Nowadays, we talk a lot about living in a packaging-free world, consuming home-grown food, giving a new life to second-hand clothes, reducing paper waste, not wasting food, avoiding toxic detergents, etc. In the light of all this, when I think back to my own childhood, this is how we – the 50s of today – lived in the ‘blissful’ USSR in the 70s and 80s. Living in Kingissepa, on the 5th Floor of a panel house in J. Smuuli Street, there was a big box in our hallway with old and worn out clothes in it. From it, we could take cloths for washing dishes, dusting, scrubbing floors or even mending some clothes. Dad’s sports shirts, especially, were used for washing the outside hallway, which we had to do in turns with the girl next door. It was often done together, because it was more fun that way. The cooperative – that was us, the children of this staircase! With the girl next door, we also went together to fetch milk from a real cow, across a dark and cold pasture, with a three-litre milk jug in each hand. We always got to taste the warm and foamy milk. If we didn’t have any real cow milk, we had glass milk bottles from the nearby Tooma shop. It was my brother’s job to take the empty bottles back to the shop. And in a net, because there were no plastic bags. Or if there were any, we didn’t dare use them. In the shop, bread, sausages and cheese were wrapped in paper. You couldn’t get meat from the shop anyway, and we got it with the help of an acquaintance who worked in a meat processing plant. Newspapers also ran in our family. Dad was the main reader and more for the sports pages. The old newspapers were used for washing the windows as well as the toilet. There you had to rub them a bit softer between your hands before you used them. 🙂 The newspaper also went on the bottom of the trash can, no plastic bag. Worked very well, although washing the trash can was a bit of a nuisance. However, if there were still newspapers left over, they were taken to the basement, tied up and taken to school. The pioneers, including myself, had a competition among themselves to collect the waste paper. The windows were washed with mild vinegar water and the dishes with soda. In the summerhouse and at grandma’s place, it was easier to get the pots clean, because then you could use wood ash. We often washed the dishes in two basins, one with soda water and the other with rinsing water. I used to crochet a holder for the dishcloth in the craft class. This was a gift that made my grandma particularly happy, as it was much more polite to dry the dishcloth in it. It also dried very quickly over the wood stove. The summerhouse was an important place in our family, as it had all the garden beds, berry bushes and a large strawberry bed. My grandparents and I looked after them and that’s where our summers passed, and where the winter supplies, compotes and jams ended up in the old cellar. The grandparents also raised pigs, chickens and rabbits – still on free-range and rich food left-overs. All our family’s eggshells and dried bread went there. From the home-grown rabbits my grandfather had a fur coat sewn for my 18th birthday.

Whereas he tanned the rabbit skins by himself. And the rabbit meat steak from the wood-fired oven was mouthwatering! I still have the coat and use it. If there only were coat-worthy winters! I even remember that my grandfather made soap by himself, which was used to clean the woolen clothes nicely. Most of the clothes were sewn by my mother by herself for me and my brother, and they were worn until the end of the wearer’s life or passed on to younger relatives. The soft party shoes were made by a shoemaker I know. I also often babysat my cousins, and changing gauze diapers was part of the “work”. The faster the child learned to go on the potty, the less time it took to wash cloths. When I reached girlhood, I also learned how to make “sanitary pads” from gauze and cotton. Cotton handkerchiefs were also in use, washing them was a bit of a chore, but there was no choice. Of course, such handkerchiefs, where the lace was crocheted with a wonderful thread, were in the honor. Washing the head with egg or bread and rinsing with nettle water were also done in childhood. Quite often it also happened that the hot water did not come from the tap, and then there was nothing left, but to learn the tempering. Shared saunas and running in the snow barefoot are also fondly remembered. Meanwhile, it all seemed to disappear. It is a great pleasure to recognize that eco-life is the new normal and that our own experience is used here to encourage young people. Don’t put the plastic bag in the trash and go to the store with your own net, because that’s what we did when we were kids, and that’s how it is now – almost 40 years later.