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

Anyone remember Pez? When I was a kid you could only get them in the airport and it was a very lavish treat indeed. Was never allowed the refills as they were too expensive so you had to really ration them.

Izal toilet paper

My god, that stuff was awful! Totally non-absorbent! Just slipped off your bum.

We used to use the purple tissue paper the Christmas satsuma was in to wipe our backsides - it was the height of bottomly luxury!

Oh, kitchen roll... Didn't have it at home growing up. Reuseable dishcloths all the way. Now we get through lots, and I flinch inwardly and often make a small comment when I see my 12yo using about 6 sheets to mop up a small spill. It's not so much the cost as the environmental impact that bugs me, though.

carouselfish, My parents also hated undercover shopping malls - i remember taking them with my son ( who was only a baby at the time ) and suggested we stopped for a drink. They were appalled - kept moaning about the cost of everything and how the place ' wouldnt have enough fire escapes in the event of a fire' - we ended up going home after half an hour for a drink at home. They never ate out at all and the idea of a place like mc donalds sent them over the edge!

Putting the heating on.

Same here Gobby. And it's carried on into my present life.

At this time of year I have a huge sign on the central heating boiler that says "PUT A JUMPER ON" for when people start messing with the central heating.

Recognition at lots of these - comfortable MC upbringing with very frugal parents born at the tail end of the war.

I do think eating out/coffee shops are luxuries, though - they've become much more 'normal', low-level luxuries, but they're still luxuries. We eat out around once a month after church (whole group of people go, it's like a big family lunch) and on top of that for celebrations/special occasions (birthdays, good school reports etc) and on holiday. On most day trips we won't visit the cafe, although we might buy an icecream or some street food (often for the dc only) at some point. And we always take several refillable bottles of water out with us. Buying bottles of drink is last-resort behaviour. (Dh is a lot more liberal than me in that respect and I always find it a bit ).

I still consider taxis hugely wasteful unless absolutely necessary. Knowing about branded food/groceries versus own brands has stood me in good stead in terms of being able to shop frugally. I still very rarely go for the premium brand unless it's offering something a) over and above the own/'ordinary' brands that b) is worth the price premium.

Clothes are something that has changed massively in my lifetime. I remember the sheer giddy excitement of going to Woolco (remember them?) to buy a top and skirt set and a tracksuit Very different now. When my dc go through the knees of their trousers AGAIN it's much cheaper/less hassle to replace than to attempt some kind of acceptable patching/mending (I am not gifted with my needle). We do do hand-me-downs and second-hand clothes, though - less so as they get older.

We only had Coca Cola etc on holiday , special occasions. We didn’t ever get Sykes / Alpine pop. One day my dad found the order book for our local pop van’s round in the street. We got a crate of pop by way of thank you , it was like Christmas !

Shower Gel , we had Imperial Leather soap only . How I longed for Camay soap having seen the glam 70s adverts. I still love choosing shower gel face wash etc.
And getting my first spray deodorant in my later teens was an event !

We ate chicken once a year at christmas.
Never tasted roast beef.
No central heating.
No fridge.
Never been on holiday even in the UK.
No car.
Hot water once a week on bath night.
Kitchen roll was not invented.

Little Chefs, every year we made the tedious trip up the motorway to Scotland and at every service station we had a packed lunch and a thermos of tea. We never once ate at a service station and I used to look wistfully at Little Chefs as we sped by and used to imagine how fabulous it would be to go in. Needless to say when I eventually went in one as an adult it did not live up to my expectations.

And yes to Cornettos, seedless grapes and Alpine fizzy pop which got delivered to my neighbours regularly.

I came on to say kitchen roll too! i still feel slightly rebellious using two sheets to wipe round a pan.

I still feel trick or treating is shameful. No one understands me!

Towels-just use one post bath/shower. To this day, my mum who is very comfortably off looks at me funny if I use one towel for my body and one to put my hair up.

She's also appalled by my use of any type of pre-prepped veg

We never ever had mcdonalds.
We only had fish and chips about once a year on holiday.
Cinema... maybe once a year.
Eating out... now that was once a week but I think that was rare in my peer group.
Weekends.... now I see parents desperately trying to fill weekends with experiences and days out... We were left to our own devices mainly.

Toys... my dc have toys everywhere. We had a few for birthdays and Christmas. That was it...not every few weeks.
Days out.... you never ever got into the gift shops at attractions and if you did it was a rubber.

But I am still at the things which my parents and MIL found a luxury because they grew up without them.

MIL: Riding in cars. She said a car would drive through her village maybe once a week and all the kids would rush out to see. She was born the same year as Princess Elizabeth and like her, trained as a driver in the ATS at the age of 18. She thought she'd died and gone to heaven!

Electric or gas cooker and hob. She'd grown up cooking over an open fire. She was always delighted at adjusting the temperature of the oven or the gas rings with a knob.

Bathroom. Even when her own children were small, baths were in a tub in the kitchen.

Eating meat. Apparently she used to stretch one chicken to do a family of eight for three meals. Not sure I quite believe that one though! By the time I met her and she could afford all the meat she wanted, she would lovingly serve huge slabs of meat whenever family visited.

Mum: Freezer. Having ice cream at home was amazing. Her rich friend was the only one for miles around with a freezer, and she used to have all the neighbour kids round for ice creams sometimes.

Fizzy pop.

Clothes bought from a shop.

Oh and of course we weren't allowed go go out trick or treating or penny for the Guy"ing" at this time of year. That was known as begging in the '70's!

The majority of these ring true and bring back memories for me as well - orange juice was a Christmas Day thing as were croissants, eating out or takeaways were extremely rare and takeaways were never delivered but always collected as it was deemed too flashy 😂. We never went abroad on holiday (always a week in Whitby and when money increased we ventured to Cornwall), now people are aghast that I have no intention of taking my own DC abroad for another few years til they’re older, caravans didn’t harm me and they certainly won’t harm them or leave them feeling deprived! I do think what’s deemed as a “basic” standard of living has a lot more luxury elements than it used to.

I’m laughing at the poster who said their friend asked for a white magnum.
And she and her brother were like

The friends audacity!!

The division of biscuits. The everyday tin full of digestives and the tin with the good biscuits. Wow betide you if you went into the every day tin without being offered it. Wow betide you if you asked for a biscuit. And dont even think of approaching or looking at the good tin. Massive issues if you took a biscuit from the good tin when visitors came round. Result? Free for all inour house on any biscuit at any time....

We were allowed a bath once a week, in the regulatory 6 inches of water, no taxis, butter or takeaways except for a rare fish and chips.
We didn't have holidays but got a delightful day at the seaside once a year when my dad's works put on transport, packed lunch and a salad tea at a church hall somewhere on the trip home for all the employees' families (not the employees themselves). Easy to spot by the convoy of red double decker buses on the motorway that we were all from the local bus company workers.
We had a restaurant lunch once a year on our annual trip to the New Years' sales, which was the only time we ever went out as a whole family, apart from the weekly visit to ASDA.

Eating out or takeaways at all - we only ever really ate out on holiday, which was always a week at Butlins in the May half term. Abroad was too expensive (and probably too much of the Great Unknown) as was holidaying in the main summer holidays.

We'd have takeaway (fish and chips or Chinese - there wasn't anything else anyway) maybe 3 or 4 times a year. We walked a lot to save using the bus too - we'd visit relatives who lived 2 or 3 miles away and always walked one way and got the bus the other way. But I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing - it's good to be active if you can. Pop and crisps were also rationed - we had to fill small bottles from a big bottle and it couldn't be full and we couldn't just buy a bottle when out.

You're right to think about those things ifi. A lot of things that are, in reality luxuries, are thought as normal basic essentials by a lot of people, which leaves them thinking that they 'don't ever have anything nice' or are skint all the time and can't see where they can cut back or where there money goes.

Eating food out of the house is a good example. Many people spend £10-15 a day on a couple of coffees, lunch, and maybe breakfast too. Even if this comes from cheap places like Greggs or McDonalds, it still costs at least 2 or 3 times more than similar food brought from home, so is still a luxury really. Reducing/ditching the coffees and making packed lunches (or taking leftovers) is likely to reduce £10 a day to £10 a week, which would save hundreds of pounds a year and go a long way towards paying for more obvious luxuries like a holiday.

There's also the health aspect, especially from all this daily fizzy drink consumption, and most of what Greggs and McDonalds sell - it's not good to be eating and drinking that sort of stuff every day.

I'd really like to know how crisp consumption has increased in the last 30 years (exciting I know). When I was a child in the 1980s, crisps were something we had once a week a most. Now you can buy them by the sack in the supermarket, so some people must be eating a lot of crisps.

Coke/any fizzy, but if it was in a can it was sacred! (Sort of how glass bottles of coke sometimes still feel )

Getting lunch or even a drink while our shopping. Shopping trips were planned to be before or after lunch. It's made me go the other way tbh and I fritter far too much away in costa.
Also drinking from a can or 500ml bottle in the house -'THEY ARE FOR DAY TRIPS!!!' I still feel extravagant now if I drink a can of coke in the house
Also if we went to maccies I was never allowed a milkshake as part of a meal because it's extra. When I'm giving DH my order a tiny part of my brain is waiting for him so say no way it's 40p extra, have a coke instead.

Getting to watch your favourite TV programme, if it conflicted with something your parents wanted to watch. Now we have TV on-demand and while you might have to wait to see your favourite programme, you never miss it entirely.

Butter. Now I have it all the time and never eat marg.

Taxis. I still only take taxis about once in three years when there is no alternative.