lights? I thought I was raised with all the etiquette, but my parents missed this one.

I was taught they’re tacky and low-rent and make you look like you were raised in a trailer. Outside of the kitchen, we never used the overhead lights in our home - to this day they bother me and I don’t turn them off. It’s lamp lighting ONLY. I am not saying I care if anyone else uses overhead lights or that this is right, just that these were the kinds of “civilized details” OP laments not knowing that my mom taught me while otherwise leading a very disastrous life and not teaching important things because she didn’t know them.

All my parents' subdivision houses had overhead lights so when I got my own new build I paid for all kinds of built-in lighting. My house is sunny in the day and bright and cheery in the evenings. My family had the no containers on the table rule. We also had etiquette books on the bookshelf.
But we didn't get the overhead lighting or washcloth memos.

I have seen numerous posts from home designers and stylists recommending lamps be the only light sources. It must be coming from the UMC. Older houses tend not to have overhead lights.

[Anonymous]

When you wash your hands im the sink you don't use a wash cloth
. Seems to work ok

[Anonymous]

I grew up pretty sheltered in a very generically white part of the country. My parents did not swear, we didn’t have cable, and there really were no people of other races to interact with so racial epithets never surfaced even if a bigoted person might have been inclined to use them.

Even someone as unprepared for life in the big city as I was knew how offensive the n-word was, and through reading I had gleaned that there were also derogatory terms for other races, but it had escaped my notice that white people had bad words for other white people who weren’t WASPs. Imagine my mortification when a friend referred to “Mike,” and I innocently asked, “Do you mean (derogatory term for Irish) “Mike” or (derogatory term for Italian) Mike?” because I had heard some of the knuckleheaded boys in our dorm refer to the Mikes in question in that manner. Thirty years later I still cringe at that memory. Sorry Mikes!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't imagine "Washing" without a washcloth. That's animalistic, it's 2025 people!

Washing with a washcloth is disgusting! You pick up bacteria or dirt on the cloth and rub it all over your body.

It’s akin to a kitchen sponge. But a kitchen sponge is necessary because our hands aren’t tough enough to clean dishes. Whereas skin is soft and you don’t need a washcloth to get your body clean.

My husband uses a washcloth and watching him shower with it is funny. It’s simply unsanitary if you’re not used to it.

[Anonymous]

I keep the front porch light on all night for safety and always have, especially as a single mom. I think all homes should do this to deter crime and for safety reasons. I live in a "dark sky" neighborhood with muted street lamps and I actually dislike this aspect of my development the most because I don't feel comfortable walking after dark and I am in the burbs.

Overhead lighting that emanates from a boob light or a fan light in the the middle of the room is the worst. So unflattering and unsettling. Recessed overhead lighting is ok sometimes in a living room type room, or a dining room, though I prefer lamps. Overhead lighting is ok in kitchens and bathrooms, but never in bedrooms unless you are cleaning. But to be this is not about tackiness at all, rather mood settings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Growing up, we did not wash hands after the bathroom (but did before food prep).
My parents were also not knowledgeable cooks (as in, no one taught them anythingbut casseroles) and would do stuff like put frozen meat on the grill.

DH didn't know to use a spray bottle when ironing, he would pour water out of a glass onto his shirts.

Isn't the steam on the iron for that? I've never heard of anyone using a spray bottle. You pour water in your iron, use the steam, and then iron your clothing.