Things your parents never threw away

[DareIask]

My dear parents.

Their 3 piece suite lasted them all their married life (albeit with loose covers)
Their mid century teak dining room furniture
Their beds

My mum has the same prestige saucepans all her married life

We live in such a throw away world.

What did yours keep?

My mother has towels that were given to her as a wedding gift in 1974. Never used them but won't get rid of them. Has tried to pawn them off on me, multiple times.

MIL has everything they brought from the old country 30 years ago. She sees it as her duty to preserve them - including a sad old lounge suite. She's unfortunately stated DH will be willed them ALL for safekeeping because SIL said she is a minimalist & doesn't want them. I feel the same, but H is too wimpy to say so. Also, when our kids were babies she presented us with some of DH's old clothes & knitted stuff she'd been hanging onto for years. Wasn't happy we didn't use them. I'm sure there's more we haven't seen yet.

My mum has still got the washing machine she bought when I was pregnant with my first - I was living at home then and up until that point she was still using a twin tub! That baby is 26 this year and that damm washing machine is still going strong 😂 I on the other hand have gone through about 5 washing machines in the last 15 years.

Thanks to this thread, I have just bought some vintage 'kitchenalia' on eBay

@grassisjeweled

Everything and the kitchen sink. My mum will freeze bits of pastry and everything to use later

I once found half a mcdonalds hamburger in my parents' freezer. My mum had eaten half of it, carefully wrapped it up, gone home and put it in the freezer for some other time. She was upset when I threw it out on the basis it could give her food poisoning - couldn''t understand my position at all.

My friend in college lived on a farm. When recycling finally hit the town near the farm her mother revealed an outshed full to the brim of mayonaise bottles and similar. She said "I knew it was wrong just to throw them away"

I live in the US and have some very crunchy friends who probably judge me because I am not out and front environmentally. I am always amused at the difference in how we were brought up. I walked everywhere, we ate seasonally and locally because there really wasn't much choice, we foraged (well blackberries mostly) a fellow came around for the potato skins for his pigs, we saved jam jars for making jam, we saved bread to give to the swans.

My parents kept their scratched-up old S reg car until they died. It's 23 years old now, looks awful and has moss growing on the edges of the windows... but it passed its MOT without a problem and I'm still driving it!

They also kept all their old family papers, letters, mementoes and photos - which is brilliant now I'm researching the family history.

The one old thing I longed to get rid of? Mum's ghastly, rotting old pastry brush!

I am currently using my parents dining room table and chairs. It was a wedding gift from my nana and grandad 35 years ago. The chairs have been reupholstered three times and my dad has sanded the table quite a few times (due to pen marks, melted wax stains etc to name a few) but they are all still going strong.
I've been told it is a loan. They bought a bigger table to accommodate the addition of grandkids as well as my nana coming for meals once a week (before covid). They have said when they want to downsize we will get the bigger table and they get their old table back.

Dad reused everything, even his old pants as washcloths for garage or garden chores

Yep, when I cleared my grandparents house, grandad's worn out aertex underpants and vests were all there under the sink, chopped into pieces as dusters and cleaning rags and carefully rubber-banded into neat piles according to size.

I found it strangely humbling somehow. Their generation were so environmentally friendly without even realising it.

Mine never threw anything useful away. My mother, now 80, still uses the plastic baby bath she bathed me in 60 years ago as a washbasket when she hangs out her laundry.

a fellow came around for the potato skins for his pigs,

I rarely peel potatoes. But when I do I usually leave the skins a couple of days then fry them till crispy. A quick sprinkle of salt and paprika and done. Another family tradition.

My dishwasher is nearly 20 years old ... didn't realise that was considered so 'old' - maybe I've just been lucky .

I am over 60 but still have plenty of my DGM's things that I use daily - a brilliant knife for spreading butter, serving plates etc.

I remember my MIL passing lots of DH's toys to us when our DS was born ... we didn't become parents until we were in our early 40s so the toys were really ancient and really not wanted .

Like a previous poster, my mum has a Singer sewing machine she bought back in 1962.

She was a trainee nurse at Harefield Hospital at the time and couldn't afford to buy it outright. She still has the hire purchase agreement from a shop in Hounslow.

Some of the attachments have never been used!

I have a glass tumbler with the words "Home Sweet Home" etched on it. I remember drinking from it when I visited my grandmother. She was given it by her mother and no one know who first bought it!

The chest of drawers that was my clothes storage as a child is now in my dad's shed as storage for tools.
There is milk formula tins in there holding bits of string, paint brushes etc.

Dad always had tins and jam jars full of string, nails, screws etc in the garage too.

Mum always removed buttons and zips for another day, also in tins.

She often undid a knitted jumper when it became too small and re knitted it. Stripes on sleeves were commonplace

Sideboard and crockery. We actually have a lot of dh's great-great aunt's furniture so our furniture is older than my parents'.

My mum also still wears the dressing gown she bought to go into hospital in 1977. It has been in and out of fashion several times since then!

I inherited my grandmas button box when she died, it was years and years of buttons striped from old shirts as well as the baby buttons with little pictures on them. I was obsessed with it as a child, it’s all neatly organised. I’ve never used it.

My parents kept a fair amount but weren't obsessive about it. DH's parents however kept EVERYTHING.

The difficulty we had trying to persuade them that the gas camping stove from 1982 just wasn't safe as the rubber tubes had perished, and no we wouldn't like to take it camping...

They have two houses. Both attics are full. That'll be our job one day to clear them.

Tin foil

My DM will resuse the same piece multiple times until it is literally disintegrating, she will even recycle other people's foil (goes for a walk with a friend and will bring home the foil her friend had her sandwiches in to prevent it being thrown away)

I reckon she only needs to buy a new roll of tin foil about every 10 years!

My mum still has a knife from when she was in culinary school (late teens I assume - she's in her late 50s now). It's still the sharpest knife she owns

I reuse grease proof paper. I wrap DC sandwich in it and DC bring it home and it’s used to cook with 🤷🏻‍♀️

My saucepans are close to 20yrs old and I got them just after I moved out at 16.

Most of my furniture is ‘vintage’

I’ve mugs that are from the 70s.

Everything gets repaired where possible and I only buy the best quality (not always the most expensive)

I take buttons, zips and fixings off old damaged shirts etc and the fabric is is sorted into rags for cleaning, patches/remaking and the rest goes to recycling.

I’ve a small stack of denim pieces I’ve used to repair everything from bags to jeans.

My handbag broke and it took a few months to find the right sized fitting to fix it. It was worth repairing it.

I manage a charity shop and I dread people bringing in donations from 'deceased family', yes we occasionally find a gem but sorting though decades worth of 'stuff' is soul destroying and then having to dispose of it responsibly is a nightmare.

I also have one very elderly doner who kindly brings me donations nearly every week .... but things that are totally unsaleable, old jam jars for example or inserts from old fashioned filing cabinets that no one uses anymore.
One of the saddest occasions I remember is running a jumble sale years ago, someone bought in boxes and boxes of 'ornaments' from their late mother's house .... all really old fashioned ... not one of them sold, even at 20p each. .

Evening my saucepans are over 30 years old, bought when we first got married so 33 years this year, still going strong, and coincidentally DH and I had the same Habitat china when we first met, we have bought new sets over the years but the tea cups and tea pot are the same ones . We have two dinner plates left and DH still likes to use them daily!

My DF saved nails, wood, bits of cabling and all that because he could make stuff. Years ago he would fix people's electric kettles and hair dryers because they were expensive and worth fixing. He also had the room to keep these things.

I've got my DGM's glass cabinet that was her mothers and its stunning.

I get so anxious when surrounded by stuff although I refuse to have more than one of things other than hair dryers.

Ooh @ragwort which Habitat service did you have? I used to work for them.
I have scraffito and white porcelain still going strong, and some beautiful periwinkle blue tea mugs (named Benji)... but I managed to break two in the last fortnight