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

[heartbroken22]

Give me a tip you learnt from your grandparents.

The apple cake is highly recommended.

When my mum was little she and my grandparents lived in digs, it was lodging in one room in another family's home which seemed shocking to me. We moved very recently but our old house was next door to a HMO which sometimes had young families in one of the rooms so in some ways it feels like we have gone back to those times.

We will benefit from the EI rulings on repairing devices and expected lifetimes

We will benefit from the EI rulings on repairing devices and expected lifetimes

Indeed, but they were the ones that insisted on fixed plugs, for example, in the first place.

It’s interesting that much of what is being presented here as ‘what our grandparents did back in t’day’ actually required a shedload of work from a stay at home wife/mum. No thank you.

I agree with you, but only up to a point. It’s perfectly possible to cook from scratch, grow your own, and knit and mend whilst doing full time jobs. My grandparents did.

I think there are two differences between then and now. Firstly, the things produced were simpler. Those jumpers my grandma made were plain. They were made to be warm, not fancy. Cooking and baking was the same - quick and easy. I have all my mother’s and grandmother’s recipe books. Each recipe has about 4 steps max, they are so far removed from the recipe books you buy today. None of the faff. Designed to feed a family cheaply, quickly and nutritiously.

My grandmother would have laughed herself hoarse at the idea of all the fannying around on Bake Off. It’s perfectly possible to whip up a plate of buns (as we called them, before ‘cupcakes’ took over) in half the time it takes to drive to a shop and buy some, and yet I’m always hearing other mums in the playground saying they haven’t time to bake for cake sales and it’s quicker to buy something.

There is so much pressure now for home made / home grown stuff to be instagrammable. Allotments are supposed to be beautiful. I have a talented friend whose knits are shown off on Facebook. They are things of beauty, but that wasn’t the norm back in the day when people did this out of necessity.

Secondly, they were quick at this stuff - my mother couldn’t afford new clothes (she was another one who wasn’t allowed to do A-levels despite going to grammar school and being pretty clever) so if she wanted a new skirt for a dance on Saturday night, she’d run one up on her sewing machine in 24hrs using fabric from something else. My grandmother would knit or mend while watching telly on an evening. They used their time efficiently. They weren’t ladies of leisure.

Fixed plugs because too many idiots killed themselves

It’s possible, yes, but it doesn’t leave much time for anything else. I knit for a hobby - after a full on, full time job I really wouldn’t want to go back home to depending evenings knitting jumpers and socks. Growing your own requires you to have a garden or an allotment - good luck getting the latter with land being sold off and long allotment waiting lists - and again, who wants to spend weekends doing that? I’m a member of a community garden, again it’s a hobby and I can do it in my own time when I have time. Cooking from scratch, again ditto - I do what I can, but I’m well aware of the amount of time my grannies had to spend cooking g from scratch for a family and there’s no way they could have done what they did after working outside the home for 40 hours per week plus commuting time. My dad had allotments when we were growing up - he spent a lot of time getting to it and then keeping it going.

My point still stands - times have moved on, and our lives are far, far removed from our grandparents. We should certainly look to a more a sustainable way of life, but we have to be realistic about the amount of time our grandparents (grandmothers) spent on domestic chores.

👏🏼

Being thrifty is fine, but the ‘simple lives’ of yesteryear were tough. No thanks.

Not grandparents, but my parents, who were young adults during WW2.

Make do and mend.

Cut your coat according to your cloth.

My grandmother left school at 14 to earn money, made her own clothes, cooked from scratch, didn’t drive, she had nothing like as much stuff as us and had no central heating. On the other hand, she didn’t work once she got married, she had a daily cleaner, she sent her children to boarding school at age 7, and had no mortgage. Her lifestyle would be completely different now.

My grandmother lost a finger to a mangle so no thanks.

Make sure you have a good coat; no matter how poor you are or how shabby your clothes are, in a good coat you can go anywhere.

Use soot from the fireplace to clean your teeth.

Put your feet in a warm mustard soak and drink a hot drink at the same time if you're cold. Instant sweats

Some of these are just... well... are people not doing some of these things anyway. Who is wasting food, not handing down ther kids clothes and sharing kids bath water. I thought a lot of this was normal.

Oh and a double brandy for period pain it does work

Well obviously. Or cut your nails (it's bad luck!)

Monday is wash day. When you do the washing and have a "wash day tea"

Long johns!

Remember those?

If I lived like my grandparents, I would send my future child to be cared for full time until primary school by a relative who would look after them for a fraction of the cost of 'formal' childcare. My dad didn't live with his parents until he was 6 and only saw them on weekends. I believe Akshata Murthy( rishi sunak's wife) was raised in a similar fashion so her parents could concentrate on their careers in the big city. . It would sound alien here, leaving the DC to be cared for by grandparents in the north while working in London until they hit school age but in poorer countries with no safety net, that is what is done.

And we are quite close to becoming a country with no protections if Liz Truss/Rees Mogg get their way...

I had one GP who did live without electricity and running water for quite a while. He always wore thick wool socks and a cap, used hot water bottles and went to bed really, really early. He also used oil lamps for light and put hot coals in a metal pan and put that in bed just before bed time to heat it up (remove before actually getting into bed to prevent burning). Put a wool blanket under your mattrass (as well as over your duvet) to keep the cold from going up through the mattrass. Houses back then weren't spacious and open plan but had little rooms which meant that you could just heat one tiny living room where everyone would sit in until bed time.

He would also catch ducks and pheasants to eat, had his own chickens for eggs and grew most of his own veggies and fruits. He lived well into his 90s. It was a lot of work to live like that and that kept him fit.

Good things
Three meals a day. Stop constantly snacking.
Wearing suitable clothes for the weather.
Looking after possessions.

Not so good things
My Grandad driving a 3 wheeled car on a motorcycle license. Badly.
Not being able to afford the Dr.
Infant and child mortality.
Bring force fed foods I hated, because waste.

Things I don't recognise
Everyone having stay at home mothers. I'm adopted. The mothers and grandmothers in my birth family and adopted families worked and raised their families.

When were they born? My gran was born in 1904 and had to work as well as grandpa to get by. Come to think of it, her mum had to work too...

It always was harder on the older kids in big families, most especially the girls.

Most people wont need to live like their grandparents (or as I am in my 50s, even my parents).

We won't need to revert back to things like working with a twin tub and a mangle (I helped mum with this when young before before we got our first automatic washing machine!), planning you life around hanging washing out on the line to dry ready to bring in as soon as it rained, make brickets from old newspaper to burn on the fireplace to save on coal that you had to bring in from the coal bunker and many other things that made home life manually intense.

There will be things they did do, that many still do as it is wasteful otherwise. Such as only have heating on when needed, never overnight (or frost protection only) and rarely during the day - if you were cold you moved about more, mum always had some chores you could do to keep warm! Wear/use things more before washing (my parents never and neither do I washed bedding weekly!). Make cheap meals with less meat and bulked out with cheaper potatoes and veg, followed with no frills rice/sponge puddings or cheap tinned fruit and cheap custard from powder. Don't replace it unless it is broken and never because "burnt mustard" is this seasons fashion colour for cushions and bedding. Mend/patch things instead of replacing and hand down reuse more. Use elbow grease for cleaning instead of expensive sprays etc.

Many of these I do regularly anyway as hating waste rubbed off on me. Treating myself will be a bit less.