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Original poster

What was a HUGE deal in your house growing up that is normal for you now?

464 replies

Bakingmamma · 26/02/2023 14:38

Various things in my house.

A big one was baking. Although we
usually had the things in the house, wanting to bake was such a big deal and we could only do it on special occasions. Possibly did it once or twice a year.

I’m not talking about big extravagant bakes either! I’m talking about 12 bog standard cupcakes with some basic icing on!

It was only when I reached adulthood that I realized I could cook some basic cupcakes in 20 minutes and it wasn’t a big deal at all.

It takes longer to do a load of washing!

What was a huge deal in your house that you’ve now normalized for your own children? I can’t be the only one 🙈

OP posts:
VickerishAllsort · 26/02/2023 19:31

Bath once a week whether we needed it or not.
Only being allowed upstairs to our rooms at bedtime, with lights out straight away.

AD1996 · 26/02/2023 19:33

Proper welsh salted butter

Witchbitch20 · 26/02/2023 19:34

@SpaceTreasure 😂😂.

petermaddog · 26/02/2023 19:35

peter pan on tv 1964 mom let me eat my soup inthe living room but the soup slopped out o f the bowl because the floor was lopsided i did not care(;

Tophy124 · 26/02/2023 19:35

Takeaways/meals out.

Day trips out.

New clothing and new shoes.

Getting toys and crafts for fun and just because.

Not saving things for ‘best’

Getting to buy foods seen as decadent to childhood me in my weekly shop eg good cheese, brownies.

My child has a much more privileged life than I did growing up.

Oopswediditagain2023 · 26/02/2023 19:35

Unplanned shopping trips. Going to IKEA or the Trafford centre was a meticulously planned affair. Now they're places we just nip on a whim 🤣

Darklane · 26/02/2023 19:40

Proper toilet paper…YES.
I had the job of cutting the newspaper into squares to thread on string to hang in the outside lavatory.
Remember being given my first orange by the kind chap who ran the greengrocers, didn’t know what to do with it. Rationing was still in place through my childhood.

xogossipgirlxo · 26/02/2023 19:40

Having pets. Always the same narration how much hassle they are etc. I have 2 cats and their presence at home is natural to me. They're family members, definitely not incovenience.
Cleaning day that isn't Saturday. God, I used to hate Saturdays. They were so boring, you couldn't step on the wet floor.

PinkTonic · 26/02/2023 19:42

Usrr · 26/02/2023 16:18

At the risk of sounding very stupid, what age is everyone who is replying on this thread? The things listed are making it sound like the 1950's? I grew up in Canada in the early 80's and most things listed on this thread were very normal for me. This thread makes it seem like a very different world here than it was there. The examples are closer the examples my dad would tell us about his childhood in the 50's.

Baths? What's the issue? We had baths / showers every day?

Heating? I don't understand this. Why was this an issue? Was it because it was just expensive? We always had the heat on.

Blankets not allowed on sofas? That's just strange.

Meals out? I do agree we definitely go out more now, but as a child we probably went out a couple times a month.

Days out? We often went on long drives into the countryside or to explore different towns. Even just for drives in our own town.

Fruit & veg were all readily available from what I can remember and very normal to have these. Perhaps seasonality played more of a role back then, but I can't remember not having them during my childhood.

For me the main different things now are things I do with the children such as indoor soft play, national trust properties (we didn't have these in Canada obviously), short city breaks to Europe (we did lots of Canadian & American holidays instead), playing in the street until we were called in or going over to a friends house and not telling our parents.

I would think various ages. I was a child in the 1960s and we didn’t have central heating or a telephone in the house when I was very young. I can remember getting the phone put in and you waited ages for it to be done and first of all we had to have something called a party line, literally shared. My aunt moved to Australia and we booked a call to her weeks in advance and it was incredibly expensive. We had a car, went on holidays to the seaside. I remember getting colour TV and we were early adopters of the package holiday. We weren’t poor, we had a nice life for the times but things that are commonplace now just weren’t available. We had good food, home made baking and plenty of fruit and vegetables because we grew loads in the garden. Washing was a big deal, first my mum had a washing machine with an electric mangle then a twin tub. It took all bloody day! When she got her first automatic washing machine she didn’t believe it could get the clothes clean as it wasn’t a great big tub of soapy water.

Tekkentime · 26/02/2023 19:44

CurlyhairedAssassin · 26/02/2023 17:39

The phone. My parents first got a phone in 1995.

Did you mean to type 1985?! @IsItBedtimeYetNope

My parents didn't have a house phone until very late 90s. They only got that to get dial-up.

AmandaJonah · 26/02/2023 19:44

Eat in front of the TV. Meals were always at the table. Very occasionally we were allowed to eat in front of the TV if my dad was working late. It was a huge treat.

MargaretThursday · 26/02/2023 19:46

Shop bought cakes - almost never. Occasionally we got 1/2 a donut each or 1/5 of a Danish pastry.

Eating out

Paying for parking - we used to go to the local big town about 5 times a year. This involved driving round the free parking out of town until we found a space big enough. These were 1hr parking slots.
We'd then rush into town (about 20 minutes to the centre of town) rush round town with no time to stop and think and then be running back because we were out of time.
There was a car park in the centre of town costing 20p for 4 hours.
If we'd ever got a fine for parking (and it was very close on several occasions-I remember passing the traffic warden or on another occasion df running ahead and having to drive the car round the block to come back to pick us up to avoid them) then it would have been cheaper to park in the 20p car park every time for 20 years!

Chocolate and sweets: Only allowed chocolate on Sundays. Sweets only one packet when going on a long journey. I demonstrated today my expertise in sucking a sweet so slowly it lasts over half an hour and impressed the children around.

Reaction is: I love shop bought cakes, chocolate, eating out and sweets.
I also pay for parking when necessary and don't spent half an hour waiting for a free slot.

DahliaMacNamara · 26/02/2023 19:47

A discussion on an earlier thread reminded me of this. (Another poster refused point blank to believe that my family's usual 1970s practice of holidaying 'back home' at our grandparents' house was anything but an indicator of extreme poverty).
We always went at the end of the summer holidays, because that was the only time my dad could get off work. The strange thing is that I don't remember him taking any other time off, except once or twice to travel back for family funerals. Like, ever.
Days off now are totally normal. Have holiday entitlements changed that much?

katepilar · 26/02/2023 19:48

Usrr · 26/02/2023 18:45

Both my parents worked. Not sure what gave you the impression they didn't.

I also can't imagine my childhood without pizza or colour TV. This thread is a real eye opener

Show quote history

I think PP was talking about her own family not working.

Serena1977 · 26/02/2023 19:50

fruit, decent shoes, a bath with more than an inch of water, proper sanitary protection

Weallhaveavoice · 26/02/2023 19:50

DahliaMacNamara · 26/02/2023 19:47

A discussion on an earlier thread reminded me of this. (Another poster refused point blank to believe that my family's usual 1970s practice of holidaying 'back home' at our grandparents' house was anything but an indicator of extreme poverty).
We always went at the end of the summer holidays, because that was the only time my dad could get off work. The strange thing is that I don't remember him taking any other time off, except once or twice to travel back for family funerals. Like, ever.
Days off now are totally normal. Have holiday entitlements changed that much?

Times have changed
We and all my friends went ‘back home’ to grandparents. ( Ireland )
We didn’t go places whilst there or anything, just visit all the relatives

ChirpyChirpyCheepCheepBeep · 26/02/2023 19:51

CurlyhairedAssassin · 26/02/2023 17:39

The phone. My parents first got a phone in 1995.

Did you mean to type 1985?! @IsItBedtimeYetNope

Our less well to do neighbours got a landline well into the nineties; maybe 93 ?

TenoringBehind · 26/02/2023 19:51

How could I have forgotten no TV. We didn’t get one until 1989.

lieselotte · 26/02/2023 19:52

I am pigeon toed (ie feet turn in rather than out when walking). It's not that unusual.

My parents had a real "thing" about it, and my dad used to walk behind me trying to kick my feet out. He used to talk about older kids whose bottoms sticked out when they walked, how I'd have problems as I got older etc. I am now 50 and fine! And being pigeon-toed is good for flutter kick when swimming (not so good for breast-stroke :) )

DF also used to moan all the time about me being on the phone and of course I was not allowed to use the phone until after 6pm.

WiddlinDiddlin · 26/02/2023 19:55

So many things... some I catch myself doing now!

Eating outside at home - drove my mother mad, thus my dad was even more incentivised to make a bacon butty and eat it outside!

Bonkers because we were a very outdoor family, up mountains and down caves and eating picnics up Snowdon or in laybys in the back of the car or down a cave all the bloody time. I am sure she made a fuss just because my dad liked it, and he did it more because she made a fuss.

Meals not at mealtimes - late breakfast not acceptable (dad and eating it outside, see above), eating after teatime and as she got older, she'd declare the kitchen was 'shut' after 7pm. This didn't mean she wasn't cooking anything for anyone, it meant NO ONE could cook or prep food, no matter why, where they'd been etc etc!

Pubs with fake plastic trees/swings - Dad would spot it and pull straight back out of the carpark no matter how badly someone needed a wee or how hungry we were. The times we stopped at a pub and only discovered the delightful monstrosity once he'd sat down were fantastic, nothing he could do then! I can see now the reasoning behind avoiding a kid-centric pub... though, I mean, they had two kids sooooo.... mm.

Heating - NEVER ALLOWED IT ON, SO EXPENSIVE. Yeah. I get it now!

No sweets or chocolate - we were the kids everyone else KNEW weren't allowed these things, whether at school or with friends of the family... infuriating!

Mushroo · 26/02/2023 19:56

I’ve not read the full thread but getting something out of the loft. I may as well have asked my dad to go to the moon!

I don’t even know why, it had one of those pull down ladder things but going up there was A BIG DEAL

Rookriver · 26/02/2023 19:56

Lol yes paying for parking. Dad would rather walk for 20 mins than pay 20p.

Baking also.

Having drinks in the front room. We had to drink over the sink.

Making noise in the garden. Def not allowed.

Having friends round was a massive deal. Had to be organised weeks in advance and very rarely.

AnneElliott · 26/02/2023 19:57

This thread is bringing back memories. And I think it was very different in North America. We didn't have central heating at home and my parents still don't! My dad thinks it's unhealthy.

I was born late 70s and we had a bomb site on our road (fenced off though) until 1985 when 4 new houses were built.

My parents didn't have a shower until mid 2000s. Before that it was just a bath.

Eating out was a rare treat. Birthday parties as McDonalds were such a rare occurrence but I remember going to a few.

We had a colour TV and a phone but weren't allowed to call anyone until after 6pm. And then it was rationed strictly.

WetLettuce2 · 26/02/2023 19:58

Great thread OP !

For me it was visiting family - a huge deal was made, traffic was avoided, kids in pjs, set off at night, suitcase pack, stops scheduled. It was 4 hours away 🤣

Same for camping 2 hours down the road !

DotAndCarryOne2 · 26/02/2023 19:59

WalkingThroughTreacle · 26/02/2023 19:22

Time to really show my age and social background - soft toilet paper.

And me !! When I lived at home before I was married, my dad would only buy that ‘crispy’ San Izal stuff. Stuck to your fingers, scratched your bum and wasn’t the most absorbent !! Sorry for lowering the tone !!