Dancing Ranger, I'm glad you're still about! And best of luck with the job.
Lazy8: I'd agree about the male/female thing, generally. Only female housemate with whom I ever had such a problem was one who had been raised as Daddy's Precious Princess and was a little crazy anyway. It's part of why I taught my boys and my girls both to cook, shop, do housework and basic domestic repairs, and it has served them all well.
As I may have mentioned elsewhere, two things that got me working on the basic cookery book I'm trying to write were, firstly, my older son's experience when he first moved out of home and was sharing a house with a group of other young men. He was appalled to find that of a group of five guys in their early twenties, he was the only one who knew how to shop to a budget, buy fresh produce and construct a meal therefrom, clean a kitchen and change a lightbulb or a fuse. Oh, and make a bed!
The other thing was a project I got roped into, many years ago, by a friend who was a social worker. Adelaide, the big city nearest to where I now live, has one old wealthy suburb, centred around an old and prestigious boys' school, which has one very odd statistic: in all Australia, it is the council area that has the highest number of widowers in proportion to the population. No idea why, but suspect it may come down to men who have been pampered, supported and cared for all their lives - it's a very rich suburb.
So, all these guys in their sixties, seventies, eighties, who had never made so much as a cup of tea or a piece of toast in their entire lives, suddenly having to do for themselves - I'm sure you can imagine! Most of them came from the sort of background where as children their households had a stay-at-home mum and also generally a housekeeper, often other servants as well. Then they went to University, where they lived in and were waited on, or into the military as officer class, ditto. Then married and had a stay-at-home wife, and still possibly servants. Then their wives died, and suddenly there they were, with no idea how the kettle worked or where their missus had kept the tea and sugar, never mind how to construct a simple meal.
Enter the rescuers. For a couple of months we took these guys shopping, explained about budgeting (not that that was a concern for most of them, but it was for a few), how to choose food, how much you needed, basic food hygiene (put it in the fridge, learn to clean the fridge), how to construct a cheese and tomato sandwich or a simple salad, how to cook fish, how to tell if food is fresh, how to wash dishes (yes, really). All that stuff. For many of them it was a coping and independence strategy, and I think for some it was quite literally life-saving.
