The Modern Housewife

We should prepare our children for the future ramifications of their online and social network behaviour!   As every action as an equal and opposite reaction.   As technology and analysis techniques get more and more advanced, so do the chances that your online comments or posts will get analysed and affect your future. You can already get fired for something you say or do online.   Imagine what the future may hold. Visualise in a few years; there will be an analytic application that will process every comment or post ever written by you online or your mouse clicking behaviour and the output will be your personality profile.     This may warn an employer not to go near you because of bulling behaviour, or tell a university you shouldn’t be in their top pick for Vet School because your pet bunny died of unusual causes when you were 7.   Or it might send a potential boyfriend running for the hills because of your internet stalking behaviour.   ...

I made a pact with myself recently, to keep myself and my house in a presentable state. Simple task you may think, alas not when you are me. Its not that I am a messy person its just that I seem to have inherited a lazy gene, when it comes to keeping a nice house. Add to that mix, the fact that I have a 2 1/2 year old little girl that is like a toy hurricane and a 4month old little boy to take care of. So I set myself the following rule: I will have the house and myself in a presentable state at all times. This means that anyone can knock on my door at any point in the day and I will not be embarrassed about what I am wearing or the way my house looks. When I say at any point in the day I mean after 9am and before 9pm any other time you may catch me in my snuggly PJ's. I set this pact with myself as I was sick of looking like a homeless person, who was living in a tip (ok my house wasn't that bad). We never used to get random visitors, we always had some sort of warning. So...

I remember on long road trips my parents would give us the "back in my day" speech and tell us how it was when they were young. They described that there was no TV and when they did get TV it was only in black and white for a long time. "Wow no TV" we used to say but how did you survive, what did you fill your days with. This got me thinking, what will I tell my children in my "back in my day" talk, what has changed over the years since I was young. I realised that it is going to be a dam big talk over multiple road trips, as so much has changed. They are going to think we are sooooo old when I tell them that when I was little not only were there no cell phones our phones didn't have buttons on them and when it rang we didn't just pick it up, we had to wait to see if it was our ring, as we were on a party line. If we called a business, there would be no automated voice telling us what to press or say, we actually got a real person on the line a...

I have fond memories of all the dinner parties my parents used to host. Preparing food days in advance, the whole family pulling together to get the already spotless house clean and tidy. The best crockery was brought out and cleaned. The silver was shinned up until you could see your face in it. Tables were placed together in order to squeeze 12 or more people in. The nicest table clothes were pulled out along with their matching napkins (no paper napkins in sight). My job was to set the table with the best of everything. Now was the time to test my knowledge on which piece of cutlery goes were and in which order. Crystal wine glasses were pulled out of the display cabinet, I tell you it was a magical time. Once the guests had arrived and kids had been shown off we were all shuffled off to a separate room with our chippies and TV. These dinner parties weren’t just a slapped together meal, it was often a four course meal. With soup for a starter, always rich and creamy. My favourite ...

Environmental rant of the month.... How things have changed. In my parents generation if something broke you got your trusty screwdriver out and fixed it, or if you really had to admit defeat you took it to someone to get fixed. These days if something breaks you merely throw it in the rubbish and buy a brand new, WAY better, one. In the process filling landfills and messing with the environment. Back in the day you could buy quality goods that real people had made with materials that normal people can tinker with and fix. For example my parent’s fridge lasted, if I remember rightly, 27 years (pretty sure that one was replaced on their 27th wedding anniversary and not because it was broken). One of their original pot sets has lasted years, and to prove that point I have now inherited it and it is brilliant. I remember at my granddad's house, his teapot handle fell off so what did he do, he screwed a goat horn onto it and it lasted the rest of his life. In my mum’s day, when you...