are we raising a generation of nincompoops?

apparently kids no longer know how to use an ice cube tray.

btw i don't really have a position on this article but it seemed too good a thread title to pass up

I have a hard time believing this next year's crop of kindergartners are all going to be wearing Pull-Ups to school. Or, as my prof used to say, "the plural of anecdote isn't data."

i have a hard time not believing i'm going to be working for someone, some day, who's wearing pull-ups.

mark bauerlein lol

. College kids who've never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.

FYI these college kids existed in 1991

i can vouch for them in 2001 too, but then everything changed

http://www.amazon.com/Literary-Criticism-Autopsy-Critical-Authors/dp/0812216253

Same old kids-these-days rant. He mentions a couple of anecdotes and a bunch of stuff completely unsourced and is like "this is how it is."

Oh man, my best friend from high school spent his first four months of college with greasy, oily hair because he hadn't bothered to read the labels the first time he bought shampoo all by himself, and he bought conditioner instead. And didn't notice until the bottle was gone. That shit is comedy gold, imo, I don't know why we wouldn't want these stories still int the public sphere.

http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/42509/bush-furman

this is technophobic strawman bullshit, Bauerlein is a fucking moron.

ha the end of that article is actually kind of great

"That's our job as we get old," he said. "A healthy society is healthy only if it has some degree of tension between older and younger generations. It's up to us old folks to remind teenagers: 'The world didn't begin on your 13th birthday!' And it's good for kids to resent that and to argue back. We want to criticize and provoke them. It's not healthy for the older generation to say, 'Kids are kids, they'll grow up.'

"They won't grow up," he added, "unless you do your job by knocking down their hubris."

pretty much OTM as far as I can tell

XXXP naw in 2002 I saw several clueless freshmen doing laundry for the first time. I chided them though, not for their ignorance, but for their pre-9/11 mentalities.

they're complaining abt velcro in that article! i mean how old are these ppl

i kind of agree with him about the hubris, but guess what? sensible parents and educators have been doing this FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS.

geez, some of these anecdotes are more like, are my kids developmentally disables and I never bothered to test them? I mean "the mechanics of a clothes hanger"? i'm pretty sure all teenagers have been clothes shopping.

also, yeah, bauerlein is a hack

Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her “kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger.’’

okay what is going on here

http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/42509/bush-furman

― goole, Monday, October 4, 2010 4:49 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

this isn't that damning... or maybe it is. i've probably spent too much time with idiot soi-disant rebel academics to know anymore.

Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."

so you're writing a book instead of showing her how to use it? love ya mom!

we need to critically examine the social impact of this new cutting edge "clothes hook" technology imo

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/A-Strange-Take-on-Taxes/27199/

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/A-Simple-Question-About/27104/

Yeah, I was cracking up at "my kids can't use hangers so I figured I'd tell everyone about it rather than show them"

maushart makes her relationship to her children sound like jane gooddall's relationship to her chimps

"my kids are so clueless, they don't know how to do the basic household tasks that i never taught or allowed them to do growing up" y/n?

y, thousand times yes

or maybe " i had kids, hadn't an angle on my next shitty 'quo vadimus' societal epic, so didn't learn them shit about shit then wrote about it.

YOU DON'T NEED TO TEACH A KID HOW TO USE A HANGER.

Studies have shown that it is a skill people are born innately with, such as the ability to breathe.

SLOPPY CLOSETS - SCOURGE OF 21ST CENTURY ADOLESCENCE

good god, this woman, please teach your kids how to fold laundry, clean a toilet, write a check, and cook a simple meal before it's TOO LATE

xxxp to table

well, not the mechanics, sure- the concept, OTOH, still escapes all three of my brothers tbh

"my kids are leaving their clothes all over their room...i swear, with social networks, kids don't even know how to use dressers anymore."

"Twitter- Is it giving your 5 yr old boogers?"

fwiw "nincompoop" belongs on the register of endangered insults

"My daughter doesn't know how to use a can opener; instead of showing her how they work, I decided to tell everyone in an AP article so that the entire nation would think she's stupid."

I know some people treat their kids like playthings but this is all kind of cruel (and hilarious)

thanks to new technology, i can humiliate my daughter in front of an exponentially larger group of people than before in zero time

Like seriously, this should get linked to the cyberbullying threads.

facebook makes it so i can guarantee every single acquaintance of hers knows how much i love little sugar bear

nincompoop btw, from "non compos mentis" = "not of sound mind"

so "are we raising a generation of retards?" is the question posed here, pretty much

But the answer to that is always y

No one at my office seems capable of putting the folded paper towels INTO the wall dispenser, which only requires pushing one plastic button to release the swing-away front. There are no springs, complicated fasteners, dual-action processes requiring two hands -- Christ, the whole thing only requires one finger-touch. And yet.

We give these people salaries, and computers, and trust them with entire sales accounts. I do not understand.

So answer to thread question is pretty much yeah?

On the flip side, I've had to wipe my hands on my pants because even though there's paper visible in the window, the batteries in the dispenser have gone dead and the paper's locked up inside.

"my daughter tried to open a can, but i could see she was frightened. i saw her large bovine eyes widen with anxiety as her claw-like hands scrabbled at the can, searching desperately for a pull-top tab. finding none, she screamed -- a low, rattling moan of wordless distress -- as she slammed the can against the formica countertop, shaking with anger and totally helpless to access the solid white albacore trapped within."

poor little Koko Maushart

http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/42640/undoing-white-supremacy

Pp ours isn't even electronic! Or electric! It's just a plastic shell with an oblong hole on the bottom, like an upside-down kleenex box!

lol @ omg teenagers leaving piles of clothes on the floor. From the first time your Mum walks in then quickly out of your room in disgust, you realize you're onto something with this whole piles-of-clothes thing.

hangers how do they fukken work

I like the article's prediction that in ten years from now, there will literally be zero fridges without ice makers left.

from now on I'm blaming facebook whenever my girlfriend complains that I didn't change the toilet paper roll

Or, as my prof used to say, "the plural of anecdote isn't data."

I'm totally stealing this.

in 10 years, our kids won't even know what ice is

if i have a kid, they are getting so many chores

^^^

there will literally be zero fridges without ice makers left.

I would love a fridge with an ice-maker. Ice cube trays are a hassel.

I admit that at age 9, I was confused by how I was supposed to use this, but I figured it out.

http://www.legendcookshop.co.uk/images/dexm/xed17820610.jpg

Conversely, I remember my grandfather breaking two plastic ice trays in quick succession by rending and twisting them too hard.

This article and the "well take 2 seconds and show them how" examples it uses remind me of all the infuriating job listings that "require" prior experience with some software/task that would take all of 3 days to completely master.

making your own ice teaches you the value of a cold drink

Haven't bothered with ice cube trays since getting a water filter jug for the fridge.

this is technophobic strawman bullshit, Bauerlein is a fucking moron.

I think the same of Nicholas Carr, though he's at least slightly more academic about the subject, and I wouldn't call him a moron, just wrong. No matter what studies about internet use he (mis)interprets, his most indisputable evidence is still that he personally has trouble concentrating on long books.

any parent who teaches their offspring to be self-sufficient with non-electronic appliances must be re-educated, or if needs be, shot.

the young need to learn complete and utter dependence and submission, not archaic rituals.

i think the article really really dodges an actual relevant question--it's ok to not how to do something, but you have to be willing to accept the responsibility of learning. like, yeah, i didn't know how to do laundry until college, and then on the first day of college my mom showed me what to do. and since then i've done laundry!

all the infuriating job listings that "require" prior experience with some software/task that would take all of 3 days to completely master.

^^^

interviewer: "So Mr. snoball, you have 9 out of 10 of the requirements for this job, but for this role you also really need to have extensive 1ClickWebProduct experience."
snoball: "Well, that would take about an hour to learn that application."
interviewer: "NO FOOL! Why have you wasted our time applying for a job for which you are clearly not qualified! Get out of my office and never darken these hallowed halls of commerce again!"

"I'm going to teach my kids how to hot-wire cars and then write an article about the increase in youth car crime..."

xp OTMFM -- infuriating when the people who are screening applicants have no idea what the job even is.

To be fair, I've probably said to my boss, "Oh, no. Paint.net is a very intense program to learn. You can't just hire someone off the street to use it."

i think the article really really dodges an actual relevant question--it's ok to not how to do something, but you have to be willing to accept the responsibility of learning. like, yeah, i didn't know how to do laundry until college, and then on the first day of college my mom showed me what to do. and since then i've done laundry!

so true!

The issue hit home for me when a visiting 12-year-old took an ice-cube tray out of my freezer, then stared at it helplessly. Raised in a world where refrigerators have push-button ice-makers, he'd never had to get cubes out of a tray -- in the same way that kids growing up with pull-tab cans don't understand can openers.

whatever will we do now that children take advantage of technological advances - next thing you know there'll be a bunch of people who don't know how to crank start a model T

"Things you're kind of stunned your parents/teachers/elders never taught you growing up" would be quite a thread.

whatever will we do now that children take advantage of technological advances - next thing you know there'll be a bunch of people who don't know how to crank start a model T

yeah but there are like what, 5 Model Ts still in existence and maybe only 1 that is still drivable? whereas there are approximately 50 million households in the US with ice cube trays at last count

all of which is just to say that I hate counting ice cube trays

i would actually like to know how to crank start an old car.

let's ask our resident expert, Soulja Boy

Superman that Honda...

you just turn the damn crank ffs

goolja boy

cars are outdated technology how do I kickstart this jetpack

you're doing it wrong--just think about the jetpack and it will turn on

my children are morbidly obese, because of tumblr

Yeah not knowing about outdated tech is irrelevant compared to not knowing a necessary life skill because your mom has always done it for you.

Of course if you can pay someone to do it for you there's no limit to the necessary life skills you can avoid learning.

These kids are just optimistic about their earning potential.

Nothing more character building than working a horsedrawn plough imo

IF YOUR KID CAN'T USE A CLOTHES HANGER YOU ARE A TERRIBLE PARENT, SORRY

You should have used a clothes hanger on the kid.

Not really, I just wanted to make an evil chiasmus!

how will our kids ever learn to use elmer's glue and glitter, when sites like blingee exist

this article is like the parenting version of "smh"

TS: teaching kids how to hang clothes vs teaching kids how to get an ILE account

User Image
BrutalTruth69 wrote:
The media has helped to create a country of morons. When the masses vote for a person who has no right to be President over an American hero you know something awful has gone wrong with society.

I have a friend who has an 8-year-old son. That child has never been allowed a Wii or a Nintendo. He is not allowed to play video games. So at the age of 8, he is able to greet an adult when an adult comes into his home and he is able to engage in a converstion with those adults instead of sitting slumped on a sofa, drooling on himself while watching tv or playing video games.

a wii or a nintendo
a wii or a nintendo
a wii or a nintendo
a wii or a nintendo
a wii or a nintendo
a wii or a nintendo

the ice-maker in a fridge is a new concept to me.

kid sounds like a fuckin prick tbh

BrutalTruth69

truthsex

i really hope dude was born in 1969 because uhh

back in my day kids were using wire hangers to break into cars and give back-alley abortions and now kids can't even hang up their clothes. FUCK YOU, OBAMA

Born in 1969 or 1941.

btw my child is covered in his own drool and urine, because of nintendo wii

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EjIxFR8z50Q/SnPC26kjbYI/AAAAAAAAAFs/ZeQYXo9P8m4/s400/Canned+Feud+Still.JPG

kids unable to grasp the plot of looney tunes, what is the world coming to.

honestly, if you handed me one of those old fashioned can-openers

http://toolmonger.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/Bully%20Beef%20can%20Opener.jpg

i would have no fucking clue what to do with it, and I am a grown adult

it's a unicow!

Cosmo [Mona Charen]

Funny you should mention that. I was in the supermarket yesterday with my 14-year-old son who asked "What's up with Cosmopolitan? What is that?" I replied, "It's a magazine for sluts."

From time to time I impress friends and acquaintances by opening a can with a swiss army knife

In 1955, Marty got a bottle of Pepsi from a vending machine at Texaco, but tried unsuccessfully to twist off the cap. George has to open the bottle for him, using the bottle opener built into the machine.

my teenage son doesn't even know what '69' is, because of xtube

I laughed at my brother on the weekend bc he was made chocolate mousse from scratch and whipped the cream with a handheld rotary beater instead of the electric mixer/stick blender. (He said he was trying to be 'authentic', lol)

I am what's wrong with America

omg "he was made" wtf. language come back to me: "He. Made. Chocolate Mousse.."

he was mad at a moose

lol

i'm trying to think of things that i didn't know how to do when i came to college. i remember when i moved out of the dorms and into a house and it became my turn to mow the lawn, i kinda just stood over the lawnmower like \(o_O)/ for five minutes or so, then i realized there was no gas in it

p sure i didn't have any mowing experience cuz we didn't have a yard when i was a kid and then when we moved to a bigger property my dad cared too much about the lawn to put any of its fate in my hands

are you in a frat, j0rdan?

no, i just lived in a house w/ two dudes i met in the dorms

I didn't wash clothes until I moved out. I never mowed the lawn at home after my seventh birthday because that's what Mexicans and Cubans were paid to do.

you were made to mow the lawn when you were 6?

I didn't know WHAT to do with a push mower the first time I used one, when I was about 13. I had riding mower experience (those are so fun), but didn't understand the handlebar lever or the throttle or any of that shit. Probably take me a minute to figure it out even now. The adults' attitude was kind of the opposite of helicopter. They were like, "If the boy loses a toe or two, it'll toughen him up."

i did a really terrible job mowing the lawn, and then i was no longer asked to mow it

I never mowed the lawn at home after my seventh birthday because that's what Mexicans and Cubans were paid to do

lol did yr parents really use this line on you

also aren't you cuban

yeah i didn't wash clothes until i moved out either, but that's pretty easy to get a hang of -- even when i go back home i do my own laundry just cuz it's more convenient

actually also remember being befuddled by the dishwasher even tho we've always had one at home, but that was also p easy to figure out just by reading the inside of the door

yeah i didn't know how to use a dishwasher until this year--never had one before

i didn't wash clothes until i moved out either, but that's pretty easy to get a hang of

After a couple of episodes of turning everything pink, anyway.

my brother went to college when I was 12 so I had 6 glorious years of mowing approx. an acre of land by myself with a push mower

When I was 6, there was a 7 year old on my street whose parents made him mow the lawn. I was so jealous. Mine didn't let me until I was 10, which looking back is a much more appropriate age for handling a whirling blade of death.

I have never envied anyone doing something that looked sweatier that what I did.

i believe my mom literally said to me, "Now that you're going to college, I have to teach you how to wash your clothes." And then she taught me.

I mean, I know Susan Maushart hopes her kids telepathically pick up this information, but sometimes you have to have a 5 minute conversation with them

And you know what, even if every parent was as shitty as Susan, kids today at least now have the skills to GOOGLE "How do I wash my clothes"

actually I had to mow the lawn, dust, vacuum, clean the bathroom, sweep and mop the kitchen, clean the counters, wash the dishes by hand (no dishwasher), take out the trash, do laundry every other week and cook at least twice a week

my parents sort of viewed kids as indentured servants

i believe my mom literally said to me, "Now that you're going to college, I have to teach you how to wash your clothes." And then she taught me.

Yeah, I got that too. Also with cooking.

Yeah, but with laundry, I knew the correct way to sort things, but had to learn the hard way. I was like, "Hey, how bad could throwing everything in together possibly be?" This was because I'd never actually seen what happens, because my mother did it properly.

you were made to mow the lawn when you were 6?

actually, I'm pretty sure it was part of my chores, for which I got an allowance (also: vacuuming the car [ugh], taking the trash in and out, etc).

Man, I wish I still got paid for doing that shit.

They make detergent for cold water washing, you know.

oh god vacuuming the car sucked so much

ts: nooks v. crannies

when there were 3 of us at home, dividing labor among the kids made sense because no one got overwhelmed with chores

when I was the only one left and my parents had grown accustomed to making "the kids" do everything, that kind of sucked

actually one area of adult responsibility that i mostly felt totally lost on was shit involving my car that i gave to my brother this summer -- i THINK i could put a spare in place of a flat tire but i always just defaulted to getting it towed, also i always felt overwhelmed when having to deal w/ shit like fluids and oil and what not. even when i'd take it for a routine service i'd always just be all "uh, sure, do all that \(o_O)/" when they would hand me the list of things that they wanted to fix on the car

i think my grandfather taught my dad some car shit but he never really passed it on to me

shit is a hassle tho

we had a 60s-era kirby vacuum that seemed to weigh 30 pounds, sounded like a jet taking off, and i was supposed to maneuver this thing into all the tight spaces in the car.

that vacuum JUST died last month according to my mom.

i learned a lot of baseline handy stuff & lots of cooking/cleaning just from working jobs

my parents did teach me a shit-ton of stuff; I don't think I realized most 13-year-olds couldn't do their own laundry until I got to college and met 17/18-year-olds who couldn't

Man, this whole generation of kids raised on computers don't even know how to operate a word processor.

Touch-tone phones have made us too lazy to dial on rotaries!

Yeah Mum had us doing a lot of stuff from an early age, bc she worked part time and Dad worked full-time so extra hands helped keep the house spic n span. We'd get an allowance for hanging out the laundry, folding clothes, vaccuuming, cleaning the bathroom, stuff like that. My brother & sister mowed the lawn, I only did it a couple of times, but I knew how to use the mower if I had to.

Not that I was jumping at the chance to do all that stuff when I was out on my own. I loved not having to make my bed if I didn't feel like it, lol.

on the other hand, I was never taught to clean the tub/stall and toilet – I had to learn myself. I think my parents assumed that I knew this from watching them.

i learned a lot of baseline handy stuff & lots of cooking/cleaning just from working jobs

This. I learned how to clean my kitchen from coffee shops, how to sweep and mop and dust from working on offshore boats, and how to fold clothes from working retail clothing in the mall. Also how to sort my music collection from working at Sam Goody, but iTunes has made that irrelevant knowledge, by and large.

i havent read that article but has pining-for-the-old-days conservatism really reached a point where we are complaining that 'kids these days' dont know how to use a washing machine

i mean for christs sake

the first electric washing machine was invented in 1904

on the other hand, I was never taught to clean the tub/stall and toilet

One word: Comet.

Oh, I know now. One thing guaranteed to gross me out when visiting bros is watching pube tumbleweeds blow across the bathroom flor.

i would close the window

Car stuff I'm not great on. I know a little bc I drove an old, ye olde Austin that was my grandmother's in college and pretty much had a mechanic on retainer to fix all the stuff that was wrong with it, so I absorbed some things, like checking the fluid levels and how to change a flat or things like that. But I wasn't exactly inclined to do much of it myself, even though I was interested in cars in general. And I mean hell, given the choice I'd be on the phone to AAA now in a heartbeat, lol.

i would close the window

or stop breathing

I think I was pretty well rounded. I lived with a girl who didn't know how to start the pilot light on the gas hot water heater and it had never occurred to me that someone wouldn't know something like that. Then again she tried to clean the shower with antiseptic so *shrug*

my 4yo nephew has to pull on his huggies pull-ups before he can show me how to re-size and print an excel spreadsheet to pdf

bathroom cleaning tutorial is a good idea imo, so's the kids don't die from chlorine gas

And yet, they should know that bleach is not the enemy. It's a tool. Like a gun. Bleach doesn't kill people... etc

actually I had to mow the lawn, dust, vacuum, clean the bathroom, sweep and mop the kitchen, clean the counters, wash the dishes by hand (no dishwasher), take out the trash, do laundry every other week and cook at least twice a week

my parents sort of viewed kids as indentured servants

Ohhh yeah. You think it's a joke: "Dishwasher? Sure, I've got four of 'em!" until you realize the full scope. I'm pretty sure most of my peers (if they didn't live on farms) didn't have the kind of chore demands that we were subject to. HOWEVER you have to realize it could also take any of us ALL DAY to do a particularly hated task even if it only would have taken AN HOUR at regular speed. So realize that ymmv between adult perspective and the childhood imagining of exactly how torturous cleaning your room would be.

we had a 60s-era kirby vacuum that seemed to weigh 30 pounds, sounded like a jet taking off

THIS THIS THIS^^^ My dad found it in a junkyard, I'm pretty sure, and said to himself those fateful little words: "I CAN FIX THIS!" And fix it he could.

I specifically recall that he kept our vacuum, our refrigerator, our washer & dryer, and occasionally our cars, repaired and running with parts that could be found in junkyards.

actually one area of adult responsibility that i mostly felt totally lost on was shit involving my car that i gave to my brother this summer -- i THINK i could put a spare in place of a flat tire but i always just defaulted to getting it towed, also i always felt overwhelmed when having to deal w/ shit like fluids and oil and what not. even when i'd take it for a routine service i'd always just be all "uh, sure, do all that \(o_O)/" when they would hand me the list of things that they wanted to fix on the car

Ha, on more than one occasion I've been piled on for posting basically the same thing, but y'know, whatever.

AAA is a useful membership, worth the $50 a year.

i was never given any chores growing up, and there was always someone -- either a relative or paid employee -- to clean up after me in most situations. it took a long tike in my late teens / early 20s to just learn and habitualize these adult daily living skills. and while i probably would have hated it at the time, i sorta wish i had been given more chores / self-care responsibilities as a kid because at least i would have learned sooner that i *can* do this shit, as opposed to dealing with the lingering, impotent feeling of 'learned helplessness.'

Dan, I'm amazed that yr parents expected you to COOK? Could you make whatever you wanted?? Did they actually eat it in good faith, like, okay we made him do this, we will eat the honest mistakes however gritty/grey/overcooked/etc???

My mom wouldn't have allowed any of us within 3 feet of the stove unless we were only cooking for ourselves and not the rest of the family.

sorta playing off something Laurel said above, the thing about giving kids lots of chores is that it's a pain in the ass to monitor them, & to get them to do them right. The point of its being a chore is that they don't really give a shit about what they're doing (o/w it would be something they wanted to do, rather than were required to do). & if you don't want to do something, you're likely going to do a shitty job of it. So it's often just a lot easier as a parent to do shit yourselves.

That being said, I'm looking forward to the day, coming soon I hope, when we can either move to a place w/o a yard, or can give lawn-mowing to the kids, because I hate moving the lawn soooo much, but am under the impression that plenty of people think it's only a moderately annoying, or even mildly therapeutic, chore.

I need to ask my parents why they insist on doing heavy yard work (pruning hedges, trimming the tree, planting) yet will pay someone $15 every two weeks to mow the lawn.

yeah--i don't really trust most ppl to prepare a competent meal, much less 12-year-old HI DERE

The point of its being a chore is that they don't really give a shit about what they're doing (o/w it would be something they wanted to do, rather than were required to do). & if you don't want to do something, you're likely going to do a shitty job of it. So it's often just a lot easier as a parent to do shit yourselves.

yeah, I remember as a kid often intentionally doing a shitty job of some stuff my parents asked me to do just so they wouldn't ask me to do it anymore. I was a terrible son.

Or, as my prof used to say, "the plural of anecdote isn't data."

― Mormons come out of the sky and they stand there (Abbbottt), Monday, October 4, 2010 11:44 AM (3 hours ago)

whoa i'm stealing this

Nothing more character building than working a horsedrawn plough imo
― VegemiteGrrrl, Monday, October 4, 2010 10:46 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

^^^ Look at this dilettante, using a horse to move the plow! Thats not how we grew crops in ancient Egypt, missy! I swear, kids these days...

Dan, I'm amazed that yr parents expected you to COOK? Could you make whatever you wanted?? Did they actually eat it in good faith, like, okay we made him do this, we will eat the honest mistakes however gritty/grey/overcooked/etc???

Basically I could make whatever I wanted. Initially, my mom oversaw what I was doing and helped me get a handle on some basic recipes like meatloaf, spaghetti, baked chicken, hamburgers, etc. Once I proved I could make those and could follow a recipe, I was allowed to do what I wanted, which generally was the simple stuff whose recipes were easy to follow (I think the most extravagant things I ever made were pudding from scratch and beef stroganoff).

The cooking lessons started probably around when I was 9 or 10 and I was allowed to make meals for the family unsupervised by around age 15. I don't think I ever made anything inedible, or if I did it only happened once or twice. Scrupulously following recipes is a very good skill to learn.

actually I am pretty sure I was regularly making meatloaf and spaghetti in jr high but in terms of being told "if you get home first, you're fixing dinner", that didn't happen until high school

I did make a lot of sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies when I was 12 tho

did you figure out reasons not to get home first?

Well it's tough: I mean a lot of our chores had to do with things that, as kids, were fundamentally unimportant to us. At some point you have to realize my parents semi-defined themselves by the condition of their home & grounds & cars -- things being clean and in good repair, done to a certain standard, etc. That self-definition didn't matter to us one iota. I didn't even notice that the kitchen floor WAS dirty, much less feel motivated to wash it by hand with a particular cleanser blah blah blah.

I know some chores, NO ONE likes, they just have to GET DONE. But of course it's going to be more helpful to assign kids things they might care about the results of. Letting yr older kids make dinner for the family, for instance, could conceivably be a great chance for them to make a food they really like even tho nobody else does or something. Gimme that agency!

gotta say that mowing all that lawn with a push mower probably sucked, but it's kind of awesome that your parents had you cook

did you figure out reasons not to get home first?

yes, it was called "try out for a bazillion sports/academic teams/plays/singing groups"

trying to find ways to avoid going home and being an indentured servant is directly responsible for me getting into Harvard, no joke

We had a riding mower, thank cheese. I had to mow starting around I'm guessing age 14? A few acres, maybe...3?

I'm in the same boat as Dan, kind of. As little ones, Mum would always let us help, like stir or sift, or prepare vegetables (really little she'd give you a butter knife and you'd cut soft things, or whatevs) or stir the pot of gravy, and when we were a little older she'd let us make a dessert, or bake a cake on the weekends, or we would make salad or something like that. Then once we were in high school, she'd let us do a little more and a little more til you might cook dinner or lunch or whatever. When I was 16 Mum & Dad built a new house, and while they were off with my brother & sister most days painting and sanding and stuff like that, I cooked lunch and/or dinner for everyone. Mum was totally cool with letting us in the kitchen once we were old enough to do it. And I always did that on school holidays, since Mum & Dad both worked I'd have lunch ready for them when I got home. It wasn't expected/demanded, but if we wanted to she was totally down with it.

Right (xp to Laurel)---among my biggest fights with my father when I was a child were fights about when I ought to mow the lawn. I'd look & say, it's a fine length, we can let it go longer, no problem. My father would say, DO IT NOW. It just seemed like such a waste. But he hated the idea of us sitting around, enjoying ourselves, when he felt like he was supposed to be taking care of house-things during the weekend.

one of the funniest conversations I had with roommates post-college was one day when one roommate and his girlfriend came in as I was lifting up the top of the stove to clean it and they were all "OMG what's wrong with the stove? Is it broken?" and were incredibly puzzled that not only was I just cleaning it, but that was what I always did when I was cleaning off the stove and countertops

not that I do that anymore, RIP mid-20s energy ;_;

Also Dan otm about learning how to read recipes at an early age.

AAA is a useful membership, worth the $50 a year.

did they stop lobbying against environmental reform? someone recently told me Verizon has a crazy cheap roadside assistance program

my dad graduated from culinary school & while he didn't explicitly teach me all that much (there was actually a period in my life when he was running catering at a college two hours away that he almost never cooked at home) i picked up some stuff from him enough that i can feed myself reasonably well for like two weeks at a time w/o feeling the need to go out, i feel competent in improvising meals from shit i just have laying around and my i prob cook way more & slightly more complex stuff than my roommates

Dan, F makes fun of me for being "cleaner than a German". It's true. I used to curse my mother soundly for thinking that part of "doing the dishes" was, for instance, wiping down the counters afterward -- what the hell did counters have to do with the dinner dishes, for god's sake?!? Now it's like I can hardly help myself from getting out the stainless steel cleaner for the sink basin. It's a sickness.

And you know what, even if every parent was as shitty as Susan, kids today at least now have the skills to GOOGLE "How do I wash my clothes"

Whiney otm. A few years post-college I was pretty grateful I could look up how to tie a tie on the internet instead of having to remember my dad telling me how years ago.

Re kids: Or, like, if you want their rooms to be clean, maybe ask how they would LIKE to store their toys/clothes/books/action figures so that the process of clean-up (or just keeping it neat in the first place) has some reference point in their own habits.

but guys, you are forgetting times have changed, kids can't even open cans now

I'm pretty sure the majority of kids these days are still doing an assload of chores. Except for the ones who are either actually gainfully employed or are too sick/starving to perform menial labor.

TBH I bet kids who work at sweatshops still have chores when they get home.

So clearly they can't throw some shit into a storage box and shove it under the bed either? I'm confused, I thought this was a skill they acquired around age 12-14, because "under the bed" is certainly where *I* put everything.

we need a can-opening, clothes-hanging game on Wii

Kids today are woefully lacking in churchkey skills.

Large cans of grapefruit juice confuse and frighten them.

I can give lessons in many of these things, and would enjoy doing so. I charge by the hour, though, so if your kid really is an idiot, it might get pricey.

Ask a 15-year-old to prepare an envelope some time; you might be shocked at the result.

love this

had to do a lot of this stuff for ourselves from very early days, but weren't very good at it until shown how by an aunt that moved in with us when i was maybe 16 or so. was guessing at a lot of the domestics up til then.

they taught us how to do envelopes in school. I remember the lessons!

"dateline nbc asked a group of 15 year old to prepare envelopes, but we were totally unprepared for what happened next. the results of our special investigation may shock and offend you."

I feel like the one "life skill" I learned in school that I've never used, and can't ever forsee using, is how to add up a bowling score cared by hand.

Wait, I also learned how to make "butter" by shaking cream around in a baby food jar for seemingly the entire day of kindergarten. Never used that one either.

How to use a mangle. A skill I have never required use of, ever.

also this:

Had I not been there to help that 12-year-old with the ice-cube tray, she added, the kid surely would have “whipped out his iPhone and clicked on his ice cube app to get a little video animated by a 6-year-old that explained how you get ice cubes out of a tray.’’

i mean at least he's resourceful enough to get the information from somewhere, you sarcastic blighted uterus that calls itself a mother

btw let's get on this ice cube app thing, there is money to be made

iHelpless

http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-Ice-Cubes-From-a-Tray

ice cube trays can be pretty annoying tbf

holy crap xp

it is true

wikihow is an amazing website

omg I love wikihow

Things You'll Need

* An ice tray
* Ice
* A freezer

Honestly the ice trays we had in my childhood fridge were made of an older, more rigid kind of plastic and I couldn't twist them by hand, ever. Only my dad could do that. The rest of us put the tray diagonally the long way on the edge of the counter, then leaned hard on diagonally opposing corners until things popped free.

The rigid plastic also got brittle when cold, which is why none of our ice cube trays had the flat bits of tray around the corners anymore.

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Ice-Cubes-with-an-Ice-Tray
holy hell @ Tips

I'm enjoying this http://www.wikihow.com/Have-Fun-With-an-Ice-Cube

Fully close the freezer door

helpful web page imo

My parents had a really old fridge/freezer and the ice cube trays that came with it I swear were not in any way flexible.
Dad was the only one who could get the cubes out. The rest of us used warm water.

My friends had rubber/silicone icecube trays...now THOSE are great. Just bend them and BLOOP out come the ice cubes - sure they're not character building but they're not irritating as all get out.

My parents had ice cube trays that were made of rubber, and had a metal bar to support them so hey didn't flop all over the place when you filled them with water.

big fan of this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg9skPKr5xc

oxo should design some zero-torque ice cube trays though.

somebody once showed me how to make perfectly clear ice cubes. i forgot, though.

Has something to do with putting in warm water, maybe? I can't remember.

boil the water first!

yeah! that + distilled water

but the whole point of the article is that you should know how to remove ice from a tray, or use a can opener, or tie your shoes without being shown, or told, or taught, or seeing somebody else doing it

and that technology has destroyed our kids telepathic / intuitive powers

That argument was already ancient 40 years ago when my dad relied upon it.

at my last job i had a coworker who had been raised for a few months in the u.s., a few months in trinidad, a few months in antigua, etc., from ages 4-12 and never once attended school. he went to high school, graduated and started working as a stock boy in the store in which i clerked. this coworker was a perfectly nice guy with no intellectual deficit, but an amazing lack of knowledge about totally practical skills that it never occurred to me needed to be taught: how to screw in a lightbulb, how to address a letter, how to fill out a form, how to set an alarm clock, how to read a bus schedule, how to write a check, how to make a copy, etc., etc., etc.

http://www.wikihow.com/Eat-Pizza

i can see the romanticism and purity of say shaving with a straight razor, or tying your shoes with simple thread, but ice cube trays and can openers are straight up primitive torture devices that are just as cruel to the arthritic elderly as they are to the young'uns.

like this sort of content is more suited to your local humor columnist who writes about parenting or w/e, "these kids today, world sure is different" sort of stuff -- the level of disbelief & outrage in the piece is really the most confusing thing

I could have sworn I read this same article a few months ago in the boston globe.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Globe was recycling articles

this coworker was a perfectly nice guy with no intellectual deficit, but an amazing lack of knowledge about totally practical skills that it never occurred to me needed to be taught: how to screw in a lightbulb, how to address a letter, how to fill out a form, how to set an alarm clock, how to read a bus schedule, how to write a check, how to make a copy, etc., etc., etc.

How Do I Make Bagels?

Honestly? Not knowing any of this stuff and STILL going out and engaging w the world in a totally gung-ho fashion and stayin' positive is kind of a really brave thing to do.

I mean not when you expect other people to do these things FOR YOU and you show it, obv, but more like, it never occurred to you that there WAS "a way" to do them.

Our family had aluminum ice cube trays that used a built-in lever to twist the short separating section by about a quarter inch to free the cubes, but sometimes it was too hard to move so we had to run warm water over the tray to free them. When we finally got plastic ones I thought they were genius.

http://www.wikihow.com/Bake-Cookies-on-Your-Car-Dashboard

yeah, i had a lot of respect for him. he'd been snookered into a green-card marriage by a russian harridan he met at an adult-ed class, who told him he owed her 50% of what he made at work, because that's how marriage works. he paid up even after we told him he was being taken for a ride, and explained – methinks ruefully - that he was just 'an all-fashion romantic' :(

poor tony

http://www.wikihow.com/Open-the-Hood-of-a-Vehicle

i'm 25 and i remember feeling like an idiot because i didn't know how to do this by the time i got my own car in high school

Wait, I also learned how to make "butter" by shaking cream around in a baby food jar for seemingly the entire day of kindergarten. Never used that one either.

I tried this recently and although glad I did, the result was two jars of manky butter left in the fridge until we moved out of the house last week. I don't really have the arms for that kind of activity.

Knowing how to make your own butter would really only come in handy if you happened to have a spare pint of cream whilst in need of butter. This is never the case.

Okay, my girlfriend found it: an earlier, SLIGHTLY BETTER (OR WORSE) iteration of the article that inspired this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnS4SMh4wBA

This might be something for a separate thread but: a friend's Mum collects antiques, and we were over at her house one day with my niece 8yo niece. My niece spies an old typewriter (really old Royal, round spindly keys, open on top)...she stares at it and then looks at me & my husband and says "What's that?" I say, "a Typewriter". And she says, "What does it do?"

It broke my brain to realize that she'd never seen a typewriter. The weirdest thing is that when you explain it, "so you take a piece of paper and you put it inside and then you hit the keys and it puts the words on the page"...I freaking LOVE typewriters but when you explain it to an 8 yo, compared to a computer it really does sound like a ridiculous invention. It made me very sad.

i don't suppose calling it a steampunkputer would make it cooler.

eh at least that column finds fault with the boomer generation for coddling and sheltering their kids and not with "technology" xp

man the local gift shop is like 90% novelty ice cube trays, it is too bad they are redundant technology

when i went to university i found a site for adults with learning disabilities (no, not wikihow) explaining how to do things in the most step-by-step way, nothing taken for granted, and i chuckled to myself at its 30-step description of something mundane

then the next night i was having problems with something equally quotidian myself and cursed myself because i couldn't find the site again

then again, i did get through childhood without being made to do too many chores, mainly because i am clumsy as all hell, so any such thoughts my mother had were promptly followed by visions of me destroying precious or expensive household objects, then a rethink

How the fuck did the boomer authors of those Globe pieces potty-train their kids? Stand them in front of a toilet and say, "What, you don't know what that is?! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

What sucks about ice trays is forgetting to fill them when you're G&T is almost ready.

As in: you go to put ice in your gin and tonic, and you've got no ice.

ugh, the class privilege on display in that second Globe column is pretty amazing. For an overprotective parent she sure doesn't mind making her children look like total idiots in public. HI DERE otm on cyberbullying upthread

Mr Veg is icecube nazi. Refill the icecube tray on pain of death, don't take cubes out without refilling the empty spaces, etc or you will never hear the end of it. Am totally indoctrinated now, but I used to not care. BOY DO I CARE NOW, lol

How are those kids ever going to figure out how to kill themselves?

After skimming this thread I get the impression that many ILXors, myself included, did not do well in wood shop as a kid.

"You know, Mr. Tibbons, as excited as my mom is to see the bird house I'm making she'd probably be equally happy to just buy one herself."

Eh, I like hands-on stuff, but I replaced the power steering pump in my truck today and that shit is totally overrated.

On the other hand, boomer parents have been good role models for our children in other ways, including a strong work ethic and social activism. Our kids tend to be confident achievers, thanks to our obsession with education and, yes, ego. But danged if they can fertilize the lawn.

I'm having LOLs at all the guys who never 'needed' to learn laundry until their moms weren't around to do it for them. I am totally willing to believe this was not the same for their sisters. I was washing my own clothes from age 10 and ironing, too. I got taught folding and matching even earlier because my dad had that peculiar dark-colour blindness that required a second opinion on dark socks. We started cooking sweets and breakfast food pretty early - we were taught simple things like French toast and scrambled eggs pretty early, and how to use an oven. I was babysitting other people's kids in fifth grade and could usually feed them if asked.

My mom is also someone who bore a pair of indentured servants - the worst stuff we had to do was raking and weeding and shoveling snow, but we were yelled at if we didn't help out and my mom is the type of person who only shows a kid how to do something once before a wrong attempt buys a load of SCREAMING. So we picked up life skills to avoid shrieking. However my sister had a habit of never refilling the toilet roll, and my mom served the revenge cold one day after my sis was handcuffed to a toilet paper holder by robbers at their store - my mom was like 'if you'd ever changed one of those in your life, you would not be stuck now.'

Then our mess got to critical mass following my parents' separation and Mom hired a friend to be our cleaner once a week. Of course, this was my mom, so cue the act of 'cleaning up before the cleaning lady comes'.

my sis was handcuffed to a toilet paper holder by robbers at their store - my mom was like 'if you'd ever changed one of those in your life, you would not be stuck now.'

lol wait what

yeah, back up there, suzy...

However my sister had a habit of never refilling the toilet roll, and my mom served the revenge cold one day after my sis was handcuffed to a toilet paper holder by robbers at their store - my mom was like 'if you'd ever changed one of those in your life, you would not be stuck now.'

So your mom is completely insane?

suzy, i'm not sure i really agree with your thesis at all!

like, is she saying that this is karma for not changing the toilet paper rolls?

even my cat can remove the toilet paper roll holder

does your cat roll the end under or over when s/he replaces it, tho?

Xpost
I hate this article yet it is true. Although our modern gadgets are life changing all kids should know their common sense. And i cant beleive that teens are befuddled by icecube trays.

(That was Rufus - this is Maria): I think that article is horribly, horribly condescending. Isn't it the same tired saw? Obviously there's always going to be old farts saying kids don't know how to do stuff anymore. We've lost the ability to darn our socks, too.

Hey we can talk about how embarrassing it is to run into boomer retirees who can't do things themselves and have *zero* social confidence.

that sounds better than comparing childhood chore-loads.

wait til we start whacking them upside the head with our kindles. cos of the newsprint and state of the media lol etc. hehe and what have you

Children of today don't know how to collect stamps: news at 11

The local postage history museum here does have a "Philatelism 4 Kidz" program.

LOLLLLL you guys, my mom and sister run a business together and one morning it got robbed when my sis showed up to work. My mom showed up to find burglars at work and chased them down Excelsior Boulevard on foot over icy sidewalks, fell down while calling the cops and IDing the car/plates of dudes driving off, dusted self off and went to unhook Betsy from the roll holder. Et voila, open goal for smart remark.

I don't know if my mother believes in karma but she does believe it's very important to change the roll of TP when it's your turn. She isn't insane - her politics aside - but you really wouldn't want to fuck with her: once I was crossed by this girl who wrote me a particularly nasty note saying I was psycho and my mom was like 'bitch, if you think she's nuts, COME TO MAMA...'

wait, so your sister was literally cuffed to one of those spring-y telescopic tp roll holders?!?!

not telescopic; collapsible or whatever. u know what i mean

Wouldn't staying cuffed be the smart thing to do? (unless you could escape by open window or something)

Well, she'd just watched my mother chase the dudes out of the store, screaming like a banshee, so 50/50. My sister works like a dog but lacks various life skills such as the toilet roll thing mentioned above, and never using a phone book when 411 is to hand. When they started to charge for Information calls we got a whopper of a bill, cue the screams of doom.

My mom was also one of those room tornados: my sister and I shared a room and if it was mildly untidy, she'd dump EVERYTHING onto the floor and demand we clean up to white-glove standards. She did not appreciate a 10-year-old trying to turn this into a discussion on how illogical her behaviour was (I can still rattle my mom by going Spock on her). BTW this was all happening in the twilight days between her separation and divorce, and she was trying to run a data entry company with two friends, so we were Home Alone a fair bit.

one of the assignments I had my students do was to write a business letter and also include a stamped and properly addressed envelope (they are all around 19-20)

some of the envelopes were pretty lol

such as? (ie lols pls)

I dunno some of the addresses were written on the back of the envelope, nothing on the front

other times they would just be written on a random location on the front (i.e. nowhere close to being central or even left-centered)

return addresses written right above the receiver address

I have to say, the main one I'm not suprised by is adult men not knowing how to use washing machines/clean bathrooms. I have met FAR TOO MANY guys who this applies to. They seriously dont know what chemical to use on the tiles, or how you turn on a machine even when its freaking obvious like my digital press-button F&P one you cant fecking go wrong with.

And I think Suzy is right: I bet there's nowhere near as many women in that predicament by 20.We were all expected to help out with the washing/ironing/vacuuming/cooking. Well, I know I was. My dad taught me how to make gravy from scratch when I was ten, I've been cooking full meals since I was about 14.

When I was 17, I moved from the sticks to my dad's house here in Capital City. He had me start doing chores, such as running the dishwasher.

Only thing he didn't count on me doing was filling up the dishwasher soap compartment with Palmolive. Came home to a foam party.

It's like that SNL sketch from the early 80s where Gary Kroger's a Kansas farm boy who doesn't know how to use stairs.

My Dad can use a can opener but his idea of how a computer works is pretty retarded

I do believe that no white children will be named anything like "Beulah" for a good long while, because no white person can be bothered to spell such a terrifying thing.

I'm having LOLs at all the guys who never 'needed' to learn laundry until their moms weren't around to do it for them. I am totally willing to believe this was not the same for their sisters.

no sisters, fwiw!

Yeah, I was the oldest of two boys. Any boy is always a little boy when it comes to laundry.

"Sew a button? For fuck's sake. What do you want me to do next, KNIT?"

eh i've never sewn a button i must admit, tho i did learn how to knit in school. but never used it tbf.

Button sewing is a pretty damn useful skill when buttons fall off, I must say.

Also, it's a piece of piss.

it's the one and only domestic job where i think 'I've a gf to do that', not sexistly but cos she can and i cant

If you can tie your shoes... well, but now we're way back to the original article, I guess.

Most men can't sew a button, except of course they could if they looked at the other buttons and thought about it for ten seconds. In. Out. Over. Back in.

I like to put a little piece of thin cardboard -- say from a discarded TP roll -- under the button, to make sure I don't pull too tight and leave no room for the bit of shirt that has to go underneath it.

But what do I know, I'm a big fag.

I'm having LOLs at all the guys who never 'needed' to learn laundry until their moms weren't around to do it for them. I am totally willing to believe this was not the same for their sisters.

My mom "assigned" the laundry job to my sister while I usually handled dishes, so I never had to do my own laundry until I was living on my own.

yeah, I'm kind of disappointed that my mother taught my three sisters how to sew and knit but never taught me (well, I don't care about knitting, but sewing can be useful). Instead I learned how to operate a bunch of agricultural machinery which was probably more fun at the time but now I live in the city and am a computer programmer.

^ ex tractor fan

Buttons aside, the most important thing I ever learned about clothing is how to pay for dry cleaning.

Srsly, you guys, it's irreplaceable.

anyway, http://www.wikihow.com/Raise-Smart-Children

Half of those rules are also for your houseplants, but they're not wrong or anything.

http://www.wikihow.com/Eat-French-Fries

Sewing on a button is equivalent in ease and usefulness to boiling an egg or putting gas in a car.

http://www.wikihow.com/Break-Up-Over-the-Phone

I love the pictures for this one

LOL everything about that entry is hilarious

Or, as my prof used to say, "the plural of anecdote isn't data."

― Mormons come out of the sky and they stand there (Abbbottt), Monday, October 4, 2010 11:44 AM (3 hours ago)

Or, as my prof used to say, "the plural of anecdote isn't data."

I'm totally stealing this.

― kenan, Monday, October 4, 2010 11:43 AM (Yesterday)

whoa i'm stealing this

― k3vin k., Monday, October 4, 2010 2:21 PM (Yesterday)

Surprised neither of you have heard that phrase! Or useful portmanteau "anecdata".

I learn something new every Monday.

Be one hundred percent certain that this is what you want because once the words are said, that's it, the other person will be absolutely aware of your thoughts.

Oh man, is this the ultimate advice for posting on ILX or what?

Haha, I should print that out and hang it up in my cube at work. Or make it my screensaver.

omg this video http://www.howcast.com/videos/385987-How-To-Break-Up-Long-Distance

You will need:
* Honesty
* Consideration
* Civility

I'm having LOLs at all the guys who never 'needed' to learn laundry until their moms weren't around to do it for them. I am totally willing to believe this was not the same for their sisters.

My mom "assigned" the laundry job to my sister while I usually handled dishes, so I never had to do my own laundry until I was living on my own.

when i was nine i felt really horrible about myself because i was staying over at a friend's place and her family asked me to help out with laundry -- i didn't know what i was doing and messed it up. i don't feel so bad now knowing that some COLLEGE FRESHMEN are clueless about laundry.

xp He makes a chart, too! Apparently with the x axis as "length of relationship" and the y axis as "how much of a cock I can act like".

quiz show flat-track bully (darraghmac) wrote this on thread Homeopathy: Medieval Mysticism on board I Love Everything on Feb 4, 2010

the plural of anecdote is not data.

jesus christ am i ever gonna overrepeat this line.

do you guys differentiate between colors and whites? at my house I was taught to throw everything in at once and wash with cold water. my socks and white tees were always sadly grey.

nope

everything on warm permanent press

dark colours, colours, whites. there's always enough for one load of each tbh, wash at 40 or 30 degrees, throw a whitening sheet in with whites

RONG. Wash whites in warm water, separately. Wash like colors in cold. Most shades of dark-but-not-white are ok, if you don't mind a little bit of fade and bleed over time. Don't wash anything in hot water unless it's like infested with vermin or something.

xxxp

Srsly, though, have you ever seen a tag on a piece of clothing instruct you to wash it in hot water? What is the hot setting on the washing machine even for? Special cases, I guess. I have deliberately shrunk a sweater or two.

you should wash every garment seperately in cold water, or just dry clean everything.

which, y'know, is shite. fuck washing all that

think that my white tees all say to wash in hot water

with other whites, yeah fine, but tbh the whitening sheets are p good. save the earth maynneee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQYNkfmnHlo

I use hot water on whites, along w bleach.

Otherwise kenan otm.

I sort clothes as follows:

Whites - warm water w/ a little bleach, dryer
Colors - cold water, dryer.
Delicates - cold water, short cycle, hang to dry. Sometimes I divide these into dark and light because this is mostly work work clothes and I want to keep them nice and avoid getting white lint from a sweater all over my black pants.
Towels (to avoid linting up all my other clothes) - warm water, dryer.

Other tips: white vinegar in a Downy Ball for fabric softener is: 1) cheaper; 2) easier on your clothes; 3) helps forestall pilling; 4) helps towels stay absorbant by not coating it with softening stuff; and 4) if you are washing a bunch of technical stuff, like running clothes, this will help deodorize them and maintain their wicking abilities. You only need like a quarter cup of bleach to brighten your whites a little. Biz (US, I have no idea what its UK equivalent might be) is a fantastic additive for a particularly grimy load.

I love doing laundry.

I even made my own laundry detergent, which makes me feel like a huge dork, but I get all excited every time I use it. Recipe #4, here - http://tipnut.com/10-homemade-laundry-soap-detergent-recipes/

hmm bleach u say?

hot water for bedsheets? bed bugs n that.

You have me reading the laundry labels on my white t-shirts, damn you people.

"Machine wash cold, do not bleach." Yeah, fuck you, Ralph Lauren. It's a white t-shirt.

"Machine wash warm, use non chlorine bleach." That seems to be the the standard for everything else. "Non-chlorine bleach" seems like they don't want to be blamed when it falls apart, though. It's not actual cleaning advice.

the lice hate the powdered sugar iirc

What do I wash my hair in to get the mind-reading nanobots out of it?

Mr Veg does all our laundry, separates the whites & coloureds etc: I just do the folding.

Had to Google this: http://www.textileaffairs.com/lguide.htm

hoo boy

we actually have so much shit that we can legitimately do loads broken out as:

black/dark blue
light blue/gray
green/brown
tan/yellow
red/pink
white outerwear
colored underwear
white underwear
colored towels
white towels

typing this out has done more to make me painfully aware of how much inessential shit we have than any amount of attempting to send shit to Goodwill/Salvation Army

Kenan, you're going to make some Chicagoland family one hell of a Mr. Belvedere one day.

Nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVgKiadhVJk&feature=related

i mostly just wash everything in cold water (including whites) and bleach whites separately in hot water when necessary.

detergent of choice: arm & hammer powder, perfume- and dye-free

xp Does Peggy Lee sound there like someone that Simon Cowell would tear limb from limb, or is that just because she's next to Frank?

peggy lee is amazing. simon cowell is a vile twat.

I'm just saying, kinda breathy there, kinda half-assed.

Who needs nincompoops when we've already raised a generation of self-appointed critics?

today's young women just don't know how to pose gracefully in an elephant's tusk.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9tjvtbyQs1qbyf2jo1_500.jpg

There is something terribly wrong with the world, and I have just realized what it is.

elephant garters?

^ yes.

I'll take my book advance now, please.

Enjoy eating fries any time of the day as a snack

Every time I see this thread title I think of the Oliver Wendell Holmes quote: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

^ new suspect in the JKF/RFK shootings?