Household Items From The Past


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The only one I have personal experience of is the Goblin Teasmade.

I used it once.

I didn't like the experience of having this machine at my bedside and being woken up by the gurgling noise while it heated the water (20 minutes before the alarm clock was due to wake me) and then having it spurt boiling water in my face as it supposedly filled the teapot - which it failed to do as there was a piece of packing material hidden in the spout where the filling was supposed to take place.

The end as far as I was concerned - off to the jumble sale.

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We had a Teasmade when we got married. I think many people had them as a wedding present. It did seem like a good idea at the time but, as Jonab says, it was extremely annoying to be woken up twenty minutes before time with the gurgling and spluttering. It was rapidly consigned to oblivion. I don’t remember taking it to the tip though so it must be lurking somewhere together with all the other unwanted wedding gifts that people think you must have but you will never use.

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images-2.jpg

 

My mother had a Goblin cylinder vacuum cleaner when I was tiny. The one in the photo is similar but ours had a maroon middle and stove enamel ends. Apparently, a week before I was born, she was vacuuming the stair carpet, tripped over the hose and fell down the stairs. For a while, she thought she was going into labour but it passed off and I made my appearance exactly one week later.  I think it upset me though because I have an instinctive dislike of housework which I attribute to that Goblin cleaner!

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That Goblin cleaner of Jill's mother reminds me of a very similar shaped cleaner we had called a Calthorpe. It was on sledge type runners rather than wheels.

It was obtained for use by a neighbour who was a telephone engineer in Nottingham from the Calthorpe factory next door to the exchange where this fella worked.

 

Any memories, anyone, of an electrical manufacturer called Calthorpe or who made Calthorpe labelled products?

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Remember the 'Betterware' bloke with his suitcase?

 

Used to give away those little flying Saucer shaped plastic things for pressing foil milk bottle tops.  Saved you from those  'Thumb in the cream..  cream on the ceiling' moments.  I was also the official keeper of the one we had in Henry Whipple Juniors when I held the lofty rank of Milk Monitor.

 

The Betterware bloke also gave away little 'sample' tins of shoe polish and all sorts of basically useless plastic freebies which were so effective I don't recall what most of them were.

 

My mum was persuaded to purchase a 'Dry Powder Fire Extinguisher' from Betterwear.

 

betterware-fire-extinguisher-MW3R4G.jpg

 

It was basically a plastic bottle full of Sodium Bicarbonate with a little CO2 cylinder the same size as those used in Sparklets  Soda thingies.

 

Ours hung on the back of a kitchen cupboard door for many years in readiness for the inevitable conflagration.. until one day when I opened the door ( It would be me wouldn't it..) and it fell off  ..landing on its 'firing' button and proceeding to deliver a cloud of Bicarb all over the kitchen and me.  Oh!  how we laughed...  :Fool:

 

 

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The tater peeler thingy I remember, the inside of the drum was covered in a sort of sand paper and  when you turned the handle this would spin similar to the inside of a spin dryer, the spuds and water would be introduced and through the spinning action would effectively peel/skin the spuds, some of the things you remember from when you were a kid eh?

 

Rog

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I think there was a secret conspiracy with those bottle tops and Betterware.

When foil tops first came out (following the demise of the waxed card inner fitting tops of the fifties) they had a little flap which lay at the side of the bottle and which you could lift up and easily remove the top with no danger of finger in the cream or a newly painted ceiling. It was some time after the introduction of the foil tops that this flap disappeared with the need for the Betterware contraption.

 

I well remember those Betterwear polish samples. I took one of the tins to school to polish my desk at Beardall St Infants School. Mrs Ward and Mrs Hoyland (Headmistress) weren't best pleased when she saw I'd used black shoe polish. I thought it looked good.

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I not only remember them, we had all of them with exception of the bean slicer and the jumper board.

We had a Goblin vacuum that slid on runners. My dad also bought and attachment they went on the 'blow' end and had a spray gun for paining walls/ceilings. The result was somewhat less than stellar.

The Teasmade we used for quite a few years, the Flatley dryer also did some good service albeit slowly.

The 'flying saucer' bed warmer was high technology - it had a light bulb inside to provide the heat. The potato rumbler was not a success, the hose came of the tap more often than not so that had to go. The mincer, the mangle (my job to turn it), yup had those too. Grandma bought lavender polish from Betterware.

It's a sign that you are getting old when Betterware gadgets look like a good idea. I fell victim not long ago when I bought a battery powered milk frother from them, not my finest decision I have to say.

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