how OS were your parents?

2cats1kid

Definitely very OS.

Dad grew all our own fruit and veg. When I was little he also kept ducks and had a shed with rabbits in for the pot. We had a whole orchard in the next field and he sold whatever apples we didn't use and he also had a half field or so of daffodils that he sold at the roadside. He also made wine out of anything that stayed still long enough (our Sunday trip out at the appropriate time of the year was dandelion picking for dad's wine!). I can also remember him doing elderflower and elderberry, birch sap wine and rose petal wine, amongst others. We had an outhouse with a stone floor, and fruit and veg were stored in there for the winter and it kept really well in cardboard boxes in this really cold room. We had real fires, and I remember him out chopping wood too, and letting me have a go at splitting the kindling (I must have been about 5 or 6!)

Mum used to make jams, chutneys etc. out of anything that wouldn't keep in our store room. She also knitted (all dad's socks and most jumpers etc. for the family) and sewed a bit. She kept a button box and a rag bag, and everything was used up somehow.

They say you turn into your parents, and it certainly seems to be happening to me!

princess_siobhan

i grew up in a single parent low income family so os was just a way of life, but think it had helped me lots. since re-marrying my mum is more comfortable but it has just opened her up to more os oppertunities...veg garden, composting, homemade wine....i cant wait till the day i can help support her but am constantly amazed by how much she loves 'the good life'
xxxx

Sweetpeanut

My mum (god bless her) was very OS, we used to laugh and say she was as tight as a ducks bum!:D But when she died 8yrs ago this may, she left a ridiculous amount of money( £50k) and she always went without,(my dad never did:mad:) she always made lovely meals from scratch, cheese pie, mince & onion pie, bubble & squeak & gorgeous roasts on a sunday, normally with a small piece of beef, or chicken & every sunday tea was sanwiches & home-made victoria sandwich cake that was MASSIVE:D (she made the BEST buttercream filling) or cheesecake,but the trick was don't tell her it was gorgeous otherwise we lived on it every sunday :rotfl:and she had jobs for everyday of the week, monday windows, front & back steps, tues bedrooms & so on, she never stopped! oh & her whites were Blinding:D, this thread has got me thinking, my mum would have loved this site, she would have been in her element, reading all these great posts:A:A

Broomstick

My parents and grandparents cooked OS meals, sewed clothes, knitted, Grandad made hooked rugs and mended shoes. They grew quite a lot of veg and I remember fruit bushes in cages in the garden - lots of tummy-filling HM puddings. I have, and still use, my gran's clothes pegs. I've recently found her sides-to-middled, darned bed sheets in with my own bed linen. I have my great, great grandmas bread tins and used them myself until I got the breadmaker - every generation in the family has baked bread in them. My knitting needle collection was inherited from my mum and my gran. I love the connection to simple things used by previous generations - wish I'd kept more, but very glad to have what I possess and that I can still use it all.

kezz

My parents were quite OS. I grew up in the 70's and my dad worked in the docks. There were times when my parents were really poor as the dockers went on strike. We never went hungry as my mum was great at making cheap and filling meals but I remember my dad cutting the toes out of my shoes so that they would last me the rest of the summer holidays . I had a brilliant childhood and really have a lot of admiration for the way my parents coped.

afterglow_2

very, my mum grew veg, went berry, sloe, nettle, wild garlic picking, cooked everything (veggie) from scratch, was very crafty, making things for home and presents and to sell,
my dad made his own beer and wine, and did all the diy, gardening and car maintenance himself and got free vegetables from farmers he delivered mail to!
we were a very thrifty family, in every way, even second hand presents for christrmas!!

nesssie1702

My parents were very OS and still are. I'm the eldest of 4 and saw how much they scrimped and saved when bringing us up. Dad worked and didn't earn that good a wage while my Mum stayed at home to look after us. She went back to work when my brother was old enough.

I was taught to knit by my gran and mum, taught to crochet by gran, sew and cook by mum and my hate of ironing stems from the fact that she used to get me to iron towels and underwear :eek: as a teenager - not just mine, but the whole families!!

Mum regularly made jam and chutneys and still does. Gran had her own cow and the milk was used to make butter, cream and crowdie. I wore clothes that my aunts wore in the 1950s and didn't look too bad for it

Mum's motto - Never a borrower nor a lender be!

I try to stick to it......

Cruiksl

My parents hate waste and if there are any leftovers it's frozen or fed to the dog - even if it means they eat the same for 3 days !

They freeze the remainder of a tin baked beans if they didn't use the whole tin.

We all joke that if you sit still for too long in their house, you'll be in the deep freeze and your clothes would be washed and ironed waiting for you to defrost (Mum has an obsession with washing and ironing) :rotfl:

crawley_girl

Like most people before me, my parents are very OS.

They have an allotment, grow their own veg, make soups, pickles etc etc from their produce as well as some random bits of food!

Mum used to work in the costume dept in West End in theatres, so she knows how to sew. I remember having had many patchwork quilts made by her, bags, skirts etc also

They also decorate themselves, do all of their DIY, have tiled their bathroom many times, stripped back floorboards, laid carpets, built fences, built brick walls, knocked them down again - all from books borrowed from the library!

I wish I had half of their confidence and skills...

PasturesNew

My mum could knit, but not sew. She knitted a lot of our clothes (dresses, ponchos, mittens, bedsocks).

She wasn't a brilliant cook, if the truth were told.

We grew all our own fruit and veg and when I was about 11 we got our first freezer and mum would freeze things (quite badly really, but she tried).

She used to make ginger beer and ginger wine and lots of home made jams.

99% of our clothes that she didn't knit were 2nd hand from her friends at work.

My dad made our TVs with old cabinets and lots of valves.

We had a series of ropey old cars, one I remember dad hand painted. He never spent more than £40 buying a car.

Holidays would mean driving somewhere then driving slowly along the roads looking for a hand painted sign hanging that said "caravan to let", they'd invariably be in the corner of a field, with a wooden small shed containing a chemical toilet. They had gas mantles and no electricity. Quite often the roofs would leak badly and it often rained on holiday. My parents' bed would drop down from the wall. These were 1950s style old caravans.

We had one coal fire in the living room, no double glazing, no fitted carpets. In the winter the ice would be on the inside of the window. Dad used to use drawing pins to attach plastic sheets to the windows in winter some years, but not in the bedrooms.