Are we going to have to adopt the way our grandparents etc lived?

[heartbroken22]

Give me a tip you learnt from your grandparents.

Well, it seemed to involve being charming and knowing your place (or in her case pretending to know your place and actually being steely determined to have it all your own way), egg based canapés and potted shrimp, and the children being with nanny 6 days a week

Ha ha, no - gp has a new sofa every couple of years and winters in Spain, so I wish.
The principle of living a more wasteless lifestyle and being a little more self sufficient is something we've been trying to do for a long time we with veg, meat, diary, eggs, logs for the fire. I want solar panels next, but they are expensive. My parents grew their own veg, filled the freezer for the winter, made lots of soup and casserole bases to freeze, plus lots of jam.

Me: " I'm bored", GP assigns job like turning compost, painting wall etc. I'm never bored now 😂

They never wasted anything or were big consumers. I learnt a lot from them and am pretty handy.

Actually I'm going to make one of my Granny's desserts - raspberry jelly mixed with cream for a bit of old school 😀

If you’re cold put a jumper on
Don’t cook different things for different people.
Do not waste food.
Dry washing outside and if it’s raining use an airer
New clothes are a treat not a necessity
Do not buy new because you’re bored of the old

Offer your eldest daughter to the landowner in exchange for a reduction in rent.

I'm not sure who'd you approach in the council, any ideas?

In some ways, I still try to hang on to what my maternal grandparents lived by: not wasting things, knowing how to cook ‘from scratch’ and being physically independent. But I am grateful I have so many choices they never had, such as getting an education and a professional job as a woman. I also let go of their automatic deference to anyone who seemed to be an authority figure, such as a doctor or a teacher.

One I forgot to add. Don't try to be your children's friend . Be their parent . Until they reach adulthood then you can be their friend

Don't do washing on a Sunday

Smoking, living in a mansion on one wage and defeating the Nazis?

I'm in.

@Needmorelego
"Only one parent needs to have a full time job as the wage covers everything."
I'm not sure where you get this from. Lots of families had both parents working, as did my mother, born in 1910, who stopped work for just 6 weeks when I was born.
I think what you mean, is 'middle class job's such as teaching, where women were definitely expected to leave work when they married (ie my DMIL).

To answer the OP, I was brought up, saving the string and paper from parcels, and you will be thinking, 'what string?' Yes, at one time parcels were tied up with string, and at some time we changed to sellotape, and later brown parcel tape.
We were brought up in an old house without central heating, and I was always cold, so I definitely do not want to go back to that.

Keep your nails short and well trimmed.

Wear a hat when you go outside

Serve bread at every meal

If you're bored, read a book.

What do you mean? In service? Knowing our place? Dying in childbirth and watching our children die from measles, polio or diphtheria?

No, I think they could teach us one or two things about looking after our world and not being wasteful though.

Smoke 50 a day and be a bit racist.

Hmm, perhaps not.

(My grandparents were lovely really - apart from racism in one of them.)

Yes I agree. Drives me mad that my husband thinks he can wear a T-shirt in the house in winter and whinge he is cold.

My grandma baked a cake every day when her grandchildren were staying! I miss her.

What, smoke 60 cigarettes a day, drink like a fish and beat your wife and children daily? No, I don't think I'd like to live the way my grandparents lived, thanks all the same.

@milveycrohn yes it was more the norm for families in the 1940/50s (when my grandparents were bringing up my Dad and Aunt) to have just one wage coming in. Before my Dad and Aunt were born my Granny worked (in a factory). During the war they took in a young evacuee so I don't know if my Granny stopped working then. Dad and Aunt came along towards the end of the war so Granny stayed home. This was fairly normal.

What is more cost efficient - tumble dryer or not owning tumble dryer but warm house to dry clothes for family of 5 in Victorian house risking mould and damp?

My own grandparents - cooking up big pots of actually delicious nutritious meals from 'nothing'. Mending clothes. Not needing bottles and bottles of chemicals to keep house clean. Family bathwater for kids. Having friends over for a chin wag rather than cafes. Not sign up kids for hundreds of classes but take homework seriously.

Still can't cope.

• clean dishes in bowl full of degreased food particles and not rinse off
• tinned food for meals

Also never having foreign holidays. I actually love daytrips to UK beaches with cliffs more than a week in soulless resorts, so easy one here, but never travelling? Not gonna happen.

Why should we have to learn to live like people did years ago? We live in the 21st century not the 1960’s.

Also I’m a grandparent. I grew up with central heating. I bought clothes all the time as a young woman ( Kumar brothers). We didn’t grow vegetables. I went to university, and had a wild time.

What bit of my life in the 80’s would be relevant today?

One set of my grandparents (probably not unusual) had no car, no TV, no central heating, no double glazing, no meals out, no holidays.

They also had no running hot water in the house or inside loo until they moved house in their mid 30s.

Both of them lost siblings during childhood to illnesses which are now completely preventable.

What we consider basic essentials and minimum acceptable living conditions have changed.

Make do. You don't need loads of stuff really and nor do your children.

Many of us here went to cloth nappies to horrors of grandparents who endured handwashing terry towels.

Luxury. I'll just be using the candle for warmth. Not even a fire here.

Things I can do:
make soup
avoid wasting food
mend and reuse things

Things I can’t do:
run this household on one wage
grow all our veg (no garden)
shoot rabbits for food

Things I won’t do:
bath only once a week - daily shower pls
boil wash underpants in a saucepan
camping holidays