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

my husabnd and I greew up quite poor. He still wont buyt tissues and used loo roll.

He has stayed incredibly miserly and it broke me down with the stress of it and I went into psychosis

Some of these posts have been sad to read. It makes me appreciate how fortunate I was (and still am) to have such a comfortable life.

My parents didn't have a lot of money when I was young, but we always had enough to eat, enough clean clothes, a warm bed, and plenty of attention. I was dressed in hand-me-downs, second-hand clothing, and home-sewn clothes through most of my childhood, but everything was in decent condition and fit well enough (if not, it was passed along for someone else to try). Same for toys and books. Many were used, but still perfectly good, but we had no shortage of things to play with, and my parents made sure that Christmas and birthdays were special occasions, whatever their budget.

I remember making the conscious choice not to ask for anything that I thought would be deemed too expensive, and we were taught not to waste things (food, hygiene products, electricity), but I never felt we were poor—just frugal.

we had carpets that didn’t reach to the walls.
stair carpeting that only covered the middle of the stairs.
only had pure orange juice at Christmas
used loo roll instead of tissues.
never had pork chops as they were too expensive.

Wow no offence but it sounds like Britain was far more depressing and deprived in the 70s and 80s than I'd realised! I grew up in Canada (born in early 80s) and my parents weren't wealthy but we had everything people here have listed. Several TVs, and the toilet paper was pink!

Tea cakes and hot cross buns are far nicer if toasted under the grill!

1973/4 in the three day week period? There was a plan so you knew when your power would be off for a few hours, we used to arrange to visit friends and they came to us when it was our turn! It was the reason we went to work abroad in 1974.

My 15 yr old brother worked on a fruit stall in the late 50s so we always had fruit even if it was the wouldn’t last till Monday type!

I do not recall ever eating fruit at home as a child

I'm one of those awful boomers, 1948, so grew up in the 1950's one of my friends accused me of being 'posh' because we would have fruit in the house even if no-one was ill! It was only apples and oranges, maybe a few pears but it was quite unusual in our avenue of council houses!
A lot of the posts on here about not having certain things seem to ignore you can only have what's available! I don't recall having conditioner in the 1960s, there was something called a cream rinse in sachets so maybe that was similar. Most shampoos had a very medical smell, Vosene was one I remember.

I recall being very excited if we saw a product in the shops that had been on Tomorrow's World, the first time we encountered a microwave was in a pub when we were asked if we wanted our pasties heated up!

Why do your DC need new coats every autumn? When DS was 4, he was bought a coat from M&S for age 5-6. He was average sized and it lasted from reception until the juniors. Ditto dd. I can still see them, DS in his navy and yellow fleece lined coat and dd in her dusty pink one with pale pink fleece lining. Both linings removable so the coats were useful throughout the year.

By the time DS was 7, DH had made his first million.

Born late 50s.
We had no bathroom until I was 7, and a tiny scullery. Baths were in a tin bath in front of the fire in the back room of our victorian house, which was eventually demolished.
No central heating just a coal fire even in our new council house early 60s, with a huge coal bunker in the garden.
No duvets, we had blankets and candlewick bedspreads with hot water bottles, and I don't remember ever being cold in bed.
Mum had a twin tub, and we had a fridge but no freezer.
No teabags when I was younger, always loose tea made in a tea pot with a strainer.
No home phone until I was 13, and it was always locked!
Dad always had a car, the 1st being a Hillman Husky so have fond memories of Sunday picnics in Epping forest to get out of Tottenham where we lived until I was 7.
We always had an annual holiday usually to Devon or Cornwall.
Always had home made/knitted clothes until I was around 13.
No shower, just a rubber attachment that went over the bath taps and usually leaked!
No fitted carpets, tiled or wood flooring with rugs.
No convenience or foreign food, but we ate well. Home made meat pies and puddings, roasts, stews (rabbit, chicken, beef and lamb), liver, ox tail and fish.
We were no different from our neighbours/friends, it was the way things were back then.

No phone, no colour tv, no central heating, no eating out, no crisps, no conditioner, no fabric softener, no automatic washing machine and not much love

My parents were poor OP when I was a child. We used to live on the peabody estate in London. We had no bathroom in our home apart from an outside toilet. There was a block which had baths so my mum would take me across the estate for a wash. We did have a sink but I was obviously to big to sit in it.
As I grew older I remember we had no heating or hot water. I had to wash my hair in cold water and because it was very cold, my hair froze. The thing is, I wasnt unhappy. Just thought it was normal. I have fond memories of the estate as there was a great community spirit. This was in the early 1970's. My life is very different now but I never take anything for granted.

When I were a young un, we lived in a shoe at the side of the road, and lived on bread and dripping butties for dinner....

I guess we were pretty lucky - we always had a phone because my father was a doctor, likewise a car. I do remember moving into a house and the furniture was mostly given to us by grateful patients, so nothing matched! We had a coal fire in the living room and I can't remember how we got hot water. Had central heating installed when I was 7. My mother got her first washing machine when I was 12.

I don't own a microwave and wouldn't want one, nor do I use kitchen paper (what is it for really?), fabric conditioner, liquid soap or shower gel.

Many of the posters here appear to be describing severe deprivation and neglect rather than not having normal and routine things.

I grew up in the 60s and many of my frineds families had fridges, tvs, telephones and cars. Washing machines and ch not so much and sheets and blankets were perfectly normal until the late 70s. In place of ch homes were ordinarily heated with fires, gas, electric and coal, and verynfew homes at that time had showers, the plastic thingy on the bath taps was perfectly normal, as indeed in better off families were vanoty basins in bedrooms.

The thought that some young women weren't purchased sanitary products and had to make do is dreadful. That is neglect in my book. My mother was born in 1936, hers in 1912 and both had sanitary products - grannie spoke of poor people in her generation using rags. Awful, just awful.

Central heating or hot water. We used fires these tiny little blowy heaters. My mum used to wash our hair over side of the sink. We didn't have fabric softener, liquid soap and certainly not kitchen roll. We had a washing machine but a clothes horse on a pulley that went up to the ceiling when the fire wasn't on in the kitchen. We had blankets instead of duvets. I lived in a room that wasn't really a room, it was the attic and my bed was beside the water tank, the constant spiders terrified me.

This was in the late 80s and nothing weird about it except...

We were loaded, properly loaded. My father drove a flash car, we lived in a huge house in a really expensive area, he had other properties, we attended the most expensive private school in the country, wore designer clothes and holidayed several times a year staying in 5* hotels.

My dad was financially abusive and a controlling misogynistic prick.

I think I grew up with everything, but I'm being the opposite with my own DC. My dad was a software designer, so we had laptops and consoles before most people did. My mum had every gadget going. But we've gone more back-to-basics. We have hankies, use kitchen towels instead of kitchen roll, no dishwasher or microwave. The microwave is the one that gets most people, but I had one and it took up a whole counter, and I only used it to defrost things - once I bought my oven with a good defrost function, it went. I don't see the point in them if you have a good induction hob and oven, but the kids would quite like one

A piano. My family were all musical, largely through church (Methodist, so lots of singing), and it was normal for many people to have one.
So much so, that apparently i was shocked when visiting an old couple and said to my mum “they haven’t got a piano!”
re other stuff - 60s childhood so we didn’t have a fridge or a tv and only a coal fire in the living room.

With threads like this it's helpful to mention what your friends and neighbours had compared to you to ascertain whether it was normal not to have a car in the 1970's.

We got a house phone in the mid 80's and then we were promptly cut off because my mum was terrible at paying bills she was a heavy smoker and drinker so priorities .

A phone or central heating. I’m only in my early 40s

All that you mentioned..but we also had no boiler..so no hot water nor heating..yet my father was a plumber...

@ArtNotDishes I hope life is better and kinder now.

We had to wait a bit but when we got them.we thought we had really arrived.

Gas Fire instead Coal Fire.
Central Heating.
A Fridge
A phone
A Car
Fitted Carpets.
A stereogram.

I remember that we had central heating and double glazing installed in the heatwave summer of 1976, before that the (beautifully patterned) ice inside the windows mid-winter was so thick you couldn’t see through the windows and I’d put my school uniform on under the bedcovers. I didn’t get a duvet until I was about 14, before that it was layered sheets and blankets. I liked staying with my grandparents because they were posh with eiderdowns!