Things your parents led you to think were 'special' or 'expensive' that you now take for granted?

Morrisons cafe. We didn't have a Morrisons in our town so if we were ever over in the posh nearby town we would go to Morrisons for lunch. I still consider it a bit decadent

Recent discussion with DH revealed his family were the same - his GPs would take him there as a treat!

Another two: installing a shower and Sky TV.

My parents always insisted that a shower would be impossibly expensive to install in our (400 year old) house. Now we know that they just plain didn't like showers, so we never had them (even camping on holiday, my mum would prefer us to strip wash in the sinks in the toilets in front of other people).

They also told us that a sky dish wasn't available on our (admittedly remote) house. They've since admitted that they just didn't want us asking for Sky. Obviously they forgot that they could just say no, and that we couldn't force them to install it!

They were so tight that we wouldn't have dared ask for Sky anyway (my ILs, on the other hand, are so pushy about us getting Sky when we don't want to it's untrue! MIL expressed genuine astonishment that our household bills account has accrued over £2k 'rainy day' funds yet we won't fork out for something we don't want, yet they can't conceive not having).

I remember my mum said when I was 12 we were getting spoiled by having fleeces and things like that. A fleece is hardly a luxury item! Maybe they were more expensive back then.

It is funny how older styles of parenting taught moderation. With food, with treats with days out.

Now it's food like that as standard, days out as expected and parents on here asking if £80 a month pocket money is reaonable for a 12 year old

@movingtowardsthelight, the richest/poshest of my acquaintances (she has a title and her home is run by the NT) not only reuses tin foil but actively encourages others to do it. Your parents are in high company.

Agreeing with most of the food ones but my parents also had a particular foible that they would take us to stately home type attractions, then suck in their teeth at the entrance fee and decide 'just to look from the outside'. I have many a memory of having a 'car picnic' outside the attractions that you weren't allowed into the gardens without paying for house entry. My sister and I ended up paying for them to go into Vienna's Winter Palace on one of ours last family holidays, because we were so sick of looking at the outside of these amazing buildings without being allowed to go in!

Really teeny weeny glasses for orange juice, like in an old fashioned B&B

brasty, my first computer printer (a rather basic dot matrix!) cost me £350 at a time when I was earning about £100 a week (mid 1980's). I did keep using it for about 10 years though. That in itself would be unheard of these days!

Another family where one Mars bar would do the four of us. TBH now I would struggle to eat a whole one - they are so sweet but a wee slice is quite nice.
Cereal variety packs - this is still a holiday treat!
I often hear my mother's voice coming out of my mouth now telling my daughter to eat what she has on her plate before getting any more.
Taxis.

I am 6 weeks old in the first photos in our family album.
Nowadays babies are barely out of the womb before they are filmed and photographed from every angle.

MacDonalds -3 time’s a year. Once every main school holiday we would walk to the nearest town paying the water bill at the reservoir on the way. Maybe get a few essentials and then a MacDonalds as a treat.

I do think that I seem to be shopping all the time whereas I never remember my Mum going shopping for anything other than essentials at all really.

Yes it is amazing to think when the first mobile phones came out, they cost a £1000 each. No wonder they were a sign of status.

my parents were much richer than we are now however even so, my dad would always order two small hamburgers instead of a quarter pounder (cheaper for the same "meat"), bottled water (esp Perrier) was the last word in luxury, and there would often be different meals for the parents - they'd have trout with almonds while we had spaghetti with campbell's tinned sauce and parmesan from a cardboard container (in itself a ludicrous thing).
Cornettos were ok for the freezer at home, but never out. That would be madness.

can identify with so many of these. wrapping paper, taxis, kitchen roll, lucozade & ribena, posh ice cream, soft toilet paper, etc etc.

My mum would never put the oven on just for 1 thing. Hence Sunday was baking day, and she did all sorts of cakes/pies/tarts etc while the roast was in (all morning!) As well as the roast, we usually had a rice pudding that had been done in the oven. I don't think I've ever had rice pud other than out of a tin for the last 20 years.

Things that were ridiculously expensive when I was a child are now cheap as chips so get taken for granted. eg we never had a roast chicken - it was always beef which was so much cheaper. How things have changed with regard to factory farmed chicken.

The biggest change I think is that nowadays so many things are very cheap to produce so are now regarded as disposable rather than repaired.

Sugar puffs Christmas morning. The rest of the year Weetabix or cornflakes ( supermarket brand of course)

Fabric conditioner. It didn't get used in every wash, and was reserved for our purple bri-nylon sheets and Dad's drip-dry shirts . My mum over-diluted it too, so it barely did the job anyway!

Mum also rationed her perfume use and only had a spritz from her tiny bottle of Estee Lauder on nights out. The rest of the time she used talc and Avon hand-cream for fragrance.

I save wrapping paper and gift bags too. Is that weird?

Oh I also save nice wrapping paper from presents and gift bags as the were SO special when I was growing up.

It's a running joke that my Mum and I have been exchanging the same gift bag at Christmas for the last 6 years!

We used to share one (not large) pizza between 5 of us. To be fair as a family we were slim should have kept that up!

Eating a whole pizza still feels decadent.

I do think many young adults today may not realise how much things taken for granted now, were a luxury in the recent past.

I was a fat child in the 70s. I look at photos and in reality I was a bit fat, but not loads. The kind of child that mums post a photo in shock at being told that the BMI of their child is too high, but are insisting they are slim. But I was the fat child. Although I was very very active.

Dowser My Grandparents had a colour TV and we didn't so we watched Princess Anne's wedding there.

Heating. I had no heating in my bedroom while living at home (I moved out at the age of 21- early 90s) and was allowed the use of a fan heater in a morning but my mom would come in and switch it off while I was in the bathroom because a few minutes was deemed sufficient time to warm my room. It wasn't even as if it was an old house, it was built in the early 1970s but just one bedroom had a radiator in it and that was the only radiator upstairs.
Being frugal with heating has stayed with me.

Chocolate. My mom used to slice up a Mars Bar and share it between the three of us as a treat.

Eating out didn't happen. There'd be a day trip to the seaside in the Summer and sandwiches and cake would be taken from home, sometimes we'd have chips before coming home. I was 16 before I had a meal in a restaurant and that wasn't with my parents.

Crisps. Not something that was always in the cupboard for a snack. Just a very occasional treat and bought in single packets from the corner shop.

Yes to the ice cream hierarchy, also fizzy drinks were only ever bought at Christmas. It’s only in very recent years my parents will keep a bottle of 7up in the house in case someone calling would prefer a soft drink!

I must have been 18 or older before I had a takeaway for the first time. My parents just couldn’t get their heads round why you would pay so much money for something you could make (at least in theory). Nowadays they occasionally treat themselves to one though the sight of a takeaway container/menu in their house is even now as shocking to us as if we found out they were off swinging!

Loads of food ones really - rarely had branded anything, always supermarket own brand which to be fair have improved hugely in competition with Aldi/Lidl but were pretty shite in the 80s. There’s a reason “Yellow Pack” became synonymous with cheap, second rate!

I suppose they weren’t wrong though. So many of the things we take for granted now really were expensive when I was growing up, relative to household income. A lot of it sticks though, doesn’t it? I still feel a bit decadent buying kitchen roll, my DPs only buy it at Christmas . Likewise naice foods, decent toilet roll and buying books rather than borrowing from the library.

Love this thread and got me thinking that when I was at school in the 70's I actually didn't know a single overweight person. Not a single child in my schools were overweight and I cant recall any adults either.
Sorry for de railing slightly but so many of our memories are around food

Bananas we used to have a much-anticipated box of After Eights for Christmas only! Still love them but now I get them in my local pound shop