Easier to be OS in the olden days?

lessonlearned

The whole student loan debt thing is a farce. There are going to be a lot of graduates who will never repay their debts. A pointless fruitless exercise.

nursemaggie

Thank you MrsLW. I see the thread is still not on subject. Op want to know if it was easier in the old days to be OS. I don't think we have actually answered the original question.

Those of us who were born at the end of the war and just after had a lovely reminisce. What we did have just after the war was everyone in the same boat because rationing went on until 1954. It did not really make a lot of difference how well off or poor you ware your ration was the same. It was the fairest society we have ever had apart from those who either used their wealth to cheat by buying on the black market or took advantage of peoples greed and sold things on the black market.

Thankfully those people were few and far between.

I think it actually makes no difference in some ways it must be harder if you don't actually have to live on a low income. If you are on a very low income, in my case a low pension, you have no choice. We have to live what we call OS or we would starve. We were just managing.

Now that my son has been sanctioned for being on the course the Department of Works and Pensions sent him on we are not managing. we are missing meals or going cold.

The problem is despite lots of emails my son is not getting the documentary proof that he attended the course every day the college is ignoring him, just as much as my landlord is ignoring my please for repairs.

I am sorry I switched it again.

I think it is easier to stick to your determination when you have no choice. It does become harder when you think things cannot get worse and they do get worse.

I don't actually think it is completely old style for most of us. We use things that were not available to us in the old days. My mother never used herbs and spices. Dad never grew any herbs. I think the only ones my mum was conscious of was sage for sage and onion stuffing and mint for mint sauce. My dad did grow mint. I know after my parents retired my mum learned from me to use herbs and some spices. I don't think I could return to the days of tasteless boiled meat and vegetables and the limited vegetables we had back then. Mrs LW grows lots of lovely modern vegetables.

I did think at first I seemed to be expected to actually spend more than I had been used to. DS and I do not eat cakes at all and only occasional biscuits which we find work out cheaper as a small packet of biscuits lasts us a couple of months. Home made will not keep that long.

I had not shopped at Ald! for about 25 years there was not one near by. It has changed a lot in that time. I have found that although it costs a lot less for some things from Ald! It is not really cost effective for us to go more than once a month.

Mr M has become a lot cheaper. My local Mr M. has improved out of all recognition in the last couple of months. I am sure they have a new manager. I have worked it out it is cheaper for us to go to Ald! once every 4 or 5 weeks and shop locally at Mr M. the rest of the time.

We don't have a car. We tend to do a big shop at the market the same day as Ald! and get a taxi back. I may get my free bus pass but it costs £4 return on the bus for DS. You need quite a big saving to make it worth while.

We are all different and we all live in different places. We need to work it out for ourselves. I still cannot answer the question, it depends on a lot of factors. One thing I think makes it easier for us is we do not have TV. We are not bombarded with adverts telling us we can afford the things we know we can't. Advertising is very clever it is a form of brainwashing.

I don't think we can entirely blame people from borrowing money they could not afford to pay back. I did have TV until 2006. I can remember there were up to three adverts every break urging people to borrow money and telling them if they borrowed more they could pay for the debt they already had and were struggling with.

The shame of borrowing I had been brought up with kept me from ever borrowing anything but a mortgage. I still wonder if we would not have been better off had we never had a mortgage as we lost our house twice through no fault of our own.

OP I highly recommend you look at most of the threads. Find one you can post on regularly and take it one step at a time to take control of your finances. The more you do the easier it gets. Ask questions, people are very supportive and very helpful on most of the threads on here.

Last night I decided to make up a recipe. DS said he had only come across one person who was a good a cook as me. That made me feel good. He made me feel even better when he said the other good cook was a professional chef with over 30 years experience. Not a bad complement from a man for a self taught cook.

We ended up doing the meal together last night. It was good. He did say sometimes my experiments go wrong but I knew that.

[Deleted User]

The problem is that os is being forced suddenly on people who have not been born into it and whose parents have been part of the consumer generation who have had no wish to perpetuate old style living.It was not glamorous to be os, it was a hard fact of life and there are not that many of us who have carried the skills on through the years. I carried on because it enabled me to secure a warm content old age. The beneficiaries of my frugality will eventually be our children and grandchildren, who we help now, whenever we see a need

I am so grateful not to have been sucked into the credit card trap, or the designer or cruising traps. I still don`t have a mobile or sky, I don`t want them, they would not enhance my life. I do remember my dh coming home from work and going straight out to a second job on 3 nights. The other 3 nights I went door to door selling stuff, cold, wet and very dark. We worked all hours to secure our home and mortgage and our food came from home grown broad beans and parsley sauce. I made wine and we never got rolling drunk in the gutter, we could not have afforded to but we also had moral standards. Times have changed beyond all comprehension but no-one should blame the previous generation. We all have our own path to follow and childhood ends all too soon

Broomstick

I don't know how much I was cushioned from the frugalities of the 50s-70s. My mum did an amazing job of protecting us from how difficult things were financially, especially since she was very ill on and off from the early-60s for about twenty years. I wish I had been told more at the time about the difficulties because I think I would have felt less resentful about not being allowed/able to follow my dreams at that point in my life. I understand so much more now.

The lack of tv advertising was a massive bonus then. The communal sense of living within your means was also huge where frugal was the norm and the word 'frugal' wasn't heard.

Although developments in health care since the 50s have been fantastic in many ways, I would have dearly loved to be able to phone a doctor and get a home visit fifteen years ago when my children were young and we all had whooping cough badly. There seemed to be more time and more tlc from a 1950s/60s health care system that could offer less in terms of drugs or treatments. Home visits were the norm in those circumstances when I was little. I remember the one from fifty years ago when I had the measles. I had a big op this summer and was sent home - problem free - from hospital after two nights with no follow up. A relation who had the same op - problem free - forty years ago was kept in for a fortnight just to rest and be cared for.

I never even heard swear words until I was in my late teens and certainly never used them. We wrote letters to family and friends and the post came twice a day. We asked permission before taking someone's picture. Personal data was kept in paper records under lock and key. Identity theft on a massive scale was not known. Banks were assumed to be safe places. The train service was nationalised with little branch lines linking small towns and villages and you could plan a journey in a linked up way knowing exactly the fare it would cost. The bus service into rural communities in our area was better too. There were fewer cars on the road and it wasn't nearly so risky to cycle or to walk without a pavement. Pubs had sensible closing times and Sundays were quiet days with Sunday trading laws.

I would give almost anything to go back to all of that.

I would find it hard but not impossible to give up mobile phone use (I have a cheap one that is only used for essentials). I would find it harder but not impossible to give up the positive side of the internet as well. I would find it totally impossible now, as a long-term ex-smoker to live in a society where it was normal to have smoking on public transport, in shops, in the cinema and theatre, in pubs and restaurants etc. The growing smoking ban has been a very positive thing. They just need to sort alcohol next!

B x

[Deleted User]

Things I would absolutely HATE to be without are my washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, the car (although we don't use it unless we have several jobs to do in one trip), my mobile phone, the fridge and freezers which enable me to take advantage of YS offers and NOT have to do a daily shop which in this village would cost me considerably more than it does in town and my computer which gives me access to all of you and the whole of the knowledge of the internet. It is a much wider world now and I would be really unhappy if I was limited to a land phone or the post to communicate with the world. Not all things modern are bad are they?

Softstuff

I think what we consider to be OS now is very different to what it was way back, but it's always your own choice how you live.

If we're talking make do and mend, cooking from scratch, living a less commercial life by making your own, I think it's easier than ever now. It's certainly easy to buy things second hand now, because few people hang on to everything until they cave in. The tools to do jobs are pretty easy to obtain and information on how to do pretty much everything is very freely available on the internet.

In some ways I feel like I don't fit into the current time. I'm never going to pick up an energy drink, there's about half the aisles in the supermarket I wouldn't touch anything in and I seem to do a fair bit of stuff at home that people consider to be a bit out there. That said, I also love my modern appliances (even though I don't have many of them), I struggle without my laptop and I wouldn't be alive without relatively recent medicine. I'd also be short about half my teeth :rotfl:

When I wake up in the morning knowing there'll be food that day, that I'm housed, I can use my indoor plumbing, that I have a choice of what to wear and leisure time to fill with entertainment, I remain grateful. There are many that have gone before me without these things, there are many now without these things, so I guess not everything changes.

Gigervamp

I would really miss the internet, especially now that I'm housebound as it's my only form of socialising.

But it's also so full of knowledge. Need to learn how to plumb something in? Cook a recipe? Find the best deals? It's all on here.

nursemaggie

Thanks Broomstick for those links. After looking at them I watched the 1900s house if you have not watched it, do, you will be even more grateful for the washing machine.

I then watched Coalhouse. two lots 1927 and 1944. Yesterday I watched a program about the development of different rooms in the house so I put at the top of my list a modern bed and even a bedroom.

As for the washing machine I have come to the conclusion it has done more for women's liberation than the suffragettes or any other political demonstrations. It was not the vote that changed our lives it was freedom from spending about three days a week washing and ironing. It also freed us to be able to have more than one change of cloths a week. Actually a few less clothes would be a lot simpler.

One thing I have noticed on lots of these threads is people seem to do an awful lot of washing. I never do more than two loads a week. I am stuck now my washing machine just stopped two days ago with a load of washing in it. I hope it is just the fuse. The problem is finding a 13 amp one. I have to go to town today. I hope I find one in Wilkos and don't have to find a B&Q or some other DIY place. I don't know where they are or how to get to them. I shall have to Google but I have a feeling they are where no buses go.

Fingers crossed it is the fuse and I don't have to spend days looking for a repair man or even worse have to have a new washing machine.

I have come to the conclusion it probably is easier these days to be OS, purely because of there being labour saving devices and so much more choice in the shops. It must be very difficult if you are working full time.

You are certainly right about the freezer MrsL I have found I have to shop more often and can't buy much YS stuff as I only have room for an extra narrow fridge freezer so not much room. It just about holds four bags of frozen veg and enough meat for a couple of weeks.

suki1964

I think if you have the mindset, with support from either real friends and family or from forums such as this, it's a lot easier to be old style today

We do have so much more leisure time now then we had back then, mainly because of the labour saving devices we now have in our homes. I know I do not want to go back to the days of no washing machines and I love that I can get a hot shower daily. Oh and the vacuum, because we now have fitted carpets and I would possibly miss the iron, although I do tend to avoid it as often as I can

I make use of the fridge, I can shop weekly instead of having to do an 8 mile round trip to get the daily basics

I use the freezer to store my bulk cooks, left overs and bulk discount buys

I can cook a variety of meals in a week with no fear of waste. Meals are no longer ruled by having to use up before it goes off

The internet is a wonderful invention. So what if we were never taught to cook, sew, craft by our own parents/grandparents, there's online tutorials for everything. Even hubby is now using YouTube to learn how to fix things that break down saving us a fortune ( the boiler was leaking last week, cost us £9 in parts, no labour costs or call out charges)

Buying secondhand is now "fashionable" dare I say. Even hubby who grew up in a very middle class family and never knew tin baths and jumble sales, will come browse and buy the odd thing and no longer gives off at me for using them

My stepdaughter, now she has a family, is turning to me more to "learn". She has just started baking for her little ones and is learning to make more adventurous meals from very little. She's pretty nifty now boning a chicken thigh instead of reaching for the chicken fillets. It's small steps for her as she has resistance from her partner ( such a fussy eater, spoiled by parents who live on credit). She also refuses to have more then a basic card for her account to use cash for everything, and has her envelopes for everything

I can imagine that for those who are facing tough times for the first time ever it's very hard and quite frightening.i like to think that our stories of the past have inspired a few to make a few changes to their lifestyles I'm in no shape or form a total old styler as I can't sew or knit to save my life, nor any artistic talent what so ever. But I can cook and manage to grow some veg and not adverse to hard work

PenniesMake£s

Broomstick wrote: »

This thread's a good trip down memory lane. I'm another mid-1950s baby. (Another fan of St Fagan's too!)

Did any of you visit the Imperial War Museum's 1940s house when it was on display? Many years ago we were at the IWM doing some work on first world war poetry and artists (me plus my home-ed sons) and I only stumbled upon the house by chance. My Gran's house was three bed but a bit smaller and shabbier and I cried quietly as I went round the museum one because so much of it was like her house and some of it was identical. I wasn't expecting to be hit with grief like that. The 1940s house telly programme wasn't the same as seeing the museum one in real life.

The IWM has put various videos about the house online:

Bx

Thanks for these links, it has taken me some time to catch up with this thread and today I have watched these, so fascinating. I also found some videos of st fagans and which looks amazing. I love reading everyone's stories and thoughts on this thread.

I have been spending a good amount of time paring back, to olden days quantities of stuff. Less clothes available to everyone, pyjamas going back in the drawers to fool the kids into re wearing them (my dd thinks I have become quicker at getting the laundry washed and dried lol) I have been through every single cupboard and drawer in the entire house and decluttered. There is much less choice available to everyone now and no-one has complained:T eg one shampoo/toothpaste/variety of tea bags etc for whole family. I have fewer mugs available, lots of books/toys to the charity shop that were no longer used. My dd gets to wear her favorite 3 outfits one on, one in the wash, one in the drawer, no more arguments and a very decluttered wardrobe. My hubby did the same with his wardrobe when he saw how simple things were looking in the other rooms.

I have also been trying to plan ahead and take bottled (tap) water with me if im going out, not take the kids to McDonald's occasionally when I'm running out of time and they are getting hungry (have either planned ahead or if out bought a bunch of bananas to keep them going until tea is ready). Just trying to think "what would the oldstylers have done 30/40/50+ years ago in this situation. I think this is definitely saving more money. I'll be darning socks next.