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

[heartbroken22]

Give me a tip you learnt from your grandparents.

Reuse every reusable container ever.

I can’t see me cooking up soup with chickens feet and it’s head thrown in winking at me.
As a child we had hot water bottles at bedtime, pyjamas warmed by the only fire in the living room. Two duvets on the bed. On another note, I have to say that putting a fleece blanket on top of the duvet is toasty warm and you’ll never want to get out of bed!

Get an education - girls as well as boys (unusual then, one of my mother's friends wasn't allowed to stay on at school for A-levels on the grounds that there was no point, she would get married and have children not a career).

Have a career - girls as well as boys (see above)

Support your daughter to study what she wants (if she wants to do Latin O level instead of Home Economics go and see the Headmaster and insist she can. The compromise was Mum had to do both. The only exam she's ever failed was Home Economics 😂and she has always been a terrible cook)

I agree. I was born in the 50s so am almost grandmother vintage to some adults on here.

DD (adopted) still loves to eat chickens feet as a snack, as she did as a small child.

In Cape Town townships chickens heads and feet are called 'walky talkies' and are a roadside snack!

I started Grammar School in 1966 and everyone was expected to go into some sort of higher education. The heirarchy was Oxbridge, any university, polytechnic, teacher training college, nursing.

I did Latin for two years and liked it but had to fight to be able to do Home Economics O and A level which I loved and has taught me to be thrifty and resourceful. So, even then, not everyone's experience was the same. Working class background by the way and my parents wanted more for me than they had.

Snap 😂 I would probably use more water filling the sink up over and over to wash all the plates n cutlery n cups my teen uses lol

My mother is a generation before you! Also went to grammar school, so the friend not allowed to do A-levels was at grammar school.

Her parents were working class, her mother did 2 years of nurse training before the money ran out, her father got a job as soon as he left school (just pre-WW2). After WW2 they benefitted from the government schemes to fill the huge need for teachers, and were paid to do their teacher training. She (my mother) was the first of her family to go to university - with the 100% support of her parents 😀

My mother went to grammar school in 1951, when women were being told to go back to the home so the men could get jobs.

AND she did a science degree - one of 8 young women out of about 60 students!

I just worry that a diet of whiskey and bacon would be frowned on these days 🤔

My grandmother grew up in absolute poverty during the 1920s in Scotland. She has a definite Scarlett O’Hara “I’ll never be hungry again’ vibe to her. Even when she married and had a comfortable middle class existence she always had a job. Once my grandad came in for the day, she would do an evening shift in the pub and worked on a market stall during the weekend.

Her greatest advice to us girls was ALWAYS have a job so you don’t have to ask your husband for pocket money or treats. And to have a separate bank account from him so he can’t see and complain about what you’ve bought 😆She was very forward thinking for her time.

She would always bark at us for saying we were cold “you don’t know what cold is, try living in northern Scotland with no heating in midwinter” and would tell us off for leaving doors open and the lights on. Always telling us to put slippers, a jumper and a dressing gown on. Her other gem was “grab one of the dogs” and essentially use them as a bed/chair warmer 😆 God I miss that woman, she was amazing!

Oh yeah and she taught me how to make a hot toddy for her and my granddad. It warms you up a treat apparently.

Have beautiful, dainty things for best... never have an occasion fit to use them.
Ditto the best room.

Care about what people will think.
Gossip.
Judge.

Strive to be thin.
A good mother walks out of the labour ward in her 24" jeans.
Bottle feed (it's the hygienic way dear), and if you absolutely must breastfeed, so it somewhere very private where no one will see.
Solve any baby/ toddler issue by putting it in the pram/ playpen/ cot.

Some things/ attitudes are better left in the past.

Never trust a Tory.

TBF that has stood me in good stead.

Fart like a 2 ton buffalo and continue talking/watching TV/reading in a library as if nothing had happened.

Never let anyone into the house without force feeding them cake?

Maybe, it was like that, or maybe not. In London, live in a communal council flat, or council back to back, with shared toilets and washing facilities. Women took in washing, and did it by hand. Walked everywhere, because couldn't afford transport. No garden.

Or lived in a midlands back to back, with outside toilet, small garden, which housed rabbits, that you ate. No heating, next to a railway line and factory, bombed in the war.

Despite everything, it is still way better now, than it was then.

My paternal grandparents who died at the turn of the millennium never had central heating installed in their house, which they'd bought in the 1930s. Given that I am scared to switch mine on now I am already taking a leaf out of their book.

There's plenty of wisdom from my grandparents that I've never given up: wearing thermals, hot water bottles, Sunday best ...

I could probably do with trying to get back to seasonal produce more. And, although I mostly rest on Sundays, I would like to go back to having it as a proper full day of rest, but that would cause friction in the family.

Some of their advice was bizarre though. And, like others, they lived through two world wars and plenty of hardship which I wouldn't want to see again.

I bloody hope not. Mine often didn't have enough money to feed their children.

Good grief this is going to be good :)

Bake your own bread
Use hot water bottles
Wear a jumper or cardigan in the house
Always have the Yorkshire puddings first as a starter to fill you up
Make the meat from the joint last until Monday to have with chips
Use bread and butter with every meal as a filler.
Don't use the car for small journeys. Start walking.
One bath for all children
Don't wash clothes unless they need it (especially jeans)
Turn lights off
Pull curtains at night to keep the heat in
Pull back in the morning to get the heat in
Grow your own veg in your back garden
Start knitting and darning socks instead of chucking them out
Save clothes for hand me downs
Give cards for birthdays and one small present only. Mark the day without spoiling the child.
Learn to sew
I could go on

Cloth nappies, cloth wipes, and altering your own clothes.

Indeed they did. I say this as the older kid in this scenario!!

My grandparents lived in newly built council housing in a nice area which they then purchased with one salary. My other grandparents lived in a nice house in a nice area which was provided by the police as my grandad was a police officer. They could decorate however they liked and he lived in it happily until he died.

My great grandparents spoke of people who lost their legs in WW1 living on the streets as they couldn't work and children dying from simple illnesses as they could not afford a doctor. I think some Conservative MPs think of that as some kind of golden age where men wore top hats and women quietly looked after the home.