how OS were your parents?

jcr16

just a thought , all what were discribing about our parents my seem o/s to us but then that was how everything was done. you couldn't buy ready meals, a takeway let alone one delivered to the house. everything was grown or made cause thats how things were it was the norm to them. mum told me if she had carrots but needed spud she would swap. or make a cake for them.
life seemed simpler, seemed happier and more relaxed. maybe all these thing we have now for conviniance is taking away the simplicity of life.

sorry off thread, but reading these posts has made me cry all sounds so wonderful.

culpepper

My grandparents were very OS I think ,being practically self sufficient when my mum and her siblings were growing up.
Mum (youngest)was a bit more easy going about spending than her older siblings as she was earning well in her 20's and didnt think that it was important to take on OS ways but later on she wished she had paid more attention to her own mum.
My Dad was born during WW1 and most of his life was of the belief that all anyone needed was a clean outfit, food to keep from being hungry and a roof over their heads and so he would have been quite at home in the 'credit crunch'.

furball

Just remembered my mum was always well turned out, as she put it, always did her hair and wore a bit of makeup when at home, the full works when she went out of the house. She always smelt of leichner foundation. Never remember her swearing ever when i was a child, that must have taken some doing, with me. We were never aware of any worries or troubles that arose, they were never discussed when the children were around, so no earwigging, Is it me or did they never seem as stressed as we are today. Think we could all learn a lot from OS. She was always a lady and still is.

mudgekin

Both parents were very OS. Dad was a miner and had his first heart attack at 33 ( I was 5) so didn't get paid for a long time. At that time you were off work for 6 months if you had a heart attack, he subsequently had 3 more and it left mum terrified to have debt in case she had no wages coming in to pay for it. The of course there were the miners strikes in the 70s. Credit cards and debt of any kind just horrify her

I remember growing up and my mum never had a new coat for years and I can't remember her getting new shoes but do remember her always putting thick insoles into them.

She was and still is a great cook who could make a meal from nothing. I really wish I had been as OS as she was and wouldn't have been in a pickle at a certain point in my life.

Nancy888

My mum USED to be OS...like others have said..HM food, HM clothes, HM Sindy doll clothes...she'd learnt from my grandma who had lived through rationing and even til the week before she died made bread every morning, opened out the folds at the bottom of the sugar bag 'because there was at least half a spoonful trapped in there'. She scraped the last of the butter off the lurpak wrapper and used that to line her cake tins - sponge cakes were made every Tuesday and Friday morning!

I think looking back my mum stopped her OS ways when my dad's business took off and they could afford things more easily. I never went without - always went on school trips etc but that was a throw back to my dad's upbringing - he tells me stories (after a couple of whiskies!) of his childhood when money was REALLY tight - his dad was a miner that got killed down the pit (no compensation in those days) and his grandad moved in to help my paternal grandma to cope with 3 boys and 2 girls :eek:

Grandma used to buy a rabbit and feed them all - Lord knows how - but dad once caught her with only gravy on her plate so she could scrape it into the bin to say she'd already eaten hers.... He recalls sharing a double bed with my 2 uncles and his grandad slept on a pile of blankets on the floor while my aunties shared with grandma.

My mum and dad now shop in Waitrose - a 40 mile round trip - not very OS in itself - but I benefit from their throwaway attitude - I came back at Christmas with a frozen pork joint, 2 fresh gammon joints, most of the turkey ('not enough for more than a couple of sandwiches really' was my mum's take on it!!) and various other things that were 'nearly' out of date....

When I was first married I was very much like my mum - convenience foods and throwaway mentality but now it's just me and DS1 and DS2 I've got to be more aware of my money and I've gone full circle back to how my grandma's were

Sorry for the ramble but this thread has been great to read and just wanted to put my tuppen'th in

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

I was brought up by my grandmother who had brought her own 4 children up in the 2nd world war.She had come from a wealthy family and had ran off and married a miiner.Her family cut her off so she had no choice but to learn quickly and so being OS was'nt natural to her.She taught me so much though.I learned to cook from the time I could stand on a stool.I had my own little rolling pin and baking set.She baked everything herself and would be up early to bake the bread she'd left to prove overnight.
I still wash on Monday and have all the ironing done by teatime.It's something she used to do and I just carried on with it.Everyday had it's tasks and she kept to her routine and things would run like clockwork.It was a wonderful home to grow up in.
Everything she did was to make the best of what she had,which was'nt very much.She taught me so much to prepare me for being on my own,I could'nt of managed without all the advice she gave me.

lil_me

I'm definately more OS than my parents and people see me mention that I am making food for Mam, that's so she has a home cooked meal, she rarely cooks for herself (not very good to be honest) Dad cooks, good cook but a bit wasteful. Dad taught me to sew and knit but doesn't do it himself, but he knows how to. Mam can sew, knit (inc machine which she has done as a business when it was popular) and other things like that but no patience to teach us. It's not that they can't, they just don't.

pinknfluffy

This thread really brought a tear to my eye, my mum and dad gave us a wonderful childhood, I never even realised that money might have been a bit tight, mum was and still is a wonderful cook and the best knitter I have ever seen, dad has always grown his own veg and still does, it makes me proud when i see how much beautiful produce he grows from a little garden. He is so clever with his hands, my daughter bought me a reindeer xmas tree decoration from Liberty cast her £6.99 when my dad saw it he said I can make them and has made us all a set of four, you can't tell the difference (can you tell I love my dad to bits). I struggle with OS tbh but my daughter is expecting a baby in June and she intends to use reusable nappies and breast feed etc so maybe the OS way skipped a generation.

Sorry for waffling but I could go on for hours about how great my parents are.

[Deleted User]

My Dad was born in 1890 in a small town on the north-east corner of Scotland, and his Mum was widowed in 1897 and left with 5 children under 14 left at home.So his upbringing was fairly frugal to say the least. My mum was born in 1900 in Glasgow ,slightly better off than my Dad's family but full of the hard-working Presbyterian ethic. They were married in 1935 during the depression and things were very hard in those years .My Dad had worked hard, and through his own efforts had eventually become a chemist.
When they moved down to London to live in 1937 it was with the intention of improving their lot.
By 1939 when war broke out my Dad again went off to do his bit ,as he had during WW1, leaving my Mum in the east end with a 2 year old and a very young baby to care for . War raged about her ears,and she was bombed out for the first time, and then I was born. My first memory is of being pulled under the table just before a huge bang. The house was hit, but we all survived. We then moved to south east London where we had a very large garden. My Mum took it quite personally that she had been targetted twice, and believed that Blackheath was a lot safer than east London. In those days Blackheath was almost countryside. We lived in this huge draughty old house which had 13 rooms plus a cellar. It was a very old Edwardian place that my Dad had managed to buy quite cheaply.We all lived on the ground floor as it was far too expensive to heat the upper rooms.There was an enormous kitchen range that she blackleaded everyday, but really pushed out a lot of heat. She ,like most women of her generation was frugal and baked everything from scratch.She knitted and sewed and although worked very hard in keeping house used to insist on after lunch sitting down for an hour to listen to Womens Hour on the wireless.It was her me-time. The garden was cultivated so we had fresh veggies, and we also had several chickens, which once passed their laying days, ended up in the pot.My Dad would wring their necks, as my eldest brother couldn't bring himself to do it .Didn't stop him eating them though.In her life (she died in 1962)she never owned a washing machine,a spin dryer, or a fridge.She used to keep the milk in a pail of cold water in the cellar. She baked the most delicious scones on a black iron 'girdle' that had belonged to her Grandmother.I grew up in a house full of love,care and strict rules of behaviour. I only have to smell lavender polish to think of my Mum polishing her beloved big brown radio that she had saved from destruction during the war. She always wore her 'pinny' first thing in the morning, and housework was done on a specific day.
The washing was done by hand until my Dad bought her a big tub for boiling things in, and I had the job of turning the mangle in the scullery to squeeze the water out. Monday was always washday, and most things if not handwashed were boiled, with the addition of a dolly blue bag and a lot of poking with a big whitened stick.
All our jumpers were hand-knitted and most of my dresses were made on her old Singer sewing machine.My Dad mended the boys shoes, and had a cobblers last that he would put them on and bang 'Blakeys,( steel heel tips ) into the heels to make them last longer.Take-aways were unheard of as rationing was still on until the 1950s. I can remember queueing for bananas with my Mum, and she managed to buy two.These were highly prized, and she sliced them very thinly and then covered with custard,and everything was divided up equally between us all. Her sister, my Aunt lived in New Jersey, and used to send parcels after the war to us with exotic things in like tinned pineapple and nylons for my Mum. the parcel was always packed tightly with as much as she could get in and the papers inside were always prized by me and my brothers as they had cartoons in them Nothing like our News Chronical that my Dad brought home in the evening.
Life by todays standards was I suppose quite hard, as there was almost no central heating available, and not much in the way of T.V. until the mid fifties .The wireless was our main form of entertainment, or later on the cinema. Shoes were bought for school and not for playing out in. Sandles in the summer and school shoes in September. No trainers, only plimsolls, toys were few and far between and only at Christmas or birthdays.Sweets were still rationed so they were not many of them about either.
Dinner was usually meat and three veg, followed by a pudding,usually rice or semolina. A real treat was bread and condensed milk, not had very often depending on supplies.I guess my frugal ways came from my upbringing, but as no one had much, no one felt deprived.It made you appreciate things when you did get them. Holidays were always in Scotland with relatives and they would travel down to us in England in return.I can remember paddling in the sea in Montrose ,blimey it was cold, and that was in August.
Not a bad childhood though and many happy memories.

sb44

Flippin eck, my parents used to have Yeomens tinned boiled potatoes and a tin of mixed peas and carrots with their sunday dinner, every week.

Everything had to have mint sauce on the side too, chicken, pork and of course lamb.

I was glad when I left home to get some decent food.

I thought mince was only for dogs (as that is what ours used to get fed), before I got married and discovered chili and spag bol.

:rotfl: