Things you thought were posh/exciting/unattainable as a child that are actually everyday items

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I'm just searching for scotch tape on Amazon ready for Christmas. It got me thinking how double sided sticky tape was but a dream back when I was little. Blue Peter used it all the time but it was something I'd never have. The same with play dough. I only ever had plasticine. Scotch tape was fancy too, we only ever had yellow sellotape. Ribera. I'm sure I'll think of others.

This wasn’t an envy one as we actually had it, but I remember thinking it was very fancy that my parents, who barely drank spirits, had a fully stocked drinks cabinet and always had the drink people wanted at Christmas or if we had a party. I was quite overawed at the idea that this was a requirement of adulthood - I couldn’t imagine how I’d be organised enough or rich enough to have all that “just in case”.

In fairness, I probably didn’t realise that spirits didn’t go off. What I thought of as the huge expense of having vodka in the house that nobody drank was in reality probably an outlay of a tenner every five years 😁

I would love a fully stocked cocktail cabinet! I remember a friend's family had a decanter of whisky, with crystal glasses, on a tray, on the sideboard, and the level never seemed to go down.

In reality, a fully stocked cocktail cabinet would probably result in me having a serious drink problem and I'd be restocking the vodka once a week, not once every 5 years 😂

mathanxiety yes a bedside lamp!! Or lamps in general. I have remembered that we only had overhead lights, I don't think even my mum and dad had a bedside lamp or even a lamp in the downstairs rooms when I was small, everything was lit by overhead light (still can't stand the overhead lights on now, unless I'm actively doing a task and soon as I've finished it goes straight off ie back to the ambient lighting ie lamps. I'm a big fan of ambient lighting!). Also all our bedroom lights had the long dangly pull cord with a toggle on the end instead of a switch oddly.

Our neighbours had plain carpet whereas everyone else I know had mad patterned. I loved the plain carpet and remember asking my mum when I was 8 if we could get plain next time and she said no, it shows all the dirt (!)

That'll be because we wore shoes indoors including in bedrooms (I do not do that as an adult!) so there is another one that seemed "posh" but unattainable to me as kid - having the sort of house where shoes were taken off inside so we could have plain carpet instead of patterned "to hide the dirt"....

It’s still posh to food shop at M&S to me! 😁

Shortbread.

Goodness, I'm glad I started this thread now as it's been a joy to read.

My nana and grandad had lots of posh things. We didn't have much money growing up but at nana and grandad's things were plentiful. Dinner was always at the table and the table was set straight after the pots had been washed and dried after the previous dinner. There were napkins on the table, butter in individual Denby pots, side plates, brown sugar crystals, melon boats in glass shaped dishes, butter knives. They had a salmon as the centre piece for their wedding anniversary party one year and it cost £50! That was the late 80s I think. Crisps, nuts, chocolates out on little dishes all year round, triple glazing, gold taps, a big chest freezer, two cars, detached house with one room as grandad's office, fitted furniture, a Mira electric shower, Golden Shred marmalade in a marmalade jar with a lid and specific spoon. They had a bar in the house and I could help myself to cans of coke, 7up, lilt etc. I always asked of course but was always told of course, go and get one. Nana bought crisps from M&S. They ate hake and things like chicken and white wine crepes. The bath was huge-about 1.5 times the width of a normal bath and they had a bath pillow. They had 4 foreign holidays a year and were permatanned. They were amazing grandparents.

Things in other people's houses were things that were there just because they were nice and perhaps whimsical. Fripperies that's indicated excess money.

Showers, especially one in a cubicle.

Orange juice in a dimpled glass bottle.

Two cars in a family and a mum who drove.

Eating in a restaurant

This might be an odd one, but Burmese Cats. One of my mum’s friends was the height of glam to young me in the 80s - bleached blonde hair, always very tanned, ‘leather’ furniture and a front room teaming with pot plants, gold Knick knacks, stone Buddhas and a brown Burmese cat that always slunk through it. I thought that cat was the most exotic cat I had ever seen. Now I have my own Burmese and he’s an absolute idiot (but I adore him).

Dunlop Green Flash tennis shoes. I would have probably sold my soul to the devil for a pair when I was about 12. Or for anything that was "genuine" or remotely fashionable actually. We always had "lookalikes" off the market, or home made stuff which led to my sister and I being bullied more than we would have been for not having things at all. We were talking about it recently actually. We both feel terribly guilty now that we weren't more grateful for what we did have, and for the efforts our parents made, yet we also vividly remember the misery of showing up at school with an obviously cheap copy of whatever the cool kids had. But it was those tennis shoes that were the real object of desire for me!

Same here OP, my grandparents on one side had a BAR in their living room, as well as an electric organ. When I opened her fridge there were STACKS of Cadbury Dairy Milk just sitting on the top shelf. We only ever ever went out to restaurants (Beefeater or Harvester) when visiting them, and was allowed one tiny drink of Coke. Also in their bar they had bottles of Coke and we were allowed a tiny glass with tea! And one year I had my birthday there (they lived about 3 hours drive away) and the cake was a BOUGHT one with fondant icing making an amazing decoration. My mum did do fantastic cakes but always looked nice and home-made so this looked so fancy.

They got new textured wallpaper of palm trees and I got in trouble because I picked bits off, it was like polystyrene also a plum coloured bathroom suite with thick carpet.

At home everything was second-hand and nearly all food was 'good for you'... not complaining though, we had a great childhood.

Another one for pre packed sandwiches. An absolute treat. Also, I remember our local Sainsbury's had a salad bar. It was a very exciting day that we were allowed to fill up one of those little plastic boxes. But I remember not being allowed to put in iceberg lettuce, cucumber or a boiled egg as we had all those at home. And having to cram the pot so full that the lid would pop open if you let it. To be honest, I'm not really sure I liked the contents all that much, it was the self serve element that made it so enticing.

Funnily it is the self serve (or more to the point other people self serving) that puts me off salad bars today.

Vienetta!

And it is only £1 nowadays in Iceland! We thought it was so posh!

I was born in the 70s and bought up in a council house by a single mum so when I stayed at a friends house and they had a shower and used to shower in the MORNING I thought they were so smart!

It was a few inches of water bath twice a week and shared water in our house!

A family car.
A valance.

Mine are mostly stationery. I was a child in the 70s, and unattainable novelties back then included such things as really big packs of felt tip pens with unusual colours like lilac or teal blue (oh, the joy of a visit to WHSmith in Finchley Road with my grandad!), shiny coloured paper and Copydex glue. The best thing about getting a Spirograph set for Christmas was the coloured biros. The purple was my favourite. Of course, coloured biros are everywhere now, like pastel gel pens, gold and silver marker pens and fountain pen cartridges that come in green or turquoise or violet.

My friend had her own phone in her room like this one. It was so posh.

Oh Janey Mac please please can you tell me where in Dublin you saw this menu in 2016? I love proper old fashioned restaurants

Sorry should have quoted @Followinclosely - can you remember the Dublin restaurant ?

In 2018 I went on a days river trip. The menu looked like it had not changed since the 1980s. Orange juice, minestrone soup or grapefruit for starters. Beef or chicken in a cream sauce for main, and sherry trifle, ice cream or black forest gatieax for dessert.

Three piece suite
Dishwasher
Colour telly
Beach/package holidays
Snacks/treats
Jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjhhoooooooo

An intercom inside the house. It meant your house is so big you cannot just holler upstairs.

V V recently my manager said "Pyong, there is a 9 pack of loo roll for you in the staff room, got sick of it being here and delisted so I have wasted it and everyone can take one home". I went in for my next shift with her and told her what my 17 yr old son had said. "Mum.....have we just come into money?!" "no, why?" "ANDREX? We NEVER have posh loo roll" 😂

In my defence, at one point we got through a roll a day with 8 of us in the house, so Aldi all the way! Also, 2 days before lockdown I bought our standard 24 pack of Aldi bog roll, we were out of bog roll well after lock down ended so I can only assume that those people who stockpiled either ate it or still cannot get into their shed!

My friend's dad had some aged whiskey in a cabinet. He had a house party for his sixteenth and some kids drank it with budget cola.

I never learned what became of that. I did not personally partake. I remember someone threw up in a shoe though.

shiny black patent shoes with kitten heels.
mum said I had to wait a few years til I was sixteen…
I got to sixteen, and guess what? They were no longer fashionable 🤷‍♀️

grapefruit knife made me smile.
one of the wedding gifts received back in the early seventies was a box of knives that each had a specific purpose.
I dutifully placed the knives in the kitchen drawer for later use….. many months later, when I was cleaning out the drawers, I picked up the grapefruit knife to wash along with the other cutlery etc.
I should tell you that I didn’t actually KNOW it was meant for grapefruit, and I felt panicked 😱 that there was this distinct curve in the blade.
I spent ages trying to hammer it straight before my husband got home. I was alarmed that he would think I’d not taken care of the gift, and let it bend somehow!
I was so happy when I found out that was meant to be the design…

Heating. New clothes.