What normal things did you not have or not have in your house growing up?

Opposite really- my parents always had kitchen roll and fabric softener but I never do. Seems like a waste. I cut up rags to wipe with.
They always had biscuits in a tin too and I don't. Usually something lying about, cake or chocolate but very rarely biscuits.

I was a 90s child so had hot water, central heating, a fridge and a freezer etc. dial internet and then wifi.

what didn’t we have?! We lived in a modest semi with 3 beds. I suppose we only had one bathroom and no downstairs toilet.

Now I have a downstairs loo and 2 en suites and a family bathroom!!!

I was shocked to read OP about not having a coat. Wasn’t that always basic in any decade and neglect if no coat? I feel very spoilt that my kids all have 2-3 coats

My parents always prioritised their own needs/wants and minimised mine. They were homebodies and never went anywhere. I was so envious of my less well off friends who would get to go to the seaside for one or two weeks each year.

As a teenager I really wanted to go to museums and art galleries but that never happened. Instead I was coerced into playing the piano, which I hated.

Obviously no paper towels or hair conditioners….. this was the 60s. One bath a week and a hair wash once a fortnight.

No central heating, storage heaters and a bar heater in the bathroom we rarely had on. Glorified tracing paper for loo paper in a box, no snacks bar the occasional biscuit which were boring rich tea generally, no take aways, no meals out unless a very special occasion. Vosine shampoo and no conditioner, no tumble dryer, no fabric conditioner, second hand bikes and hand me down clothes unless hand knitted

I was born in '75 and we didn't have a vhs (dad had a Phillips2000), so we couldn't rent videos. I still have massive gaps in my 80s film viewing. Saw Top Gun for the first time last year. Never seen Pretty Woman or Dirty Dancing

Central heating (probably a common one for people of my generation). My father died in 1985, without ever having lived in a house with central heating. ( I'd left home about 5 years before this, and had warmer student flats than our home was)

I’ve never had double glazing. Not even now.

That’s so sad OP, some of the things you’ve mention. Especially the mattress and the winter coat 😢

I don’t think we had hair conditioner either - I don’t think my Mum had heard of it either and that’s really weird as she has always been quite into her hair. My hair was very knotty too.

PE kit washed more than once a term.
Threadworm medication.
Regular dental appointments.
Clean school uniform daily.

No central heating until I was 12.
No double glazing until I was 12.
No constant hot water - we ‘put the tank on’ an hour before we wanted a bath.

Also, and this is a weird one, I was thinking the other day that we bought lemons twice a year - pancake day and Christmas. I buy them every week!

We had kitchen roll in the 1960s. We had a dishwasher too.

However, we did only have one heated room. Coal fire.

A mum

Arts and crafts. My mum is a clean freak (potentially OCD but never diagnosed) so she’d never allow us to make mess. Even if we brought home art we’d made at school, she’d bin it. I loved Blue Peter but couldn’t enter the crafty competitions unless I went over to my best friend’s house. She had a huge box of crafts and I was so jealous. Always made sure my DC have lots of this sort of stuff.

A real Christmas tree and just actually any decorations with soul. Again, too much mess and mum would only ever put up a fake tree with baubles to match the room decor. Now go to a farm every year to pick one with DC and we have crazy decorations, nothing matches intentionally.

I don’t buy kitchen roll fwiw, seems really wasteful.

I was a teenager when the council put radiators in. They ran off the back boiler behind the fire in the living room so we were screwed if we ran out of coal. Luckily my dad was a miner and got part of his pay in coal otherwise we'd never have had a fire!

The windows were metal framed and froze in winter so a radiator was the best thing ever! A fire even just a couple of hours in the evening really took the chill off.

We didn’t have a colour tv until I was 6.

I was born in 1961. Apart from things that hadn't been invented (microwave, kitchen roll etc.) we didn't have central heating, dishwasher, tumble drier or even a fridge until 1971 (we had a cool cupboard). We had a washing machine and a radiogram. My dad had a good, well paid job and we had new clothes, nice holidays and birthday parties. Looking back we had much more than many of my friends but compared to these days we didn't!

My parents never had central heating. There was no heating at all upstairs unless there was one of dad’s fan heaters available. We had coal then gas fires in the lounge and dining room. Didn’t have a fridge till I was about 10. No landline till I was about 18

Loo roll. Most of the time we'd use newspaper.

I used to steal loo roll from school and sneak it back home. It was that tracing paper stuff so notrealyly much better!

I buy loo rolls in bulk and store them in my loft. I have issues!

We didn't get double glazing and central heating until I was 8. I remember the rubber pipe and funnel contraption on the bath taps instead of a shower too.

My children are bought (and purchase for themselves) many more books than I received as a child. I'd only get them for birthdays or Christmas. Now, we buy both new and secondhand books at least every two months. My parents did take me to our local library weekly though, whereas I only take my children every three weeks.

I grew up in the 70s and money was tight.
No washing machine but a twin tub.
No phone
Black and white TV
Clothes were bought from jumble sales (apart from shoes and underwear)
Every year my sister and I would choose one nice dress from a catalogue and that dress would be used for best for the year.
No central heating.
Sweets once a week after Mass on Sunday and sometimes if we were lucky my auntie would bring us some.
We had a few holidays but not every year. When we didn't have a summer holiday, we'd use a local coach company for a couple of day trips.
I had a really happy childhood and my mom and dad were very loving and affectionate.

We also didn’t have cushions, I’d never thought about that either. Maybe my Mum didn’t like them , she never had them. We didn’t use kitchen roll, it didn’t exist when I was little, so I don’t use it either, I never have.
The world has changed so dramatically since I was small. We always had an indoor loo and a bathroom (as did my grandparents), but many houses didn’t have either in the 60s and early 70s. We also always had a car, and a telephone, but until the 70s most children I knew didn’t have a phone at home and not many had parents with a car. In 1976 my best friend had parents who had a car each, which I hadn’t come across before.

Various things, but for some reason it's the tissues that really stand out to me. Instead the whole family would use looroll. Bits of looroll doubled over and stuffed in our pockets. Sometimes whole swathes of looroll if we had a cold.

What gets me is that I have no idea why. We were on a fairly tight budget, but honestly I can't believe that cheap tissues would really have been more expensive than the amount of looroll we got through. We could certainly have afforded tissues. And the looroll was just so much more inconvenient (given the size/shape and the way it fell apart), and must have looked awkward to everyone when we (including my mum and dad) fished our trailing lengths of looroll out of our pockets in public.

I barely registered that tissues even existed until I'd left home. Then I never looked back. Even as a student I could afford them, and they just seemed like the last word in luxury to me for ages.

No fridge until I was a teenager. No freezer.
No central heating. A coal fire downstairs and nothing upstairs.
I was 10 when we got a TV, 14 when we got a phone and 18 when my dad got a car.
No washing machine.
No microwave.
We had a week at the seaside in the summer.

Heating
Food
Love

I’ve only just realised that I never had a birthday cake . Quite odd as my Mum was very good at baking, and a generous person, a loving Mum. I wonder if it was because she never had one growing up so it didn’t occur to her ? I didn’t have birthday parties, I think she would have made one for a party. Perhaps they weren’t generally made apart from for birthday parties, for my generation (mid 1960s), I will have to ask friends !

Sellotape or pritt stick/glue.

My year four teacher laid into me in front of the whole class because I used staples on a piece of homework instead which culminated in the following exchange:

"Do you have a fridge?!"
(Yes Miss)
"Do you have a bed?!"
(Yes Miss)
Then you must have glue!! Go and sit down you insolent little girl!"

It was the first time I realised not having thise things on tap at home was not normal.