Things your parents led you to think were 'special' or 'expensive' that you now take for granted?

[VladmirsPoutine]

for the po-faced

Growing up my siblings and I were wary over using too much kitchen roll - we'd get a sheet and fold it in half to tear before using, the faff was a PITA but to this day I still get a bit territorial over my kitchen roll.

We also had 'special' China plates, cups, cutlery, that sort of thing. Only used when we had guests or at Christmas - I didn't carry that into adulthood but whenever I visit my DM I still fondly look at the unit containing all those 'special' cups

My dad died when I was relatively young but prior to this death he used to always take us (siblings&I) to our weekend clubs when we were young, on Saturdays one of my sisters and I attended clubs that finished at similar times and it was always Saturdays that mum worked nights so the 4 us: dad+siblings would always get McDs and think it was basically gourmet dining.

I didn't have a deprived childhood by any definition but I do find those quirks quite funny looking back.

Takeaway pizza - always referred to a "Dial A Pizza" in a sniffy voice, and apparently the sole reason our family friends were In The State They're In (up to their necks in debt and ended up repossessed): Nothing to do with them smoking 40-a-day and being terminally work-shy, then .

Our experience of pizza was those thin cardboardy things from the freezer centre - even now, ordering a Domino's seems the height of decadence.

Putting tomato ketchup on a meal that also includes baked beans because "there's already tomato sauce on the beans"

Hot water.

Fireflies. I think our kids will look back on their childhoods as a time of luxury and decadence.
My mother voted Brexit. She thinks that going back to being frugal with toilet paper, not going abroad and only having strawberries in August will be good for the country.
“People expect too much nowadays”

My parents lived through WW2 and rationing so a lot of things were considered special and expensive even though we were well off.

I was away from England for decades and was very surprised to see so many American fast food joints in England when I returned. McDonalds, Subway etc etc are American and places many of the posters here grew up with and that surprises me still for some reason.

Love this thread. We had backbone in the olden days! I recognize so many of these: new clothes; takeaways; hotels; Magnums (we loved being allowed Mars ice creams in France as they were comparatively so much cheaper there!); phone calls before 6; taxis; buying lunch out; paying for days out; the equivalent of soft play.

But it's making me wonder:

• Is it better that our kids are/will be so used to things we considered luxuries?
• What are the things, if any, that we don't allow them now that they will feel this way about as adults?
• Was being "deprived" of things / having to wait for things / save for things good for our characters, and if so, assuming we don't want to deprive our own kids of e.g. fruit, how do we help them develop those elements in their characters?
• Those of us who are more lax about this stuff than our own parents were: is that a good thing, or not?
• Is it basically all part of the way we no longer consider children inferior / less important members of the family?

Butter. Now I have it all the time and never eat marg.

Taxis. I still only take taxis about once in three years when there is no alternative.

Getting to watch your favourite TV programme, if it conflicted with something your parents wanted to watch. Now we have TV on-demand and while you might have to wait to see your favourite programme, you never miss it entirely.

Getting lunch or even a drink while our shopping. Shopping trips were planned to be before or after lunch. It's made me go the other way tbh and I fritter far too much away in costa.
Also drinking from a can or 500ml bottle in the house -'THEY ARE FOR DAY TRIPS!!!' I still feel extravagant now if I drink a can of coke in the house
Also if we went to maccies I was never allowed a milkshake as part of a meal because it's extra. When I'm giving DH my order a tiny part of my brain is waiting for him so say no way it's 40p extra, have a coke instead.

Coke/any fizzy, but if it was in a can it was sacred! (Sort of how glass bottles of coke sometimes still feel )

Eating out or takeaways at all - we only ever really ate out on holiday, which was always a week at Butlins in the May half term. Abroad was too expensive (and probably too much of the Great Unknown) as was holidaying in the main summer holidays.

We'd have takeaway (fish and chips or Chinese - there wasn't anything else anyway) maybe 3 or 4 times a year. We walked a lot to save using the bus too - we'd visit relatives who lived 2 or 3 miles away and always walked one way and got the bus the other way. But I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing - it's good to be active if you can. Pop and crisps were also rationed - we had to fill small bottles from a big bottle and it couldn't be full and we couldn't just buy a bottle when out.

You're right to think about those things ifi. A lot of things that are, in reality luxuries, are thought as normal basic essentials by a lot of people, which leaves them thinking that they 'don't ever have anything nice' or are skint all the time and can't see where they can cut back or where there money goes.

Eating food out of the house is a good example. Many people spend £10-15 a day on a couple of coffees, lunch, and maybe breakfast too. Even if this comes from cheap places like Greggs or McDonalds, it still costs at least 2 or 3 times more than similar food brought from home, so is still a luxury really. Reducing/ditching the coffees and making packed lunches (or taking leftovers) is likely to reduce £10 a day to £10 a week, which would save hundreds of pounds a year and go a long way towards paying for more obvious luxuries like a holiday.

There's also the health aspect, especially from all this daily fizzy drink consumption, and most of what Greggs and McDonalds sell - it's not good to be eating and drinking that sort of stuff every day.

I'd really like to know how crisp consumption has increased in the last 30 years (exciting I know). When I was a child in the 1980s, crisps were something we had once a week a most. Now you can buy them by the sack in the supermarket, so some people must be eating a lot of crisps.

We were allowed a bath once a week, in the regulatory 6 inches of water, no taxis, butter or takeaways except for a rare fish and chips.
We didn't have holidays but got a delightful day at the seaside once a year when my dad's works put on transport, packed lunch and a salad tea at a church hall somewhere on the trip home for all the employees' families (not the employees themselves). Easy to spot by the convoy of red double decker buses on the motorway that we were all from the local bus company workers.
We had a restaurant lunch once a year on our annual trip to the New Years' sales, which was the only time we ever went out as a whole family, apart from the weekly visit to ASDA.

The division of biscuits. The everyday tin full of digestives and the tin with the good biscuits. Wow betide you if you went into the every day tin without being offered it. Wow betide you if you asked for a biscuit. And dont even think of approaching or looking at the good tin. Massive issues if you took a biscuit from the good tin when visitors came round. Result? Free for all inour house on any biscuit at any time....

I’m laughing at the poster who said their friend asked for a white magnum.
And she and her brother were like

The friends audacity!!

The majority of these ring true and bring back memories for me as well - orange juice was a Christmas Day thing as were croissants, eating out or takeaways were extremely rare and takeaways were never delivered but always collected as it was deemed too flashy 😂. We never went abroad on holiday (always a week in Whitby and when money increased we ventured to Cornwall), now people are aghast that I have no intention of taking my own DC abroad for another few years til they’re older, caravans didn’t harm me and they certainly won’t harm them or leave them feeling deprived! I do think what’s deemed as a “basic” standard of living has a lot more luxury elements than it used to.

Oh and of course we weren't allowed go go out trick or treating or penny for the Guy"ing" at this time of year. That was known as begging in the '70's!

But I am still at the things which my parents and MIL found a luxury because they grew up without them.

MIL: Riding in cars. She said a car would drive through her village maybe once a week and all the kids would rush out to see. She was born the same year as Princess Elizabeth and like her, trained as a driver in the ATS at the age of 18. She thought she'd died and gone to heaven!

Electric or gas cooker and hob. She'd grown up cooking over an open fire. She was always delighted at adjusting the temperature of the oven or the gas rings with a knob.

Bathroom. Even when her own children were small, baths were in a tub in the kitchen.

Eating meat. Apparently she used to stretch one chicken to do a family of eight for three meals. Not sure I quite believe that one though! By the time I met her and she could afford all the meat she wanted, she would lovingly serve huge slabs of meat whenever family visited.

Mum: Freezer. Having ice cream at home was amazing. Her rich friend was the only one for miles around with a freezer, and she used to have all the neighbour kids round for ice creams sometimes.

Fizzy pop.

Clothes bought from a shop.

We never ever had mcdonalds.
We only had fish and chips about once a year on holiday.
Cinema... maybe once a year.
Eating out... now that was once a week but I think that was rare in my peer group.
Weekends.... now I see parents desperately trying to fill weekends with experiences and days out... We were left to our own devices mainly.

Toys... my dc have toys everywhere. We had a few for birthdays and Christmas. That was it...not every few weeks.
Days out.... you never ever got into the gift shops at attractions and if you did it was a rubber.

Towels-just use one post bath/shower. To this day, my mum who is very comfortably off looks at me funny if I use one towel for my body and one to put my hair up.

She's also appalled by my use of any type of pre-prepped veg

I came on to say kitchen roll too! i still feel slightly rebellious using two sheets to wipe round a pan.

I still feel trick or treating is shameful. No one understands me!

Little Chefs, every year we made the tedious trip up the motorway to Scotland and at every service station we had a packed lunch and a thermos of tea. We never once ate at a service station and I used to look wistfully at Little Chefs as we sped by and used to imagine how fabulous it would be to go in. Needless to say when I eventually went in one as an adult it did not live up to my expectations.

And yes to Cornettos, seedless grapes and Alpine fizzy pop which got delivered to my neighbours regularly.

We ate chicken once a year at christmas.
Never tasted roast beef.
No central heating.
No fridge.
Never been on holiday even in the UK.
No car.
Hot water once a week on bath night.
Kitchen roll was not invented.

Shower Gel , we had Imperial Leather soap only . How I longed for Camay soap having seen the glam 70s adverts. I still love choosing shower gel face wash etc.
And getting my first spray deodorant in my later teens was an event !

We only had Coca Cola etc on holiday , special occasions. We didn’t ever get Sykes / Alpine pop. One day my dad found the order book for our local pop van’s round in the street. We got a crate of pop by way of thank you , it was like Christmas !