How to live like its the 1990s?

[Coffeeandcake12]

Inspired by a thread about how people were happier in the 90s, how can I live more like we did in the 90s?
Obviously no Internet, I already don't use social media apart from mumsnet.
But what made the 90s so good that I could recreate for me and my children a bit more?

Having your friends' work numbers and phoning them at work to ask if they fancied a drink. Buying everything in shops and in person from wedding guest outfits to books and CDs or tapes. Not taking photos of you, your friends and your food every 5 seconds.

I had a great time in the 90s. I went Interrailing in 1990, bimbling around Europe for a month with about 300 quid spending money. We did a lot of drinking and sleeping on trains, not much eating unless we could get people to feed us. I came home so skinny and suntanned (and sunburnt, couldn't afford to buy more sun cream!). Then moving to London in 1991 as a graduate trainee and shortly after met my husband who introduced me to the rave scene. So it was power suits and briefcases by day, and out clubbing at the weekend (Whirlygig, Return to the Source and Escape from Samsara were our favourites, but also Club UK for a bit of dirty techno as we lived nearby). We also got in with a festival crowd and did a lot of volunteering in the beer tents at Glastonbury, Reading, Creamfields etc (free tickets and secure camping!). I got dial up internet in 1997, but I also remember going to London's first Internet cafe (Cyberia), in maybe 1995. We got married in 1996, we had the reception in a restaurant on Battersea Rise, we hired the whole restaurant amazingly cheaply, doubt we could affords that now. Labour winning the election in 97 was amazing, it seemed like everyone in London took the day off and went down the pub to party, it really felt like a new beginning after years of the hated Thatch! Sadly we didn't buy the flat we were living in for 60k in 1997, It sold last year for 550k! I feel very privileged to have been able to live in London for that decade (we left in 2003), I don't think its an option any more for many working class young people. I know not everyone was having a good time ( I remember Black Monday too) but I bloody loved the 90s!

OMG this!!

When I went travelling for a year in 1991-1992 I just sent a few long letters to close family and had the odd long phone call.

I was an entirely different person when I returned and reconnected. The difference now - daily updates on Instagram etc...it's like you never went away.

Wait was dominoes even around in the 90’s??? I didn’t think takeaway pizza existed in the uk then??

Leave the house on a Saturday morning, walk all around town on a shopping spree. Go to Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Oasis, Warehouse, Faith, River Island, Accessorise, Knicker Box, The Body Shop.

Get nice coffee is Starbucks (and an amazing Blueberry muffin) for less than a fiver. Take yourself out for lunch. Buy a new novel / dance CD / indie record. A copy of Heat & a big bag of pick’n’mix.

Get ready with your flat mates. Slide into your no-elastane non-vanity-sized low -waisted jeans. Handkerchief top. Straighten your hair. Slick on lipgloss. Marlboro Lights & Bacardi Breezers for dinner.

No emails, no WhatApp, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Insta, no TikTok. Just a message on a notepad saying that your mates called & will be in the pub. Work is a distant memory. Snog the bloke you fancy.

Travel to different meetings when at work and be unreachable to anyone else. Have someone at the office answer all your phone calls with, sorry she is out and won't be back in the office until tomorrow. Don't look at work emails as you would be very unlikely to have a laptop.

Go out shopping for clothes buying size 12 or 10 and still be very slim.
Send your kids out to play with the local neighbourhood kids and tell them to come home when the streetlights come on.
Send your kids to the after school club where for the first time staff are police checked.

Ah yes, The Word! I remember laying in bed in now DH's student bedroom watching 'bile beer' on the word which was somebody putting a tube down their throat and into their stomach and getting some kind of hideous stomach juice to come up the tube and into a pint glass. They then drank it.
Entertainment was so much better in the 1990s.

You've just reminded me about the laptop! I had one from work in the mid 90s, it was massive and very heavy, and only had a green screen (no colour). I remember the boss walking me to the tube station in Southwark a few times as he was worried I would get mugged for it. I used to play a lot of solitaire on it, I brought it home one Xmas and my folks were very impressed!

Gosh. Real vibes from this post!

Really don't think the 1990's were a happy time. We were so poor, interest rates were silly high. We worked hard and slept every minute in between.

But on the flip side there wasn't really internet or social media so we didn't realise how poor we actually were.

zines
riot grrrl
live music
critical thinking
books on paper
heartfelt conversations
useless but cute mini Japanese toys
vegetarian food with dairy and eggs in it
big flannel shirts with the sleeves ripped out
activism that is not 100% self-serving & commodified
independent coffee houses with mismatched china and newspapers
occasional hidden gems for pennies at the flea market/secondhand shop
the feeling that we were going in the right direction, even if slowly/unsteadily

@Mumtothreegirlies my stepson was a Dominoes delivery driver in the early 90s! He made a fortune for a teenager.

Some bits were good, some bits were shit:
Loads of Tory politician sex and financial corruption scandals
Don’t take photos at all, apart from a small few with a disposable camera on big occasions.
Have public libraries everywhere
Be in the EU
have private pensions that were final salary
Smoke on trains, in cars, at home
Have more private rents that people can afford
Have more council housing that people can access
Have fewer (to purchase) private housing costs that people can manage
Have tertiary education open to farfewer people
Have racism, sexism, homophobia much more open and freely accepted
Tory Party openly demonising single mothers
Have new Labour come in and rescue public services in 1997 from total Tory decline by putting in loads more public money
Have porn infinitely less available
No social media
Living costs that allow families to raise children more affordably
Global pollution and environmental degradation thought of as a problem (cutting down rainforests, aerosols depleting the ozone layer ) UK equivalents not really considered (fine to pollute our UK waterways, Single use plastics not thought of as a problem, alternative’ fuel technology and green living seen as a bit of a fad not a necessity)
Everyday life affordable enough that there could be a youth culture and a music culture (many more live music venues, dance halls, pubs, music artists earning money from releasing music not just from touring)

My year of birth and my experience too; right down to Knebworth! Seeing The Smiths, The Cure then onto Pulp. Amazing rockabilly/psychobilly scene. Uni in London then second half of the 90s in Sheffield. Music defined my youth and twenties and it was spent socialising not on a phone. Such a different time- I do wish it was different for my kids but at least their Spotify playlists are awesome!

Are you me??!

Bring out the books, board games, imaginative games, and just go outside and enjoy your surroundings.

dance to Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Alanis Morissette, Ace of Base, so much good music in the 90s… Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, 98°, girls allowed

I enjoy about the TV thing as well, wait till something is either on the TV, or “rent it “and just watch it for the month on repeat with some snacks.

The one thing I will say is, I’m visually impaired, and in the 90s we still had to listen to audiobooks on this big clunky Ford track tape recorder. I did grow up in Florida though, in a very rural area where church was a big thing, and during one summer, I went to the church summer camp, and rode my bike, including into our friends car and knocked off her license plate… Of course I never admitted to that one.

Go to tesco for Chardonnay after college on Friday. Make sure you have Pralines and cream Haagen Daaz in freezer for later
Go home get ready after TFI Friday
New top from Principles to go with black boot cut trousers or jeans
Take rollers out and shake your Rachel haircut out
Boots nude lipstick
Big spray of Paris perfume
Set video+ for Friends, Frasier and ER
Go out and dance until your feet bleed
Get home check answer machine for messages
Lie in the next day with Marie Claire Magazine and coffee.
Get up and do it all again...

drink blossom hill
watch friends

DS was born in 1992, we hired walkie talkies when he was due so I could contact DH easily

My ds was born in 93.

Ex Dh borrowed his firms mobile phone. It was like a brick and he was embarrassed to use it in case he looked like a yuppie!

A massive high five to you @Trusttheprocess1 You've given me more memories

I saw The Smiths at Guildford Civic Hall, very early on, when Morrissey was still throwing Gladioli. In 86ish me and my punk friends used to go to a place in Hammersmith, London called The Clarendon (demolished and turned into a shopping centre like everything). Punk and alternative bands upstairs and Psychobilly (King Kurt, Guana Batz etc) downstairs. We hadn't even got to the 90s yet.

I never realised what a big deal Knebworth was until Oasis released "Oasis Knebworth 1996". We were the ones shouting "Have they started yet?" because the screaming over "Columbia" was so loud!

I don't have kids, but if I did, their playlists would be as awesome as yours! I love and miss those times so much.

All the above. I was 30 in 1995 so not a kid and yes it was wonderful. Massively into the underground rave scene - Spiral Tribe, Bedlam etc. We had our own sound and lighting rig and had the best few years in the early 90's before the Criminal Justice Bill came in and we went off travelling for 3 years! Best decade of my life. Remember being on the shores of Lake Wanaka in New Zealand when Tony Blair got in, it was a decade of massive hope and enthusiasm to my mind.

I used to enjoy going out late and on the way home buying a Sunday newspaper. Then lying on bed on Sunday reading the paper.

Oh, yes. I remember that.