I found a shopping list from 1969

[Trouthallgrapefruit]

Interesting isn’t it!

Yes, I noticed that too.

I think that's just how it was back then. If you wanted beans, you got Heinz. They didn't have the equivalent of supermarkets own brands back then.

My gran died many years ago. She didn't have much money, but she still bought branded food. She just liked to stick to what she knew and didn't like trying newer brands / own brands.

There’s a mention of a cydrap. Fizzy apple juice apparently, anyone remember it?

There’s an X against the tongue so I’m thinking they decided against it. Wise choice.

Looks like mine before I was using computers all the time and my writing deteriorated to scrawl!

Stergene was used for hand washing of delicate items such as woollens and silk, so perhaps baby's cardigans or shawls, or petticoats and blouses for the writer. Lux soap flakes had the same use, but Persil, Daz and OMO were more for heavy duty laundry.
Nappies were usually boiled, in a trusty Berko boiler (the cutting edge of laundry technology!) if you were lucky.

I married in 1970 my budget for all shopping for a week was £5 so she has virtually blown my budget with no meat, fruit, veg, milk, bread. I suppose she had the milk and bread delivered.

The week my co-op stamp book was full and I had an extra 50p to spend was luxury.

I used Napisan for the nappies, no Baby Burco for me. Nothing like getting up to a bucket of cold nappies to hand wash.

For some it might but I did my shopping in a supermarket which had butchery and greengrocery sections.

Cydrax, here you go

Ooh posh!

They could afford Heinz Baked Beans!

You mean you don't remember the infamous toilet roll shortages, must have been about 1976 or 77. Queues in the supermarkets not unlike the start of lockdown. Also bread shortages which I think was due to strikes but I do remember being behind a woman with 3 loaves of bread in the local co-op, we were rationed to one, and she had to produce her home help ID and say which clients she was buying bread for.

The larger grocery shop chains did have their own brands for basic consumables. Companies such as Liptons, the Co-operative or Home and Colonial produced tea, coffee, biscuits etc in their own packaging, Liptons tea is still famous.

The main reason for the emphasis on brand names in these lists, is that they were order books passed to the grocer so he could make up the customer's order, so they had to be specific.
It was also the case that when you shopped in person, you told the grocer what item you wanted, and he went off to get it. So you needed to know in advance which brand you wanted.

I remember having tongue in the 70s - it was a staple in our house 🤮

two dozen eggs at 9 shillings would be 45p in 1969 if my memory is correct. The RPI increase September 1969 to September 2013 is about 5.6% compound per annum or £9.70 today. Sainsbury's sell two dozen eggs for £5.90 (just googled).

Nice work ⭐⭐ Food is much cheaper these days, relatively speaking. Little over half the price, if your eggs are a typical example. I always thought this was mainly due to EU membership, but I'm sure there's a lot of other factors at play too - faster transport, better warehousing, gouging British farmers ...

Housewives did bake every day. My mum didn't make endless Victoria sponges as this woman seems to, but all the mums would mention "doing my baking" as an expected daily activity. "I didn't even have time to bake!"

I think I must have lived in a different world to lots of people on here. I shopped in a supermarket which was much like supermarkets are now. Most supermarkets were smaller but the one I used was new and as big as the Sainsbury's I shop in now. I never shopped anywhere that involved asking the grocer for items. I'd go shopping for my mother in the mid 60s and that was in a self service co-op but it wasn't a supermarket, by 1970 when I got married supermarkets were everywhere in my city.

Some probably did, my mother was a widow in the 60s and running the family business. I never remember her baking once in my life let alone every day.

❤

She wasn't a housewife, then. was she. Despite the trials she must have faced, she was probably better placed than most!

Hope you still got your share of glorious carbs, though 😄

That’s a big list.

Looks beyond a shopping list and is more home economics/household accounts.

My parents got married in the 1960s (though didn't have me until the 1970s) and apart from when I was little my mum worked full time - chief cashier in a bank, marketing assistant than ran her own business. After my dad was made redundant from his previous career in the 1980s she was the main breadwinner. She wasn't into baking, sewing or knitting but could turn her hand to them if required. She hated food shopping and my dad did it and also cooked many of our meals. They also shared household chores and did them on a Saturday. I helped with laundry and ironing from my teens.

Were these weekly shops op? I imagine this is from a relatively wealthy and large family.

You are all wrong about the handwriting, it's my grandmother's.

When my mum was a little girl, so 1950s, they would go on holiday for a week at a 'guesthouse', my grandmother would plan a week of meals and then buy the food for the landlady to cook.

I'm not sure if that was to do with rationing.

My mum had the BeRo cook book.

Both my grandmothers baked, maybe not every day but cakes and pies were all home made. And my mother's mother was widowed, but because she was under 40 she didn't get a full widow's pension so had to work. Probably not as complicated as running a business.

She would occasionally make us bread with cheese and onion baked into it, delicious still warm with lots of butter.

My father's mother would make 'spice cake' which was basically a fruit cake, there was always some in the pantry and if you were offered a cup of tea you got a slice of the cake with a slice of cheese.

I’m surprised at all the comments about the handwriting. It just looks like handwriting to me.

I write like this.