What domestic appliances or other electrical items do you remember growing up?

[TheTecknician]

1970s. We had a Hoover Keymatic washing machine, a Hoover Senior vacuum cleaner and a Colston dishwasher. All three items must have been well built; there were nine of us in our house and all these were used daily without fail for at least a decade. The washing machine did up to three washes a day, the vac had a big house to do (the lamp on the front never worked) and the dishwasher was small enough to fit on the kitchen worktop. Tough stuff.

We also had an ITT-KB colour television and a Garrard Elizabethan record player. I have one of the latter which I've been meaning to have professionally restored for years!

I was using one of these in the early 1980s:

I don't remember those but it looks complicated. My Mum and sisters shared two Moulinex compact hairdryers. Both the same but one bright orange, the other pink and white.

Our three bar fire, which was a sideways wedge shape. Probably highly dangerous but it was the warmest thing ever. And my mums electric hand mixer, which i still have and use regularly. Its probably 50 years old.

That would be an unfortunate product name now
The twin tub stinky steamy thing.
Electric carving knife.

An absolute monster of a 1970's Creda freestanding electric cooker. Double oven, warming drawer, the works.

My mum used her to do all the catering for a twelve bedroom hôtel, full breakfasts and evening meal every day for about thirty people, children, family and staff included for over ten years, then she moved with us from the Isle of Wight to Lancashire, made beautiful Christmas cakes and festive dinners all through the eighties and was cruelly abandoned in the mid nineties.

Poor Creda.

1970s

We had a Hoover brand fridge. I remember being rather confused when I learnt to read.
It lasted for about 30 years though. When I say lasted, by the end you had to open it carefully, or the metal bit that held the milk bottles on the door would drop off and the milk bottles would fall on the floor; there was duct tape down the hinge side to keep the seal; the ice box was held closed with blue tact and the middle shelf dropped to one side if not propped up on something because the shelf holder had broken.
But it did last.
We also had a Hoover Hoover... like this:
Hoover constellation vacuum cleaner with attachments | Science Museum Group Collection
It was exactly like that except it had star wards transfers round the top which came free in Ready Brek (our standard breakfast) I think.

We also had a carpet sweeper.

We had a top loading washing machine, which used to walk into the kitchen until it reached the end of the cable (or occasionally pulled it out) where it would strain like an annoyed dog on a lead, when it span fast.

We had a very old heater something like this:
VINTAGE 30s EKCO THERMOVENT FRC1 ELECTRIC HEATER -BAKELITE - | eBay UK

It had an orange light bulb somewhere which lit up when it was on, so I was convinced that it had a real fire inside. It gave out vicious amounts of heat though - we used to make things dance in the air currents. I don't know how old it was, but it had belonged to my grandparents.

What else? Moulinex blender, electric hand whisk and carving knife. The knife only came out at Christmas. Moulinex did well out of us.

Sony C6 II video recorder. National Panasonic music centre. Tricity microwave.

We also had a Creda electric cooker - a Topline model. A big Carron Capri double oven cooker before that and a Jackson Topline going further back. You could feed the 5000 with the Carron Capri.

Oh the carpet sweeper..my Gran called it the ubank and that's probably not the right spelling.
70s device.

Twin tub washing machine - loved helping on wash day!

I bought a carpet sweeper a couple of weeks ago 😂

We had a Sony beta max video. Its 'remote' control was on a long wire and you could rewind or fast forward with it. I was the envy of all my friends.

I didn't little sisters stinky Terry towelling nappies 🤮

Before the twin tub, we had a square top loader with an electric mangle that swing out over the top. It was the job of us kids to catch the washing as it exited the mangle. I can still smell the hot rubber smell of that old grunter.

After that, there was massive debate as to front loader or top loader. It was on a par with the Betamax versus VHS debate and Dad kept repairing the old grunter until we saw which way the market went : ) This would have been early/mid seventies.

Creda cookers were amazing back then. We had one that lasted twenty odd years. I always wanted an eye level grill but we never had that luxury.

The “pushy” carpet sweeper
top loader washing machine complete with hoses to pipe it up to the kitchen taps when in use.
catching the train to a city an hour away to buy a vhs machine as nowhere in our smaller city sold them
soda stream
3 bar electric heaters

Lots of small appliances, our kitchen counters and bedrooms were not unlike the Generation Game conveyer belt:
Kenwood mixer with various attachments including the potato peeler and cream maker.
Yoghurt maker
egg boiler
hand held mixer and blender
rotisserie oven
microwave
coffee percolater
slow cooker
electric frying pan
plus the usual cooker, fridge, chest freezer, washing machine, dishwasher, tumble dryer.

Various hairdryers including the one with the plastic hood and shoulder strap!
Carmen rollers
Bendy hot stick rollers
Crimpers
curling tongs
electic nail file/buffer

VHS player (with the remote on a long wire)
Stereo
Boom boxes
Digital clocks
Electric blankets

Hankered after a foot spa but Father Christmas never delivered one!

Everyone wanted Carmen Rollers
Mum’s Sunbeam mixer
The radio in the kitchen
We kids getting our own transistor radios as birthday and Christmas presents so we could listen to Radio 1
A Dansette record player

(old!)

We had a Berry Magicoal electric fire in the dining room. The glowing bars delivered decent heat but the fan heaters were awful. They made a noise and delivered dry stuffy air!

Child of the 60s here, and as I recall we had -

A huge, heavy (I could barely move it) upright hoover
Black and white rented television
Pifco hairdryer
Fridge with tiny built-in freezer
Bakelite radio
Portable transistor radio
Alfa (Cheap Spanish import) sewing machine
Starmatic (?) twin-tub washer
Philips record player
Twin-element electric heater used rarely (deemed too expensive)

Doesn’t sound very much written down, but it was probably typical of working-class families in my area in the 60s. None of my friends’ families had any more; some had considerably less.

My parents thought that they were the height of sophistication with their Teasmade in the late 1970s.

Twin tub washing machines are still very popular where I live. And they are not that much cheaper than a basic top loader or automatic, but some people will not be swayed away.

I remember the betamax vs vhs debate really well. And my dad was right and VHS won in the end.

We had a Pioneer stereo with the record player on the top. We would go to the library weekly to take out records. But we should have planned better the one day, where the records were left on the back seat and we went to the shop first. It was so hot in the car that the records completely warped. It was how I first found out about Parrish and Topano (remember them). But no one else in our town was going to, seeing we took the record back all skew and buckled.

Late 70’s/early 80’s and my mum had a twin tub washing machine. It got pulled out onto the kitchen floor beside the sink every Saturday morning and the washing would begin. It must have been exhausting! During the week it lived in a gap under the counter top. I don’t remember when we got a proper washing machine but it must have been life changing!

We had a Hoover keymatic washing machine too. DM still talks about how you could open it mid cycle and pop extra washing in and because the door was hinged at the bottom you could fold laundry on the door.
We also had a Kenwood Chef with all the attachments- blender, juicer, cream maker, mincer, coffee grinder, can opener, dough hook, beater and whisk. DM has passed it onto me and it still gets used occasionally. In one of the boxes was the price list from the 70s!
We also had a 1960s caravan with gas lighting, a loo that was little more than a bucket in a wooden surround, no shower and no fridge

I don’t remember all the brands, but we had a Hoover washing machine - a top loading tub, with an agitator that swished the clothes around, then you fished them out and put them through the electric mangle on the machine. We also had a spin-dryer - mum would rinse the clothes in the sink then spin dry them.

We also had one of those hairdryers like the ones you used to sit under at the hairdressers - I do remember one night when I was sitting under it, drying my hair and mum suddenly hoiked me out from under it, because the plastic had started to melt and was about to drip on my neck!

We had a Dansette record player - and that kept on going until long after I left home at 18 - it must have lasted for most of my childhood, at the very least.

An electric washing machine of the type you had to pull out and fill, plug in, and put the clothes through the attached mangle. This was in the 50s.
A Lec fridge, v early 60s.
Always a vacuum cleaner of some description.

A big old fashioned ‘wireless’! At least until mid 60s. When extremely small, I once made a great effort to get behind it, to see the little people who were talking. Oh, the disappointment on seeing only wires and light bulbs!

No TV until very early 60s.

A Kenwood Chef, late 60s/early 70s. Used a LOT by DM, who was a very good cook.
Automatic washing machine, not until early 70s.

Twin Tub Washing Machine, I don’t really remember the brands of things we had.

I remember when my parents bought a microwave though. My dad put a mug of cold water in, and we all sat and stared at this mug going round and round til it was ready 🤣

Oooh, I love appliance nostalgia! In the house I grew up in, we had:

A spin drier, given to us by an elderly neighbour. This appliance was so dangerous we children were forbidden to open it, because it would be spinning long after the lid was opened, and we were warned of arms being chopped off.
A 1950s gas cooker, which did not have the spark to light it: instead it had a pilot light, a tiny flame which was lit all the time. If the room was dark, you could see it glowing.
A washing machine which was connected to the actual taps (cold and hot), and instead of a drawer for soap powder, had what looked like a little sink on top, into which you could see the water gushing.
Toilet with high-level cistern. Whoooosh! They lengthened the chain, so I could reach it.
Ancient upright piano with candleholders, genuine ebony and ivory keys, and a crack in the iron frame. It sounded beautiful, but was not tuned to concert pitch, which was a problem when people brought other instruments.
My dad used a pen that you filled from an ink bottle: he liked to use brown ink.

My grandparents had:
Carpet sweeper. @TheExcitersblowingupmymind spelled "Ewbank".
A portable leather-covered radio.
A Bush radiogram: a huge long wooden thing with the record player or "gramophone" at one end, the radio at the other, and you would store the records inside it.
A stand-alone gas hob, connected to the wall with a hose, with tea towels hanging above it. The gas inspectors always said how dangerous this was.
Electric bells in several rooms, with a panel to show which one was ringing. (No servants, though!)
A twin tub, which like @Onefortheroad25 had to be pulled out to be used.
Sockets and plugs of various shapes, some of them two-pin, and mostly without fuses.
Butler's ceramic kitchen sink, with three taps: hot and cold, and a cold which came straight from the mains (instead of the cold water tank), presumably for drinking water.
A ciné projector, which I only saw once, and my grandad showed some film of my mum as a girl.
A slide projector. They never printed photos to put in albums, only used slides. As well as the projector, which took a lot of setting up, they had a desktop slide viewer: you put a slide inside, and you would look through a lens to see it lit up and magnified.
A stamp for embossing letters with the address, and alphanumeric phone number.
A black bakelite phone, rented from the Post Office, with a cone around the mouthpiece.
An electric fire with a remote control. Yes, really! (They didn't buy this: it was left behind when they moved into a flat.)

My uncle had:
A top-loading video player: he was an early adopter of videos.