50s thrift compared to now.

Angel_Jenny

I have a very rose tinted view of the 1950s - it is just a decade that really appeals to me. I have a few magazines from that time and it seems that life was simpler, harder and more proper than now.

Also it seems like a thriftier time in general - after the war and there still seemed to have been make do and mend articles in the magazines.

Would the thrifty lifestyle of the 1950s have been classed as being poor now?

So much that seem to be essentials nowadays (i-phones, holidays abroad, every television channel going) wouldn't have existed then.

Was it a different level of thrift?

I can't imagine most women then having a wardrobe full of clothes and only wearing a tiny percentage of them.

It is an era that fascinates me! I wish I could go back and take a non-rose tinted look at the world and everyday life, hobbies and even what was sold in shops.

SailorSam

I think no matter what Era you were to visit you'd hear people talk about the good old days of their youth.
We talk now about how much trouble gangs of kids cause in the street and say it wasn't like that when i was growing up, we had respect. But going back to the 50s people complained about 'teddie boys'

bellaquidsin

As a child in the fifties I lived in a modest rented house at the back of a shop which we didn't own or have anything to do with. It had a mouse infested cellar but things were arranged in such a way, they couldn't get near our food. We relied on the stone table in the cellar as we didn't have a fridge. Our only toilet was up the garden path, no need for airfresheners here.

My mum kept the house spotlessly clean even though it was on a main road a very close to the 'steam' railway. She was careful and yes thrifty, didn't go to work but cooked from scratch and made my clothes and her own. She made my father's modest wage as a shopkeeper spin as far as possible, saved for a holiday at the coast once a year and a deposit for a house which we moved into when I was 12. She also saved 6d per week for my wedding which after it was paid for yielded enough for her and Dad to have 3 days holiday in Bournemouth in a hotel.

There was a contentment in those days which is not present today. We didn't have a lot. My mum's 'hobby' was knitting family garments and days out were spent walking in the country. We were happy and I don't think we ever considered ourselves poor but I don't think the young folk of today would be satisfied with this lifestyle.

I have followed in the tradition I learned from my mum. I didn't go to work, looked after my family, cooked from scratch, knitted and sewed etc. etc It worked for us and now my 40ish year old DD is doing the same, so it must have something going for it.

Bella.

[Deleted User]

I don't think it crossed many peoples minds as to whether they were poor or not. Everyone was in the same boat really and there was less consumerism than there is today.True Mums stayed at home. and became homemakers because that was what was expected of them my Mum married in 1935 and had to give up her job as married women rarely worked unless they had to.She was a buy in a large dept ment store in Glasgow and had been there for a long time (she was 35 when she married ) so to give up her job was quite a wrench. but my Dad would have felt horrified if she had wanted to stay on at work as he considered himself to be the breadwinner In 1937,41 & 43 along came her children so working was not an option for her.
Growing up in the 1940s and 50s life was just ordinary to most folk they had their ups and downs, but there seemed to be more neighbourliness around than today, and folk seemed to help each other more as times were sometimes tough with shortages and rationing (it didn't finish until 1954. 9 years after war had finished)
My Mum always said it was harder after the war than during it.There was the 'teddyboys' its true, but they fought each other, not the old and the vunerable.There was crime as there has always been but not on the scale of violence that seems to be around today Children walked in fear of their parents, not each other, as if you were caught doing something wrong and taken home to your parents by the bobbies then you got another good hiding from your Dad for bringing shame to his door.My Dad was the ruler in our house, and a look from him was enough to make you quake if you had been naughty. My middle brother Davy when he started work in 1956 saved up for ages to buy himself a pair of jeans .When he brought them home my Dad hit the roof, and put them on the back of the kitchen range fire, and said 'No son of mine is going to wear something that may turn him into a hooligan 'sounds daft now but in those days the 'Blackboard Jungle' film had just come out and 'Rock Around the Clock' and it seemed that jeans were the road to ruin for young men.

My two brothers had to wear grey flannels until they were called up for National Service then they wore the Queens uniform.
My late Oh never owned a pair of jeans in his life the most casual thing he perhaps wore were a pair of cords.Life is just so different today from then I wouldn't want to return to the 1950s with the shortages of coal, no central heating, no wall-to-wall carpets or any of the things we take for granted today, having a shower everyday is great, far better than a tin bath once a week believe me.But perhaps a gentler pace of life would be nice and far less traffic on the roads as well.

ubamother

However....

for many it was still an era where son followed father into his place of work with no question of further or higher education or joining a different profession, the choices and opportunities open to women in particular were very poor indeed, and few women had anything more than the basic education, and their 'careers' were simply there to fill their time before marriage.

The opportunities for economic and geographical mobility were few, bullying in school was largely ignored, child abuse and domestic violence were brushed under the carpet in many instances and women put up with what they go because, being women, they deserved it.

Yes, I know I'm ignoring the many positives, but as a woman I still don't think I'd go back to all that - but I'd like to marry the idyllic parts of the 1950s with the parts of modern life I enjoy - wouldn't that be nice!

Butterfly_Brain

I was born in 1958 so I don't remember the fifties, but I do remember the early 60's.
Most people were extremely poor compared to today, family allowance wasn't paid for the first child, there were no tax credits or other allowances.
Nearly everyone smoked, kids were not allowed in pubs - they were for adults only.
The only fast food was fish and chips

As kids we would take a bag of bits to the rag and bone man for enough money to go swimming.
Most Mums stayed at home to look after their families and all of us had hand knitted jumpers and cardis.
We all used to have hand me downs or go to the local Jumble Sales for clothes and shoes.
School Uniform was grey skirt, white shirt a tie and a hand knitted cardi or jumper in the school colour, shorts for the boys gym, navy gym skirt and knickers for the girls and we all wore black plimsoles.
Corporal punishment was an accepted form of discipline and you got the slipper in Junior School or the Cane in Upper School.
Teachers used to get our attention by throwing the blackboard rubber or a piece of chalk and a lot of us were very adept at ducking
Winters seemed to be much colder than now and if the boilers broke down in the school we just sat in our coats, hats and gloves to have lessons, you didn't get time off school for that.

You were forced to eat all of your school dinner or suffer the wrath of the dinner ladies - even tube ridden pigs liver eeeeew I still can't face pigs liver.

I remember Nitty Nora coming round the school she wasn't gentle :eek: and if you were found to have nits you were sent home straight away with a bottle of nit lotion and not allowed back at school until you had been treated and checked that you were clear.
If you got any childhood disease and you had library books you had to inform the library so that the books could be fumigated or destroyed.
We didn't have Trick or Treat, we had Penny for the Guy

None of this PC nonsense we had adventure playgrounds that we helped build with old bits of wood and nails, great fun. We would play conkers, build dens in fields and climb trees.

It was a harder way of life but we had more freedoms and were much happier.

Itismehonest

What may have changed most of all are the expectations of what was necessary & what a luxury.
If you had a telephone, TV & car you were thought well-off. :rotfl:

Washing day was a sea of steaming coppers, starch & kids helping mothers with the mangle.
It wasn't enough just to keep the house clean, the whole stretch of path on the road outside the front of the house got the same treatment - washed & swept.

Bakers, butchers, greengrocers, Betterwear men, fishmongers etc. all delivered to the door back then.
Very little was had on credit. Sometimes things like TVs were taken out on Hire Purchase (HP) but normally it was a case of "If you can't afford it you go without until you save enough to buy it".

Everyone was Mr or Mrs ..... even the next door neighbours.
The only people called by their first names were really close friends or family. Children most definitely didn't call adults by their first names as it would have been considered rude,

Who remembers knitted swimwear? :eek:
We really felt life had come on when we graduated to that seersucker (bubbly material) stuff that didn't hold the water & so didn't end up stretching down to your knees. :cool:

Need2bthrifty

Depending on which part of the country you are in, one play/tv drama that springs to mind is "The Steamie" about a group of Glasgow women/their lives/troubles etc. A real eye opener and demonstrates the strength of this group of women - both physically and mentally.

You can check it out on the STV player - it is also tremendously funny, thats if you can understand the dialect.

BitterAndTwisted

I was born in 1954 the year food-rationing finally ended. Most ordinary working-class people would be classed as poor now and they were classed as poor then, too. The difference to now was that they had no realistic expectation of living any other kind of life than the one they had. That inculcated resignation rather than indignation, I suspect.

My own family were poor but poor in the same way as everyone else they knew. Pride was taken in having snow-white laundry hanging on the line on Mondays, scrubbed-clean-on-your hands-and-knees floors and children dressed clean and neat even if their play-clothes were worn out, mended and patched. Clothes were handed down through siblings, family members and neighbours. We only ever had one set of "good" clothes at a time which were only worn "for best" to church or visits to the doctors and things like that. One pair of shoes which were polished ourselves from the age of about five.

Anything which was shabby and threadbare beyond mending was made into something else. My mother once made the three of us summer frocks out of someone else's cast-off curtains and very sweet and pretty they were, too. Plus she baked, knitted, crocheted, kept a kitchen garden, preserved and bottled. And it wasn't because she enjoyed it, either. If she hadn't it would have been bread and dripping for us, I expect.

Looking back on it now I don't feel any kind of nostalgia for the way we lived, I see it as really rather Spartan and grim.

Alison_Funnell

I was born in the very late 60s but I have spent many years within historical re-enactment circles, working for English Heritage and the like. I also grew up in a very antiquated house, with very old style mum and grandparents (luckily forward thinking though) in a tiny and quiet village, so not too far from some of the 50s way of life.

I am so glad to be living NOW. Tolerance, true freedoms not perceived ones, as in freedom to be openly gay, to breach class and race barriers, religious tolerance, not just we could run around all day everyday in the fields playing. You know fields can be boring places too! We may have MRSAs and the like but we also have greater treatments and understanding of so many diseases and conditions.

We can communicate with people all over the planet in a split second, take thousands of photos and have such fantastic tools at our fingertips. We can learn from some aspects of the past but thank goodness for progress even with it's faults.

Florence22

I was born in 1956 and remember more from the very early 60's on.
I well remember all the things people have mentioned here, we were working class and hard-up but as has been said, cleanliness was next to godliness and we also scrubbed the "back entries" (alleys) were the bins were put out.

I had a working Mum and Grandmother and was taught, from 5 onwards, how to wash up, iron, make beds, scrub steps, make bunloaves in bulk for Christmas, knit, sew etc., etc.

How my Nan and my Mum (and Dad!), coped I don't know. My Nan worked until she was 74 and had to be told to retire, she would come back from her job, get the tea on, feed us kids for my Mum and go back to work 'til 11.00 most nights. She was so busy she almost never took her hat off!
We were very lucky, we were a big supportive family with great neighbours and Grandparents who I would never be able to thank enough and loved dearly.
But my gawd it was cold........

My Mum continued to work whilst she had the two of us littlies, then when I was 11 she became pregnant with my sister.
At 8 months pregnant, her boss stopped her in the street in the city centre at lunchtime and told her that she was sacked forthwith, as her condition "didn't look very nice" :eek:.
I've never forgotten it, I was shocked even as a young child that that could happen :mad:

We are luckier now and things are easier but there's lots I miss about those days....Oh but not NITTY NORA ha ha ha :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: