What's the strangest thing you've seen in someone's house that they thought was 'normal'?

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I'll go first.

When I was 7, I went to a friend's house, and had bright red mashed potatoes for dinner.her dad always put food colouring in food. She thought this was normal, a d everyone had coloured mash.

@CustardySergeant my friend told me they ate them.

An ex boyfriend has me round to meet his parent. The dining chairs and table were in plastic wrapping that they had come with -we sat on these chairs and they put mats down and then wiped the plastic down -weird.

Then we went in the lounge and they had a sofa covered in plastic. Apparently it was 5 years old -and immaculate -they were very very proud. Ex was a weirdo too and did similar. refused to throw packaging away etc

Nutella also goes well in rice pudding instead of jam btw....

@SpnBaby1967

My sister has kept cockatoos for decades and each time one dies she puts it in her sandwich bag and in her freezer. She has loads in there now, and her and the kids will root through bags of dead birds to find their meals to cook.

I asked her once why she didnt just bury them, she said she hadnt gotten round to it yet

I had a friend who did this with her cats. Weirdo and got to the point she had to buy a chest freezer and then there was an awful day where the electricity got cut off for 3 days and everything defrosted!

Wrapping furniture in plastic was a thing mid-century. Like in the Little Shop of Horrors song "Somewhere That's Green".

Went to friends house for tea and there was a big pot on the stove with a big cows leg sticking out of it 😱 apparently it was some sort of stock the mum was making and something to do with a meat pie.
Another friend we were playing hide and seek and I hid in her mums bedroom. Sat at the side of the bed and there was an awful smell coming from the bedside drawers. I opened the top drawer and there were actual dried turds in there. Nearly puked.

@MyMummyHasGotABigBottom my GF used to make those tinned salmon sandwiches. He loved vinegar so much that he would then drench the outside of the bread with it. I'm not a fan!

Went for tea to a friend's house and was served tinned mandarin sandwiches. That seemed odd at the time.

Not really the same thing but I remember when I was quite young and a friend from school came over but for whatever reason, she didn't like what tea my mum had made (no idea what it was) so my dad fried her an egg i think using a tool which made it square. I don't recall ever seeing it, never seen it since but the novelty factor of it helped cheer my friend up and she ate it all.
As an aside, a few years ago I found a truly 70s bit of 'kit' at my parent's house - a square box you put a freshly booked egg in so that it squeezes it into a cube again, don't remember it ever being used when I was young.

I also had a woman from work would invited me around for dinner with 'the boys' I went and she had two stuffed teddy bears one on each chair -they got fed as did I and she talked like they were proper children - I had no idea before I went they weren't real.

She had also opened bank accounts for them (back the 1970s) and each bear (Tommy and Charles) had a huge amount of savings -I often wondered what happened to her -just weird

@2021V2

An ex boyfriend has me round to meet his parent. The dining chairs and table were in plastic wrapping that they had come with -we sat on these chairs and they put mats down and then wiped the plastic down -weird.

Then we went in the lounge and they had a sofa covered in plastic. Apparently it was 5 years old -and immaculate -they were very very proud. Ex was a weirdo too and did similar. refused to throw packaging away etc

Actually I had a friend who did this, and kept the big labels on too. When you went there you literally sat on the plastic wrapped sofa . It was twenty odd years ago and we were late twenties at the time.

We did laugh in surprise when we first saw it snd asked why. She seriously told us that it keeps the furniture good as it was very expensive.

@SurreyFlurry92 yep, those are the yohurts!

My daughter in law’s elderly father had a framed photograph of two dead bodies lying in a road. He had it on his living room wall. They were his parents who had been killed in a massacre when he was a child. It was the only photograph he had of them. He was 90 and Turkish. I don’t know any more details but that photograph gave me chills whenever we visited.

Was staying at an exchange friend's house in Germany (1980s). On her tv was a slipper. Made from the fur of her dead cat. So anyone could put it in their lap and stroke it whilst watching TV. Just as they did when their cat was alive......

@BigWoollyJumpers

Lots of Giraffe in gardens in Surrey - there are three near where a friend of mine lives. Locally very famous!

@BigWoollyJumpers also in my part of Cheshire 😄

@DizzyLollipop82

I used to go round my friends every other Sunday and all of her family smothered their roast dinner with tomato ketchup. GROSS

I do this or salad cream 😋

@Livpool

My Nan used to do the cucumber in vinegar too - she had a special dish for it. Served with red tinned salmon sandwiches - it was her ideal Sunday night tea

Mine too, but tuna sandwiches rather than salmon 😋

"Another friend we were playing hide and seek and I hid in her mums bedroom. Sat at the side of the bed and there was an awful smell coming from the bedside drawers. I opened the top drawer and there were actual dried turds in there. Nearly puked."

WTF? Did you say anything to her about it?

Yes to sitting on dining chairs with plastic covers, also yes to going to a house with a poll dancing poll in the living room.

Looked round a house for sale once and the owner had loads of topless pictures of herself in bedroom, more page 3 style than arty.

"Pole"

I went into a house, through work. The living room had shelves all the way around and there were those dolls with the pot faces, crammed onto the shelves. It was well spooky.

Two spring to mind:
One of my boys was invited to a friend's to play on a Sunday. At 12:30, his friendwais called down to roast lunch and asked my son to stay in the bedroom. Twenty minutes later the mum came up and asked whether son would like a cheese sandwich.
When we had friends to play at my parent's home, they would be given lunch and then Mum would offer a pudding of rice or mandarin slices (but not both). The "pudding" would be served in the individual tins with a teaspoon. Evaporated milk was offered as an accompaniment for the mandarins but not the rice.

@pheonixrebirth

Going for Sunday dinner at my friends house and her mum put a plate of sliced cucumbers in vinegar on the table along with the gravy boat. I've never seen or heard about cucumbers in vinegar before or since. Just weird???

My grandma always did the cucumber like this when I was a kid, she also peeled it before slicing. I think this was very common back in the day

A house near us has an explicit ornament in the front window of a naked couple going for it. Looks like a 3D printout of a Joy of Sex illustration.
I was a bit by my friend’s parents having a fridge in their bedroom. They had a biggish kitchen and a biggish house.
Not an object, but I was shocked at a sleepover once to see my friend’s mum sitting on her dad’s knee and giggling coquettishly. My parents sooo didn’t do that

Got invited to a friends house. First time I'd ever been there, they had 2 dogs, there dog poo all over the carpets, pretty much in every room. It absolutely stunk & you had to watch where you stepped. Safe to say first & last time I went around to her house ever again.