Quirks from a poorer childhood that have followed you through life.

[Motorwayview]

Inspired by the tight people thread.
No matter how much underwear I have I am always slightly panicked that I'll run out of clean underwear so have been known to handwash and leave overnight to dry. Ive got draws and draws of the stuff now - BUT growing up for a while I had just enough to get by on but only if DM washed them every night. ( 3 pairs knickers) Sometimes we didn't have the 50p for the meter to use the emersion heater or boil a kettle (this was the '70's).
The one that drives DH mad is that I have to use every last drop out of a bottle even if Ive got 3 more of the same in the cupboard ( shampoo ect) .
Anyone else ?

I remember the Alpine man delivered pop once a week. We had a bottle each. In the unlikely event that a friend came around they had to drink your pop. My tipple was pineappleade- yummy.
We didn't have much.

We always had food. Treats were one each- not that often. No.puddings. A legacy of this is i like loads of treats in the house- shame cos I don't have much self control

I've gone the other way with leftovers, I can't keep them more than a day and I'm always binning things other people have saved. As a kid if we didn't finish our dinners they were saved and leftovers could be in the fridge for ages and things often went mouldy. My parents were of the view that a bit of mould never hurt anyone and could just be scraped off. I have a real disgust of mould now and probably do waste food I shouldn't if there's even the slightest risk it could be mouldy. I used to get sick all the time and I've not had a stomach bug since I left home.

My hangover I can't let go of is padding out sanitary towels with a pad of tissue so they last much longer. There is no need to do it anymore but it seems wasteful not to.

Keeping things until they have completely fallen apart. My OH doesnt get it, but for me if it isn’t broken, it’s not broken.

Not buying anything new unless I really have to. I can’t tell you why I do t, our house was so simple but never coordinated - again OH wants to by xyz to decorate the house, and I’m happy with having the bare minimum (now that I have money I make sure everything is coordinated of course and good quality) but I find myself finding easy wins to decorate the house - frame a nice piece of wallpaper sample? Keep all handmade candle jars and add some flowers or pens as a centre piece? My book collection that I will never throw away can take care of the other white spaces.

And I never throw away the toothpaste. Even if the next one is ready on standby I will stand there for 5 minutes in the morning squeezing out everything I can get from the tube.

I’m low maintenance. We always had the absolute cheapest shampoo and soap, no conditioner, and sometimes used washing up liquid. No money for make up or cosmetics. Never had a hair cut that wasn’t done by my mum. I hated this at the time but as an adult it’s meant I’m still fairly low budget and don’t wear make up or use fancy products, with the exception of a fairly pricy moisturiser with SBF.

Other than this, I’ve gone the other way. I love making sure I have what I need and that everything in my house is good quality and works. I grew up without a shower (had a bath), and we had no fridge, TV, central heating, microwave or electric kettle. The oven was broken for years and only cooked at one very hot temperature. Everything was chaotic and dirty.

These days my house is lovely, not overly cluttered, and I have everything I need and so do my kids. I don’t worry unduly about waste or buying nice things for us all. Feel very lucky.

I grew up in what was a wealthy home but my mum had grown up very poor and she wouldn’t buy us adequate clothing, or period products or enough food for packed lunches. I went to private school but frequently had no tampons or sanitary towels because I had no access to money to buy them. My mum had had a hysterectomy so there were none in the house. I am so pleased when I see free sanitary products in toilets now. My bathroom drawer looks like a tampon/ sanitary towel display case which’s it’s ridiculous because I’m menopausal and DD lives away from home most of the time.

I think that always stays with you, having to use rolled up toilet paper, being scared to move quickly.
Whenever I see those Period Poverty containers I always donate because I remember what it's like to have none, like you both.

Having a well stocked food cupboard and always having eggs. Just in case. If we have no eggs I start worrying.

Also as we had no heating as we were too poor I always make sure we have blankets in the house and I worry I don't have enough. At all times. I hoard blankets 🫣

A more lighthearted quirk is that I constantly buy books and am an avid reader. My children have hundreds (mostly second hand). As a poor child, nobody read me a story and we didn't have anything to help with school. It's very sad! But I broke the cycle and mine have loads ☺️

The concept of “poverty mindset” is very interesting-I know people who are very frugal despite no longer needing to be. And others who get great pleasure from not needing to be frugal any more. Two sides of the same thing. The comedian Rob Beckett has written about this.

Im exactly the same

You got fed and tough luck if you didnt like what was on your plate

Anything left on your plate was put in the fridge and served up as your next meal (and the next if it didnt get eaten-i think the record was 6 days-my parents are proud of this) and if you said you where hungry later on,you got your plate back

I still remember having to eat cold liver and mash (soaked in cheap gravy-i can still taste it) while my parents and siblings stuffed their faces with French bread and cheap cheese and smirking at me

If the food had been re-brought out so many times,it had gone a bit mouldy,that was scraped off and re-served

Ditto things like mouldy bread made sandwiches or fruit-black bananas had to be eaten before you where allowed the fresh stuff and any 'off' bits where not cut off,you had to eat the lot

Im so picky about food now,i do buy what we need but if,for whatever reason its gone a bit iffy,it gets binned (anything apart from meat goes in the compost bin)

I cannot eat leftovers-the thought turns my stomach

I never gave my dc food they didnt like,I would ask them to try it and if they genuinely didnt like it,I never bought it again

My father tried the 'you've not eaten everything on your plate,in the fridge it goes,you can eat it tomorrow' with one of my dc once and I went mental

The fall out was unreal and lasted for months but I stuck to my guns and it wasnt served up again nor did he try it again

It is interesting. I find that I'm very generous with people because I enjoy it, now that I am able to.

My mum (late teens when war broke out) did the same with wrapping paper, and also doing the thing with sheets. She also had a 'thing' about cutting toenails short, so they didn't wear the sheets out! Once the sheets had really had it and were irreparable, she'd cut them up into squares and use them as cloths, or for dad to use as hankies and/or polishing the chromework on the car.

I still have her button box, and her needlework basket. There's stuff in there that hasn't been touched since the 1950's. When I need some mid-grey bias binding or have some green socks to darn, the supplies are ready and waiting.

I grew up hearing make do and mend, save it for a rainy day, a stitch in time saves nine, look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves, waste not want not, enough is as good as a feast.

Do I save jars, tins, boxes, wrapping paper, tissue paper, ribbons, bows, bubble wrap and gift bags? You bet I do. We cut up old envelopes to use for shopping lists. And I can hear DM's voice in my head when I go round the house switching off lights to 'save the juice'.😁

My life exactly! I remember cutting up envelopes for notes as well.

Goodness, I really feel for you. Forcing children to eat mouldy food or past-the-best leftovers is really not ok. I can imagine the lifetime effect of this behaviour and it's not good.

I also remember that we had to eat everything on our plates and not allowed to waste anything.
I remember gagging when being forced to eat food I didn't want. It would go cold and congealed.
I made a point of never doing that with my kids. If they didn't want to eat something, I never forced them.

I hoard clothes and food mainly. I had 1 set of clothes and knickers that I'd wash every day after school (school didn't have a uniform). I got asked several times why I wear the same clothes every day, I answered truthfully but felt so embarrassed by it

Had to use washing up liquid as shampoo. My bathroom cabinets are full of crap now. I do try having a word with myself. I have a large triple wardrobe and chest of drawers full to the brim. Dcs wardrobes are the same. I have extra boxes in the kitchen with food in as there's no cupboard space left. There's only 4 of us in this house, I could probably do with therapy tbh

If I'm not careful I still eat a meal in strict order, meat first (most expensive), veggies next (good for you), potatoes last.

I didn't realise until my mid 30's that you weren't supposed to water down Heinz tomato soup, my mum just added milk to it to make it go further.

Clothes. When I was tiny, my mother only had 2 dresses for me and used to wash them out by hand every night. The lack of money for clothes followed me right up until I was 16 and started earning. Ever since, I have compulsively bought clothes. I’m now in my late 50s and I’ll never be without a choice of pieces that make me feel good & comfortable. My two big wardrobes are chockablock full. All the time.

Whole family sharing the bath water. My kids are late teens now so they refuse to do this anymore, but I still offer my dirty bath water to them! 😅. Also, I can’t bring myself to buy branded Coke, I buy cheap supermarket ‘rola cola’ and consider even that to be a luxury as we didn’t have fizzy drinks growing up.

I never realized how broke we were until I was much older as my parents always took the burden of the worry and we always felt loved and had all we needed (even though clothes were from charity shops, days out were the park or library).

My main habit is religiously cooking from scratch, I can make a chicken feed 4 for a week by boiling it, grow fruit and some veg myself and store it, grow herbs etc. My mum used to use all sorts of ingenious methods, she was a big fan of the asian wholesalers round us (we are not an asian family) where she could get big bags of flour and rice and she'd home make bread and stuff as it was way cheaper (back then... prices of supermarket bread have since come down and raw ingredients gone up so this hack doesn't really work now). So we always had full bellies though there was never 'food' in the house like stuff you could just snack on like a chocolate bar. Just ingredients!

I don't need to do this for financial reasons now, it's just it tastes better, is more sustainable and more healthy.

I'm also really good at sewing as we couldn't afford cool clothes so she (and later I) made them. And curtains and cushions and rugs and stuff for the house as we couldn't afford to buy.

When I went to uni I had the loveliest halls room and people assumed I was rich. I'd made all the fancy looking bedding and cushions etc myself from bargain fabric from a wholesaler.

Oh god yes, same here. I can remember sitting on my own at the table gagging trying to force down cold food. It’s actually really upsetting to think about.

DH and I had similar childhoods although at different ends of the country and a bit chaotic for different reasons.
Him - insists on sharing bath water (I insist on going first!); gets every last bit of toothpaste, Marmite etc out the pot; likes there to be food left at the end of a meal so that he can put the (probably less than one portion) in a pot in the fridge (and probably leave it there til it goes off).
Me - Like to leave plenty of time to get places because as a child it was likely that our car would not start or would break down on the way; paralysed by the decision process when it comes to "big ticket" items (anything from beds to carpets to cars) ; don't like being in debt even credit card or mortgage (don't have credit card, mortgage paid off). Oh also will never ever buy a Cornetto because I see them as wildly extravagant (but happy to pay way more for other icecream items!)
Both of us - have driven the same car for the last 18 years because why not.

Oooooh I do that!

Funny I was out on a day trip a few weeks back with some other families and the posh ones all had packed lunches. I let my kids go wild and have burgers, soft drinks etc (we are generally VERY healthy so it's a one off). I was discussing with the only other mum who was also letting her kids eat from the food vans and we'd both had the exact same experience.

I remember being on day trips and just wanting something hot.

You know after I left home I've never eaten another home packed lunch - or in fact sandwich - since. I plan to never eat another soggy ham sandwich again for the rest of my life.

it was always when young saving the nice clothes for best, still do to an extent will buy new clothes rather than wear something that been I the drawer for a year as saving for best.