What mundane item/experience was a luxury in your childhood home?

[FirstFallopians]

I remember being jealous that mum and dad had pillow protectors under their pillowcases. I thought they must be the height of decadence until we got an IKEA and I saw they were literally £1.50 each.

Real butter instead of margarine.

Ordering a takeaway and getting it delivered instead of picking it up. Debauched.

Buying any food whatsoever from Marks and Spencer’s was akin to doing your weekly shop in Harrods Food Hall.

Middle income family in the 1990s, no money worries and not otherwise frugal.

Anyone else grow up thinking very normal things were real luxuries?

Also a shower.
We didn't have one. Visiting house (not a swimming pool) with a shower was a massive treat.
We also seemed only to have baths (plumbed in baths) about once a week.

My mum couldn't cope with the fighting amongst the three of us over whose turn it was to wash the dishes, so she cracked and bought a dishwasher. Our friends took the piss mercilessly, asking were we millionaires, was our dad JR Ewing etc.

We spent the next ten years fighting over whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher.

When I went to university and the students I shared halls with ate avocados like they were a normal daily food, I was so taken aback! They were for posh celebration meals only in my house.

I grew up in a pretty affluent and sophisticated household. My dad was a fighter pilot in the Fleet Air Arm and we lived all over the world. My mum was an adventurous cook and made us curries and chillies and fricasee etc long before anyone had ever heard of them.

I longed to have tea at friends houses as they had egg and chips and findus crispy pancakes and i thought they were the food of kings! Lol.

fizzy drinks. We used to get a bottle from the Corona man every Friday - limeade, cherryade or cream soda.

Also, bacon and egg for breakfast, only had it at Christmas.

And bubble bath, I think we just had soap or at a push some fairy liquid.

Did anyone else have 'Mr Bacon' for pop? My grandparents used to get it on a Sunday delivered to the house :)

Shower, central heating, freezer, TV, phone, hoover, automatic washing machine, (we had a twin-tub and an actual mangle), holidays, fitted carpet, mains sewage. Old rural house, so even streetlights and pavement seemed like unimaginable luxury too. I could go on. It was the early 70s but unusually austere even then.

Mushrooms added to a meal were unusual so seemed luxury to me.
Robinsons Lemon Barley Water. If you were ill, it would tempt you back to eating and drinking.

Central heating
Double glazing
Landline
Car
Takeaways
(Only fish n chip shops back then. Had fish nchips around once a month as a treat but would be 3 portions between 6 of us)
Fizzy pop
Being constantly entertained and taken places (that cost money) by the parents .
We made our own entertainment and had far more freedom.

Enough to read. One of my best friends had a little cupboard off her bedroom lined with bookshelves, and I envied her so, so much. We had books, but never enough of them, and mostly cast-off Sunday School prizes with strong religious themes. Library books never lasted me the week. I promised myself that when I was grown up I would have loads of bookcases filled with books I'd chosen myself. So I do.

This resonates with me. I dreamed of having an everlasting book as I finished them too quickly. Books were expensive and we didn’t have any in the house.

An inside bathroom and toilet.

We didn't have either until we moved when I was eight.

We had baths at my granny's house every weekend.

I can relate to a lot of these. I didn't even know what a pillow protector was and didn't even have a pillow on my bed until I was 8! We never had a holiday abroad as kids or any holiday to speak of or real butter, takeaway which we would collect was a once a year affair usually fish and chips. We also didn't have phone at home until I was 11.

We did have fizzy drinks on a friday night though and a VHS video recorder and sometimes we'd get a film out the video shop. My Dad also had a car, usually a works van.

I grew up in a house with no hot water, no heating and no lights in some rooms that weren’t lamps run off an extension cord. It was crap.
A bath at my grandparents that didn’t involve a kettle or a torch, with badedas bath foam was such a luxury.

A fridge. As a young child (1960s) we didn't have one, I can remember asking for a drink of cold milk out of the fridge when visiting relatives, it seemed like such a treat!

I remember the excitement when my parents finally got one around 1970, and going out for a picnic to celebrate.

Haha, my dad used to do this with me and my sister on Saturdays sometimes. We spent many hours sat in the car outside the pub being regularly supplied with coke and crisps! His friends used to buy them for us too. If the weather was nice we'd play in the car park, otherwise be in the car either reading, colouring etc. For me it was sophisticated when I got a cherry or two in my coke 😂didn't always happen but exciting when it did!

Are you my sibling?!

My parents had hardly any money when I was growing up at all, and I remember pringles being a massive treat! We only got them at Christmas, or if my dad got a bonus 🤣 mega special occasion!

Fizzy drinks- these were for special occasions only. Cans of fizzy drink were particularly special and NEVER bought to be consumed at home. I remember in my teens a friend's parents always had cans in the fridge that the family could just help themselves to- I thought this was the height of decadence!

'Fashion' shoes - ie any shoes bought for their appearance rather than functionality. We had school shoes, trainers, wellies and functional summer sandals but nothing you couldn't climb a hill in! I remember feeling incredibly proud when on one occasion I was allowed a pair of shiny party shoes (there must have been a very special occasion but I can't remember what it was). My mum would use the word 'fashion' in front of any other word to denote that she thought it was a frivolous waste of money! (see also fashion bags, fashion coats, fashion curtains and even fashion bedding)

Pop too, that was reserved for when my child free (at the time) uncle was in charge! He used to get me and my cousins fizzy pop.

This for me too. One of my greatest memories is someone giving my mum an old box of Reader’s Digest and National Geographic books and I read those too.

My mum had one of these too. All the time you save peeling potatoes you spent washing up as that sandpaper stuff took some scrubbing.

A washbasin in the bathroom. Dad shaved and we cleaned our teeth at the kitchen sink.

I've just remembered that my careful but not stingy parents would about once a year buy 3 grapefruit between 6 of us, and we'd eat them for Sunday breakfast, in near silence, cut in half and sprinkled with brown sugar. No question of asking for a slice of toast afterwards, it would have been unthinkable to suggest that such a dedacent treat hadn't filled you up.

I genuinely believed grapefruit must be as expensive as caviar or something - absolutely no idea why my otherwise fairly sensible parents held grapefruit in such high regard!

Ferrero Roche chocs

Badedas bubble bath - mum always used to save it for special occasions. These days it's about £2 a bottle and always on the bottom shelf