Old timey things and traditions you love

[IWantToHibernate]

Here are a few of mine:

• Teapots. I don’t use them often but when I have guests I love cracking it out.
• Bed trays. I don’t have one but I always think about how nice it would be to have breakfast in bed on one when they’re in period dramas.
• Having milk delivered to your front door. It’s so much more expensive than the supermarket so I can’t justify doing it much but it makes me feel nostalgic.
• Homemade cake. It’s so nice to have homemade when shop bought is much easier.
• Buying eggs from an ‘honesty box’. Even better if it’s in a quaint village with cute cottages.

It seems a lot of mine revolve around food.

Manners and kindness.

Cycling around the lanes and grabbing plums off trees as you go

Fountain pens. I use them for everything I write on paper, including meeting notes at work, shopping lists etc. I also fill them from ink bottles instead of using cartridges.

I also use vintage glasses for drinks and have the correct style of glass for pretty much every drink, including cocktails.

Also, although I don’t use them myself, I love the fact that my DP uses cotton handkerchiefs instead of tissues and has a fresh one in his pocket every day.

Linen table cloths and napkins along with the correct types of cutlery (eg soup spoons and fish knives) for the type of food you're going to eat. A cruet set on the table and wine decanted into a cut glass decanter.

Having ‘best’ china that comes out at Christmas, Easter and special occasions (Royal Doulton for me).

Going blackberrying picking in the countryside.

Watching programmes at tv pace, rather then binge watching them.

The fountain pens, I do use one. Have found two Parkers from 1950s in a box we cleared from an Uncle. Will get them working soon. One has the hooded nib.

Those wire tray things that go across the bath & you can put your sponge, soap etc on them. My Nanna used to have one & I rented a house recently which had one in the bathroom & it reminded me that they used to be a thing.

Oh! I do quite a few of the things already listed, like foraging (in my defence, I live rurally, and we have an abundance of apples, wild gooseberries, wild garlic, blackberries, rosehips and sloes!), using fountain pens, and my 'best china' comes out every day, as I never saw the point of it being kept if it was only used at Christmastime, or when guests came over. Also, I have quite a collection of soup spoons, steak knives and ivory-handled butter knives, plus a linen tablecloth. Perhaps I should have been born in the 1920s!

I like having special writing paper for letters, like a Basildon Bond pad, instead of ordinary lined A4. I also have a soft spot for typewriters, knitting and sewing, eating 'old-fashioned' food and baking cakes. I live in an area where honesty boxes are normal, for things like milkshakes and ice cream (there are a lot of dairy farms around here!) and eggs.

Oh, and very few of us lock our houses around here, because it is so tucked away that most people don't realise that our houses exist! (If they do, they question our sanity, because phone signal is an interesting concept that they can't live without).

I don’t think that was really what the OP meant.

Writing cards. Only send a couple to a family member that doesn’t email as postage so expensive. Have to think in advance, no delete key.

I usually watch at TV pace. I still like the anticipation (also don’t have concentration to binge)

The radio even though I use Spotify and listen to podcasts. Love the Shipping Forecast though I’ve never lived on the coast. I miss when they had lighthouses <old>

What a lovely thread OP!
I find after a day of everything trying to attract my attention from endless pop up ads and you tube and family and even the cooker and fridge beep at me, I LONG for simpler times.
surely things weren’t always this exhausting?
ditto foraging, walking up a hill, making scones and bread.
im now thinking I need a proper tea set!

We have our milk delivered. (It’s quite annoying in anything but winter as he delivers it at bedtime - so in warm weather it’s been outside for about 7 hours. I want one that trundles up at 6am, preferably in a white coat and peaked hat)

I’m also a stickler for proper cutlery. We have steak knives, cheese knives, soup spoons, dessert forks, fish knives and cake forks.

I love thick paper and a fountain pen. Wooden rulers. Notebooks. I clearly have a stationery problem.

That sounds absolutely idyllic

Also, although I don’t use them myself, I love the fact that my DP uses cotton handkerchiefs instead of tissues and has a fresh one in his pocket every day.

My OH does this.
He has a handkerchief drawer and takes a new one out each morning.
He also has one in the pocket of his dressing gown.

When the remains of a tissue are found in the washing machine (with all the white bits stuck to the clothes) I unfortunately can't blame him.,😜

Ok👍The bone comb for nits now that was akin to torture.
Welly boots leaving the red ring round your legs.
The good stuff ,getting half penny sweets +a fair bit for 5p.

Toast rack and a butter dish.

Cloth napkins. We have them at every meal (different colours so they don't need washing every time and I know whose is whose when setting the table). It's a little ritual that makes me feel somehow "put together", even if I've had a manic day at work, the DC are whinging and supper is leftover spag bol

Basildon bond! That just bought up such a memory for me of the drawer in my dads desk and the ‘posh’ paper for writing important letters.

Repairing clothes. I sew up small holes, minor adjustments. I’m mid 30’s and so many of my friends/acquaintances use fast fashion and bin anything as soon as it gets a minor blemish. I have my nans old sewing basket 😆.

Getting honey from the bee man down the road who has hives.

I always use a teapot and tea leaves. I prefer it but anyway people don't seem to consider how much more energy and resources it must involve to make teabags - and delivering them - so much more volume and resources than plain tea leaves. I buy kilogramme bags of tea leaves from Miles' tea.
I have always used cloth napkins. We each have a napkin ring (christening present) so pop our napkin in the wash after a few days if we think it is grubby enough - after all, it is our own mess because it's been in our ring. This is how it worked years back - and also when I went to boarding school. Less waste and washing.
None of us are keen on bought cakes, though I am hopeless with bread!!

I also have a beautiful silver hand mirror that lives on my dressing table. I never actually use it but it was a present for my 18th birthday from my granny, and I can at least admire it every day rather than it sitting wrapped up in its box!

A Parker 51? Lovely thing, my dad left his to my firstborn.

Classic films, including silent ones.
Antique furniture.
Victorian fireplaces.
Victorian houses with original features.
I love seeing men wearing top hats in old films etc.

I've thought of another one - handwritten thank you letters after Christmas, birthdays etc

Where I grew up no one locked doors unless someone had escaped from Dartmoor prison. However if they got to us from Dartmoor I was told they were exhausted.
A neighbour who found one in her shed said that he was relieved to be caught.