Easier to be OS in the olden days?

meritaten

the thing is - wages now are insufficient for most jobs for a single person to run a household. back in the fifties men usually earned just enough to cover rent, food and utilities. wives and mothers rarely worked - but for some reason 'little cleaning jobs' didn't get considered to be 'work'.
nowadays BOTH parents need to work even if one is part-time. I really do not know how some people manage if they are on minimum wage. monthly rent is set at a staggering amount! and mortgages are so hard to get even if you can afford the price tag.

CRANKY40

There's something much much worse than minimum wage now though - the zero hours contract. You are employed but no guarantee of work. My friend who is a single mum can pay bus fare to get to work to then be sent home as the place is not busy and there are too many staff in.

nursemaggie

I am sorry I changed the tone. I am proud of how my parents managed. When my dad saw a rocking horse outside a posh house for the dustmen, on his way home from work, he went and asked for it. God knows how he got it home on his bike! It was a great big thing, probably Victorian.

At the age of two I rode it like I was in the Grand-National. The front room was a long room with a polished wooden floor. We could not afford to heat it on the coal ration so we did not use it. I can remember that rocking horse as if it was yesterday. If you rode like the clappers you went from one end of the room to the other. It must have been 3 times as big as me.

I wonder what the customers thought in the shop downstairs? It must have made a racket. :rotfl:

I did not know that rocking horse was not new and would I have been bothered if I had? My dad lovingly restored it and made it safe. I do think, in hindsight, he ought to have fastened it to the floor.

That rocking horse was my pride an joy it was given to me for my second birthday. I was already a tomboy at two.

I am still proud my dad made so many of our toys. He proudly made more for mine in the 70s and 80s. I don't think it was so hard then as in the 50s. Yes I still cooked everything from scratch. I managed a charity shop for a few years and I clothed my children with a lot of things from there. We still passed things on. In the late 70s my niece was extremely proud she had got DDs party dress and told everyone so at her party.

I think doing those things allowed us to have the odd day out and go camping for two weeks every year. I thoroughly enjoyed camping and it did my arthritis a lot of good. I always came home pain free. I have had one or two holidays abroad since then but they have been no more enjoyable than the days of camping.

We did camping again when DS20 was a child. We had a frame tent then and we found a lovely farm to camp at in Cornwall.

There is one thing we have all forgotten about the 50s. Summer was not hot like it is now. I have photographs of my mum and dad, sat between the dunes, in their winter overcoats, thick woolen ones, on Skegness beach in the 50s. My brother and I are wearing knitted bathing costumes! It's as well the sea goes out so many miles in Skegness we probably never got them wet. :rotfl:

No! Come to think of it there used to be a very big paddling pool in Skegness. It was still there when my older two were littlies.

[Deleted User]

I too have no romantic ideas about the 40s and 50s as another poster said it was just that everyone was more or less in the same boat so no one felt 'deprived' as we knew no other way of life .
I now have more than enough to live on, but old habits die hard, so I never waste anything if I can help it.

I live within my means and have enough food in the cupboard and warmth when its cold.
I holiday for 2 weeks a year with my DD and family and I pay for the house rental and she buys the food As she has four hollow legged sons it works out about equal
I can remember the very cold winters and horrible smog that was yellow and if you came home in it you had to wash your hair as it was very sooty and greasy from the smog.Polio,childhood ailments that made you very ill were common,I had scarlet fever once and was pretty poorly.So there were things from that era that we definitely wouldn't want to see return.But when I see food banks in a country as rich as this one is I think something has gone seriously wrong somewhere. For people that are in work to have to struggle as they do now is just so wrong. My youngest DD works full time as does her OH and I look after the boys after school She doesn't do it for 'pin money' she does it to put food on the table, and help clothe her children She has one son at Uni and she tries to send him a bit extra to help him out as do I, but for her, she works long hours and seems to get little for herself at all. But she doen't complain as she knows she is lucky to have a job at all. Her Oh works for the local unitary authority and was 'reorganised' earlier this year which meant his job was downgraded salarywise so he actually earns nearly 2k less this year than he used to.But at 46 with a mortgage and a family he cannot walk away from his job even though the wages are not brilliant as there are probably 10 people willing to step into his shoes even at the wages he gets.The idea of 'zero hours' contracts are dreadful .One of my inlaws sons left Uni in June and the only thing he has been offered is a year long 'internship' no wages only his fares and lunches paid for, at 22 with a 2.1 degree he has grabbed it as there in nothing else around.So this young man will be working virtually for nothing for a year and with no guarantee of a permanant job at the end of it. No chance of him buying a car or even going anywhere exciting with his girfriend on zilch money.
Anyhow I am OS through habit, I just know no way to be different.

[Deleted User]

My nephew also graduated this summer and is in the position of searching and searching every day for a job in his field, he's living at home again, both his parents work full time to keep the roof over his head and he tries every avenue to find himself a job he's had 1 interview so far, just 1!!! so at 21 with a degree in Marine Biology he now works shifts at the local co-op as he had a job there when he was 16. He isn't bitter, he knows that it won't be easy but he'll keep trying and will eventually find a job to use his skills. He has just passed his driving test so has mobility now and is prepared to go anywhere if a job happens.

I think life is all about choices and sometimes the choices we make either by ourselves or under the guidance and advice of others are just NOT the right ones. I can see how frustrating it must be to have worked so hard for a professional degree only to find that the job that was expected to be there at the end hasn't materialised and then where are you? In debt, indoors, and in the doldrums. To say that the job must only be in a certain area and under a set of circumstances you feel are right is not a realistic attitude in these difficult times, it, like life in general will NOT come to your door begging you nicely to take it. The world is a harsh and stark place and if you want a life, the life you've earned by hard work and the life you've always had in your thoughts as your future you must go and find it, you must widen your horizons and you must be open minded to any opportunities that are even vaguely likely to give you the future you want. My nephew is applying all over the world, as far afield as Australia, will go wherever his destiny takes him and hopefully he like you will find his future and it will be a good one. Life is for living little one, not for festering about, life is often not at all fair but many of us have been beneath rock bottom and have fought our way up into the light. You can you know!!!

lostinrates

My paternal grandmother was a nurse and remained a nurse. Married in the war, having two kids, she just didn't want to give up work. She had a couple of different roles in nursing, progressing to a sister then becoming a district nurse.

mardatha

MrsL you're so right. My mum was born in 1916, in Ireland, and was one of 9. They moved to Glasgow and my grandad worked in the pits. She was a very bitter angry person all her life, and used to go on about how hard life was and what a fight it was. I've been through strikes - husband was a crane driver in the docks and they were always on strike, and got no help at all I've been through long spells of his unemployment too when heavy industry died and crane drivers became unwanted baggage. But I never got bitter, I just got on with it. Being angry just takes away your energy that is needed to fight back with.
I see a return to the old days, very much so. And the worst of it is that we are letting them do it. All the rights and laws and safeguards that our predecessors fought so hard for.. we are letting them trickle though our fingers. Our kids will pay for that.

115K

My Grandmother was one of 13, also in Ireland, and her upbringing sounded so harsh, in and out of orphanages as her mother couldn't afford to keep all the children warm and fed. She was always such a positive person though despite having such a hard life. I miss her.:(

parsniphead

I've just read through the whole thread this morning and have to say it's one of the best threads for a while. I was born in 1970 so one of the younger ones but remember the outside loo with the candle in the jam jar to stop it icing up in the winter. Also the tin bath in front of the fire. I still cant bare the though of shared water to this date.:rotfl: The bathroom was put in around 74/75 and seemed like absolute luxury.

I also remember in my early teens the central heating being installed and saying goodbye to the icy windows in a morning. I moved my bedroom around after it was installed so I could lie against the radiator while in bed. I now have a three year old and become obsessed with him being warm. I hate the fact that anyone may be cold at all to the point where i get nightmares in the winter about being homeless. Silly really.

Mum had the double glazing put in during 1992.....I now live in a house with single glazing and lived without heating for 8 years until my DH moved in and couldn't cope with the breath dragons in the bathroom. What a wuss...:rotfl:

I also did my growing up in the 80's and all the "Greed is Good" rubbish. It made me annoyed then but makes me feel totally sick and angry looking back.

I do feel jealous of not being able to stop at home with my little one. DH's wages just wouldn't be enough with wage freezes for years, etc. I guess women wanted it all and got it. Except I think more often than not it took away choice. I don't mind the having it all thing but not necessarily all at the same time. My little one starts school next September and I feel desperately sad that I have missed out on so much.

I try to live as traditionally as possible. I just think even though things were so very hard years back the values of people were often so much better. Its so nice to read the experiences of the "older" folks on here. It makes you appreciate a little more what we have now. Please all keep posting, it's so important to remember times past but it has also motivated me to try harder.

[Deleted User]

romantic! no way. Nothing romantic about wearing one set of clothes for a whole week, getting flea infested stuff from paddys market that you then had to wash and unpick so a child could have a coat, dissecting a half head from a pig and seeing my dad eat the brains, one apple between seven children. I could go on but it is best to remember the good bits

My dad was a highly qualified engineer in the army, he gave the best years of his life to the war and stayed the whole course. He spent the rest of his life as a cobbler, mending scruffy shoes and never once did they claim any benefit but the money he earned was very very low. He had good old fashioned ethics and took care of his family

What really does gall me now is the flack that the baby boomer generation gets, as though we had an easy ride. People have no idea unless they actually lived through it. It was very very tough and deprived. God knows how we were kept so clean and fed but with this deprivation came a hunger for education and aspiration

Personally I learnt a mass of skills, that is what happened when you were the eldest girl. Washing clothes in a bath full of cold water, cooking a great big stew for 9 at age 11 with half a pound of meat, washing tonnes of dishes by hand, scrubbing floors. Oh I can`t go on, we all want to forget the bad bits and there were many but we were all in the same boat.

Nowadays, just about everyone (except me) has a mobile phone and other 21st century stuff. I wonder how many people would actually manage finances a lot better if they pared right down, down to absolute basics. That is what we did so that we could save for a house deposit and then we got married, until then living singly at our respective parents. When we had our first house we had a cloth over orange boxes and a shelf on bricks. Even the bed was second hand from a relative. No carpet and jumble sale crockery. Omg, so much water under the bridge. Suffice it now to say that I never lost my frugal ways, how could I?