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

The other thing I didn’t have was bras as a teenager. I used my sisters hand downs which didn’t fit as she’s a much bigger build..but nobody ever got me new underwear come to think of it.
i remember wearing socks in the winter to school while alll unfriendly had tights. I felt super embarrassed because my white legs ruined the school photo when everyone else was in black

Reading this and thinking how little my life has changed since childhood...

We are full time carers for our adult, profoundly disabled son. We are low income but do own our home due to decisions made before we found ourselves in this situation. Quite possiby bad decisions with hindsight, should we have known how our future lives would play out...

We have no heating other than a coal fire in the sitting room and a storage heater in my sons bedroom, where he spends a lot of his time. We are rural and not on the gas mains.

Emersion heater died several years ago, cannot afford to replace it so only hot water is via electric shower or kettle.

We have double glazing, but it is very old...several windows no longer close and are now pulled to and sealed with silicone to stop draughts.

We own our home, we kind of fall through the gaps for any help and can't afford our contribution to take up any grants for improving our home that I have seen.

Compared to my childhood (born 1970) we do have some improvements...double glazing, whilst iffy, means no ice on windows. We have an inside toilet and a shower, no more tin baths in front of the fire!

We also have a TV, doorbell and carpets, things which when I was a child I believed to be the height of luxury!

This is so interesting as a thread. Kitchen roll is something that I still feel is fancy. We didn’t have it. And I never realised it but we didn’t have tissues either. It was always toilet roll. Now I’m awake at 4am thinking about what else there is!

What was the phrase from Caitlin Moran on begin again, the Davina Macall podcast recently. Socially middle class but working class origins, functionally middle class? Something around that. I’m working class origins and now living a middle class life…

My mum was like this. She never spoke to me about periods in any way, shape or form. Long after I started periods I plucked up the courage to ask if she could pick up tampons as part of the weekly shop and started putting them on the list and she completely blanked me.

Also said I didn’t need a bra and wouldn’t buy me one.

I was pretty angry about this for a long time and think it was quite negligent but in recent years I have wondered if there was some sexual abuse in her family background and she found it really triggering. She’s dead so I can’t ask. It apparently isn’t that uncommon though.

This is a really interesting thread and makes me understand how much change has taken place in my lifetime (born 1971).

We were fairly comfortable financially so didn’t have to go without basics (heating etc) but there’s a lot of stuff my parents wouldn’t buy because they thought it was silly or unnecessary or self indulgent. Or because they were snobs and regarded as a bit lower middle class. I have spent a lifetime trying to shake off this sort of thing.

Conditioner we definitely didn’t have. My mum would have regarded that as ridiculous.

We didn’t have a microwave or a tumble dryer. We didn’t get a colour TV until I was 13 but I think that was tightness and reverse snobbery

Don’t get the doorbell being posh thing? My mum used to say they were naff. (But my mum was a roaring snob).

God, yes. Wore it mon-fri and then it got washed. And it wasn't about money (private school). Can't remember protesting or even thinking about it. Was is just the norm in the 80s / 90s?

When did conditioner really become a thing as it seems lots of us didn’t have it? I was born at the very end of 1979 and I didn’t have it either although my parents were relatively well off.
We only had heating downstairs in two rooms, lounge and Dining room, and even that was tiny ineffective radiators, supplemented by a coal fire at weekends in the Lounge. My parents didn’t upgrade it until it literally gave up totally and their boiler was condemned due to antiquity and they got radiators upstairs as well as down, that worked, when I was 30. Their house is very cold as it’s built in a sort of linear fashion so all the rooms have at least two, often three outside walls and it has, still, single glazed metal windows. Even now it’s three degrees colder inside than it is outside at all times.
I was always very cold as a child and as such I’ve got a horror of not being warm enough now-I hate it when our boiler breaks down and we have wood stoves and such as a back up in a few rooms, (which we don’t honestly need and which rarely get used).

Proper heating , metal windows ,frost inside windows ,wooly hats and clothes in bed ,seeing breath on waking.
I don't undertsnd why my parents never got it sorted.

Middle class house would be worth over a million now.

I was a 70s/80s child. We didn't have a microwave or a video recorder for about 10 years after they became commonplace (my parents were always late adopters of new technology). Likewise we were watching black and white TV until sometime in the 80s.

We didn't have anything matching eg matching towels or luggage because you used what you had until it wore out and it always did that at different times. To this day I find it hard to throw out old towels or bedding.

We didnt have salad cream either because my mum was a foreigner and thought it was a barbarous invention. All salads were dressed and always with vinegrette.

When I was a child (60s) I remember my mother washing clothes by hand in the kitchen sink, although my father's shirts, towels and sheets went to the laundry. A parcel was delivered every Monday with the clean items - they smelt so fresh and nice! In 1966 she became the proud owner of a Bendix washer/dryer (both in one). She was so happy to be liberated from the kitchen sink! I also remember having a tiny icebox in the fridge which just about held a packet of fish fingers, a bag of peas and a block of ice-cream, which I used to bring back from the shop wrapped in thick newspaper to keep it cold.

We always had a car as my father was a doctor and needed one to visit his patients. I can still recite the reg numbers of all the cars he had!

Same here. In the winter the inside of my bedroom window was frosted. I don't think we had a fridge until I was about 11 or 12. I did have a hot dinner cooked from scratch every day, home baked cakes and a mum who was home all day and able to do these things. She taught me to cook,sew and knit, as well as respect for other people and right from wrong. Until I had a home of my own, I didn't realise how hard she worked for us all. Sadly, I was unable to pay her back and thank her properly because she died of cancer when I was just 18. I miss her very much.

Coal & wood fire in the lounge only, no central heating

Black & white fat TV in the lounge only with no remote control

No fizzy drinks

No kitchen roll

It is very generational though - many of the things that people take for granted now weren't even invented or in general circulation when I was young. So we had pretty much the same as everyone else had in our neighbourhood. But no telephone, car or central heating and it wasn't unusual because very few others had either. Microwaves weren't a thing, anything other than a twin tub machine was only for middle class people.

Then technology caught up, a lot of household appliances got cheaper, food got cheaper and suddenly everyone has ten feet of plasma screen in their living room.

We weren't poor but society was just less materialistic I think. At about nine I was upset because my bedroom just had the decor it had when my parents bought the place in 1976. Grannyish carpets, curtains etc, frilly nylon bedspread etc. Went to friends' houses where the curtains and duvet cover matched and it seemed so posh. Brought this up with my mum in a slightly tearful way and she quite happily redecorated and got me my bedroom set of choice - duvet and curtains and lampshade all matching! I can see them now, pink and grey stripes, so eighties, I loved it. She was totally happy to do it but a bit surprised at the request, and perhaps a bit upset to learn that I was embarrassed when friends visited. The idea that you might decorate a room especially for a child just hadn't occurred to her.

Thanks so sad, both father and brother. Did she ever confront them? It sounds like would have had severe trauma.

1980s and 80s. WC, council estate til I was about 12, both parents working. But we didn’t have a house phone, didn’t have a car, electric was on a coin meter, most clothes were hand me downs - had a lot of cousins!- or 2nd hand. No central heating. We didn’t have duvets or bedding like that, just blankets. We didn’t have many shoes! Bit random but I basically had school shoes and a pair of trainers and a pair of wellies. I have so many shoes now for so many things!
No holidays, no over night stays anywhere but parents would take the same week off in summer and we’d day trip places.
One telly - black and white. Washing machine was one of those twin tubs that had to be pulled out to middle of the kitchen and the hose out in the sink to drain. My poor mum.
Never ate out, and when people came over it was for drinks only, there was no feeding other people. But that was the same food everyone.

really happy childhood though. 2 parents who loved us, spent time with us, valued education, worked etc lots of family around. Lots of freedom. I’m sure the lack of money was stressful for my parents but everyone we knew had similar circumstances so it didn’t feel like we were poor.

Me and sibs were 1st to Uni, and now have big salaries, fancy lives in comparison. My kids don’t know they’re born, quite frankly.

Yeah we never had kitchen roll either. My mum said it was wasteful?! Like you can use loo roll?! My auntie questioned the lack of it when staying and since then she buys loads of it. But this was only about 10 years ago.

We never had a couch. My parents had a chair each and I sat on the floor! That does seem really weird now I look back at it.

I'm with your Mum on salad cream, though I do love mayonnaise. My Dad liked Sandwich Spread, which I also find disgusting.

We never had a shower until we moved house when i was 16- only a bath.
Im 41 now and still feel like a shower is a luxury.
A trivial one but we never ever had ice cubes in drinks!
My parents were very health conscious and had some odd ideas- my father wouldn’t let us buy crisps or fizzy drinks and we never had fast food in the house. No garlic as they couldn’t abide the smell.
I didn’t have a takeaway of sorts until i went to university at 18.

No central heating or double glazing (no idea when that was invented?).We had a coal fire in the living room and one would be lit in the parlour if we were expecting company.Nothing in the bedrooms apart from a tiny fan heater.We slept under a ton weight of blankets and eiderdowns with a hot water bottle and flannelette sheets.

We had a massive tub washing machine with a mangle,to be replaced much later with a twin-tub.

I remember going to a friend's house for tea and having crinkle chips.I'd never seen them before and thought they were terribly posh😆

Hair Conditioner, Mum had short hair her whole life and didn't see the need for it.

Dish washer - still never had one 😭.

Tumble Drier - no need when you can drape clothes over the fire guard to permanently smell of smoky coal.

Fizzy juice except xmas

Fruit, nothing vaguely exotic e.g pineapple or kiwis.

No central heating. It was a radiator in the hall only. It still is a cold house that does not hold much heat.

No double glazing. Ice on the inside of windows in winter.

Baths once a week in the bathroom and occasionally midweek in a baby bath in front of the fire.

No colour TV. 3 channels

Phone in the hall.

No parent at home after school. Let yourself in.

No microwave.

No wall to wall carpet.

Occasionally no toothpaste. Soap instead.

Packed lunch: sandwich, ribena, apple.

Little variety in food. No snacks apart from bread. Breakfast was good but everything else was mainly unappetising with the occasional bright spot.

No unleaded petrol.

No seatbelts or car seats for kids.

No safety surfaces under slides or climbing frames or the witches hat nor the roundabouts.

No lift to school. You walked from age 5. Alone or with a friend also age 5.

I have lots of food in (tins) for similar reasons.

mains gas, central heating, carpets (downstairs was quarry tiles, upstairs wooden floorboards)
Got a telephone and TV when I was nearly 16
Holidays were always camping or staying with relatives
Never went on a plane
Very few clothes - Sunday best, school uniform and a tracksuit, t shirt was about it

As a kid (late 70s) I can remember going to Savacentre supermarket and they had a wall of different designes of doorbells and id spend ages pressing them to hear the sounds! They were so posh in my mind ( we never had one at home )