There comes a slightly alarming point in life when you realise that many of the things your parents and grandparents used to say, which you either completely ignored or quietly rolled your eyes at, were actually rather sensible.
I seem to have reached that age.
Growing up, there was never any shortage of little sayings in our family. My grandmothers, Olive and Joyce, belonged to generations where advice wasn't delivered through a podcast, an Instagram reel or a woman in expensive activewear telling you about her morning routine. It was usually delivered while making dinner, hanging out washing or watching you do something they already knew you would regret.
And annoyingly, an awful lot of it has stood the test of time.
Perhaps that's partly why I've always been drawn to simplicity. Olive & Joyce was named after my grandmothers, but the older the business gets, the more I realise that quite a lot of its philosophy came from them too. Use what you need. Look after what you have. Don't waste things. Eat proper food. Get some fresh air. And don't believe that more automatically means better.
None of which would make a particularly lucrative wellness podcast, admittedly.
So I started wondering whether some of those old sayings still stand up today.
Turns out Grandma might have been onto something.
Pretty Is as Pretty Does
I love this one, particularly now I'm raising a daughter in a world where girls can change their face with a filter, makeup or filler before they're even old enough to understand why they might want to.
“Pretty is as pretty does” essentially means that looking beautiful means very little if you don't behave beautifully too. It's related to the older saying “handsome is as handsome does”, and versions of the idea have been around for centuries.
As someone who makes skincare for a living, I obviously love looking after my skin. I love beautiful oils and creams and the ritual of taking a few minutes for yourself, but I never want Olive & Joyce to be another voice telling women that their appearance determines their worth.
I want my daughter to feel beautiful, of course, but far more importantly, I want her to know that being kind, funny, brave, interested in other people and a good human being will carry her much further through life than having perfect skin ever could.
Maybe Grandma's definition of beauty wasn't bad at all.
A Little Dirt Never Hurt Anybody
This was generally said approximately three seconds after something you'd intended to eat had landed on the floor.
There would be a cursory inspection, perhaps a quick blow or wipe on Grandma's apron, and back it came.
Apparently germs knew better than to argue with grandmothers.
I'm certainly not suggesting we all start eating things off the kitchen floor in the name of good health, but it turns out that the broader idea behind this saying wasn't entirely ridiculous.
Scientists now understand that we live alongside enormous communities of microorganisms and that our microbiome has an important relationship with our immune system. Exposure to a diverse microbial world, particularly early in life, appears to help the developing immune system learn how to respond appropriately to its surroundings.
Researchers have repeatedly observed that children growing up in traditional farming environments, which tend to expose them to a much wider variety of microbes, have lower rates of certain allergies and sometimes asthma. This contributed to what became known as the “hygiene hypothesis”, although scientists now know the story is far more complicated than simply saying dirt is good and cleanliness is bad.
So no, dirt itself isn't medicine. Handwashing still matters, food hygiene matters and some microbes can make us seriously ill.
But children digging in gardens, stroking animals, making mud pies and occasionally returning home looking as though they've been dragged through a hedge backwards are simply interacting with the microbial world humans have always lived in.
So while I can't scientifically endorse Grandma's apron-based food-safety system, perhaps she wasn't entirely wrong.
Just maybe don't lick the floor to prove the point.
Waste Not, Want Not
Now THIS one could practically be the Olive & Joyce family motto.
The expression has been around for centuries and its meaning is beautifully simple: if you don't unnecessarily waste what you have today, you're less likely to find yourself without it tomorrow.
My grandparents' generations simply lived this way. Things were repaired. Leftovers were eaten. Jars were reused. Clothes were passed down. Something having a scratch on it wasn't considered sufficient reason to immediately replace it with a newer, shinier version.
There was certainly no throwing something away because the best-before date had passed yesterday either, there were no best-before-dates. It was sniffed, inspected and declared “perfectly fine”, usually by someone who had survived considerably worse.
Somewhere along the way, though, we became incredibly comfortable with throwing things away.
We buy too much food, too many clothes, too many beauty products and an extraordinary number of storage solutions designed specifically to organise all the other things we've already bought.
It's one of the reasons I've always used glass jars and bottles at Olive & Joyce and why I love seeing them reused. I'm certainly not perfect at sustainable living, but I don't think sustainability has to mean living in a cave weaving your own underwear from nettles either.
Sometimes it simply means using what you've already got.
An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
I always assumed this one had been invented by an apple farmer with an unusually good marketing department.
One early recorded version came from Pembrokeshire in the 19th century and went along the lines of eating an apple before bed to keep the doctor from earning his bread. Eventually it evolved into the much catchier version we know today.
Obviously, eating a Granny Smith every morning isn't going to make your GP redundant.
But apples are a source of fibre and plant compounds, and research continues to investigate their relationship with cardiovascular health, blood sugar, gut health and other markers. The evidence doesn't show that apples possess some magical doctor-repelling ability, but they certainly fit very comfortably into a healthy, varied diet.
Perhaps, again, we've been taking Grandma too literally.
An apple is simple food, full of useful nutrients, wrapped in its own completely compostable packaging. No subscription required, no complicated instructions and nobody has managed, yet, to convince us we need the Luxury Advanced Pro-Ageing Apple at £47.99 a month.
The bigger message was probably just: eat decent food and look after yourself.
They may not have talked about polyphenols or gut microbiomes around the dinner table, but perhaps they didn't need to.
Less Is More
And finally, the saying that somehow became the philosophy behind my little skincare company without me ever really intending it to.
The words are often associated with minimalist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but Robert Browning had already used “less is more” in his 1855 poem Andrea del Sarto.
More than 170 years later, I think those three words might be more relevant than ever, particularly when it comes to skincare.
At some point we were persuaded that cleansing and moisturising our faces wasn't enough. We needed cleansers, toners, essences, exfoliating acids, serums, boosters, eye creams, masks, overnight masks and occasionally products specifically designed to repair the irritation caused by some of the other products.
I'm exhausted just writing that.
My mum was a skincare formulator, so skincare was around me long before Olive & Joyce existed, but I don't remember the women in my family having bathroom shelves resembling the stockroom at Boots. They had a few things they liked, they used them and then, rather radically, bought some more when they ran out.
It's why I've always believed skincare doesn't need to dominate your bathroom, your bank balance or your morning.
Clean your skin. Nourish it. Protect it.
Then go and live your life.
More isn't automatically better.
Sometimes it's just... more.
Perhaps that's what I love most about these old sayings. They're rarely complicated. They don't require an app, a subscription or a twelve-week programme.
Be kind. Get outside. Don't waste things. Eat decent food. Keep things simple.
Turns out Grandma was right after all.
Unfortunately for me, she wasn't finished...
Part Two coming next: more old-fashioned wisdom that might have been surprisingly ahead of its time.