WHY are you old style?......

Tippytoes

I can remember living in a house which had no heating except for an open coal fire. The fire was lit when there was money for coal. When there wasn't. we used to find a neighbour who had a lit fire. Kind of like a rota. The tin bath was hung on a nail outside the back door and brought in once a week for our baths. All the water had to be boiled up on the stove. The house had one cold tap.

The loo was outside. Freezing cold in the winter. Loo paper was sheets of newspaper cut into squares, also hung on a nail. In the wintertime, we made ice lollies - diluted orange squash in an egg cup, left outside on the window ledge to freeze overnight.

The house was so cold, that the condensation on the windows used to freeze so that you couldn't open them.

Just a few memories from childhood, but you know, we were happy and never realised the hardships. Compare with the things people take for granted today.....We oldies are far better equipped to deal with cutbacks and going without.

meritaten

ohhhhhhhh Gawd - sheets of newspaper for loo roll - still in use in my dads brothers house until the seventies! the loos were outside, down a steep flight of steps and under the kitchen, and I can remember my dad using a lamp to light my way down! the loo was home to lots of huge spiders too! with those and the bloody chickens which attacked me in daylight I prefered to keep my legs crossed when visiting!

YORKSHIRELASS

We live OS because we cant afford to do anything else. I think I have come full circle though. Like others I was brought up very OS and money was always tight. Maybe its something to do with my personality but I hated being poor and it made me desperate to have money and material things. I worked hard, got good qualifications and a good job. Once I was earning decent money there was no stopping me - I spent every penny I earned and more besides. By the time I got married and had children I was in debt, and then it just grew.

Things are very different now. I am slowly paying those debts off and have learned the hard way the value of money. I hate wasting anything now and every penny spent is considered and budgeted for. I try to teach my children that you can have a happy and fun life and be frugal with money at the same time.

What will happen when the debts are gone? I honestly dont know but I cant ever see me wasting money like I did before.

Ilona

When I was little we lived in a council house, it had a bathroom but we couldn't afford to heat the water for a bath, and it was too cold to strip off in there anyway. So Mum heated the water in the kitchen on the gas stove and three of us had a wash down in the sink.

Then mum and dad split up and we went to live in a house that was almost falling down around us, with no bathroom and no hot water. Again we washed in the sink.

Everything old style I have learnt from my mum, she had to manage on very little money. We weren't unhappy though, we made our own entertainment.

Now I am naturally old style, and I am still happy because I have enough money to pay for what I need. If ever I came into money I would find it very difficult to spend it.
Ilona

oldtractor

Because its very satisfying.

[Deleted User]

I think a lot of the posters lived in my road :):) Friday night the tin bath was brought in to be filled with hot water from the kitchen range.we had an ouside loo that house the biggest spiders in south London.two floors of our house that my dad had bought for silly money in 1944 we didn't use because there was just not the fuel around to keep the whole house warm so we lived on the ground floor and my brothers and I had the rest of the house as a place to play.We had a huge garden which we kept chickens (for the pot) and grew lots of veggie.My Dad also grew old-fashioned tea-roses and prize winning very large pompom chrysanthemums.My Late Dad was a chemist so money wasn't too bad it was mostly the fact that because of rationing there was little in the shops so everyone had very little .My Mother was a feisty canny little Scots lass who could conjour meals up out of almost anything bless her.There was an inside toilet and bathroom up on the first floor but it couldn't be used as there was no way the gay geyser was very safe to use and repairing it was nigh on impossible because again of war-time and lack of parts.The house was a rambling 13 roomed barn of a place that was freezing in the winter and you could never get warm enough certainly no central heating and especially after the war never enough coal to light more than the kitchen range and on high days and holidays (mainly Christmas and Hogmany) the lounge.We had a scullery with cold flagged floors and what we called the kitchen was really a sitting room which we virtually lived in because it had the big black range that Mum would black-lead every day .She hated the house but loved the garden My Dad had bought it as the east end was getting too much attention from the enemy and he thought that be moving out to what was then relative country side of Blackheath we would all be safer.The worse time was I think after peace broke out as the shortages seemed to become even more short, and times seemed to be more austere than ever.We seemed to spend our lives in queues for almost everything.raw materials for the simples things were in short supply I can remember queueing for some rubber soles in a hardware shop so my Dad could repair my brothers shoesIn lweisham there was a dry cleaners called 'John Hoods' which had a lady sitting in the window with a small machine and for half a crown Mum could get up to 8 ladders in her stockings repaired .Everything was repaired or mended as there was so little in the shops to buy to replace things.Still everyone was in the same boat and rumours of goods available used to go like wildfire throough a community.So in the winter we sat around the kitchen range to keep warm and knitted intermidably or in my Mums case sewed and repaired the childrens clothes while listening to our one entertainment the wireless and ITMA.The six o'clock evening news was listened to in total silence as my Dad always had to hear the news without the kids making a noise.I was happy enough really and what you don't have you can't miss and we did make most of our own entertainment as both of my parents played our piano and we had lots of singsongs.Holidays were taken at relatives and as all of our relatives lived in Scotland the journey alone was a 24 hour adventure from london to the wilds of the north east coast of Angus.Then the relatives would come to visit us which was always exciting as they usually left giving my two brothers and I half a crown(12 1/2p) to spend which was saved and talked about for weeks before we spent it I am glad I had the up bringing I did as the frugality of my Mum obviously rubbed off on me for the rest of my life

bellaquidsin

I was brought up in a house with an outside loo. We too washed in the kitchen sink because the bathroom was too cold. We also used newspaper instead of loo roll. It was a treat to go to my grandparents as they were slightly better off and could afford to buy fruit so their toilet paper was the tissue that the oranges were wrapped in, until it ran out and then it would be newspaper.

I am old style because it's where I feel safe. It was of necessity in the early days of our marriage, but as it was how I had been brought up, I was comfortable with it.

As the years progressed we became better off until DH was made redundant. He got another job after 10 months out of work but it less than half his previous salary, so I became very OS again.

Then I inherited some money, invested it and just spent the interest and was able to have spending sprees. What I learned from that is that however much money you have, the world is still full of things you cannot afford. This made me feel very insecure.

Now we are retired, at least DH is as I didn't work and so don't have a pension. My 'inheritance' is stashed away supposedly to earn us a cushion for our retirement but thanks to the credit crunch it is earning nothing, so with no cushion I am back to OS again and feeling very happy and secure and thankful that I have the skills to cope.

Yes, I have money behind me but cannot touch it at the moment and after seeing how close the banks came to collapse I don't trust it. More than money I value my skills in cooking, baking, sewing, stretching the pennies, make do and mending etc. all of which were learned at my mothers knee.

Thanks mum,
Bella.

GreyQueen

Farway wrote: »

I am with Grey Queen & Jackie, on this, similar situations, but being a soft Southerner we did have an indoor bath & toilet, all the other items described were the same for us

Never wasted money as there was never enough to start with

I do admit to sometimes buying a ready meal when I can't be bothered to cook one, but it is from Lidl, and there is only me

I'm a soft southerner, too, but we still didn't have a bathroom!

The outside privy was a bucket over a seat (hole in a plank, basically) and was emptied into a deep hole dug in the veggie garden. Mum reminisces that these country cottage gardens grew wonderful gooseberries......:rotfl:

We used to have a "copper" built in to the corner of the kitchen and, if you wanted hot water, you drew from the cold tap, bucketed it to the copper and lit a fire underneath. Mum says there was never any burnable waste inc old shoes, as it went to heat the water. The bath was a galvanised tin "bungalow bath" which hung on a nail on the wall outside. Get it down (evict the spiders), carry into sitting room in front of the fire, fill with hot water from the copper nad bail out at the end of the day. Bath night was once an week with strip-washes in the sink between times.

No one was a mucky puppy, though, they had real pride in themsleves.

Being in debt was an absolute horror and to have anything on the never-never, or tick was something you might have to do but you'd be ashamed to admit. When Grandad passed away in 1967, Grandma was so concerned about running up fuel debts that she switched to a Calor gas cooker, the kind with the big gas bottle, so that she could only use what she'd paid for.

I don't think my grandparents had the slightest understanding of ecology, but sustainability was built into everything which they did as a matter of course. They wouldn't believe their eyes to see what goes into the rubbish these days.

Heck, I don't believe my eyes most of the time.

*Chattie*

Angel_Jenny wrote: »

Is it through choice or necessity? Or even choice that became a necessity?

Would you go back?

I know people who have always tried to live very frugally even when they could afford to have more but they didn't want the luxuries in life. Their lifestyle hasn't changed that much at all compared to others I know who were more used to having treats and just expecting to be able to afford things. Even the basics are expensive now!

Living in the old style way is a skill! All the planning and organising and budgeting and that is even before you count craft type skills and gardening for food. It reminds me of the books about the 1940's and the television shows about that time. When I think about my Gran's make do and mend attitude it is so different to many modern attitudes. Nothing was thrown away.

Perhaps society will move back to these older and simpler ways.

The Waltons (love!!) and John Boy said something like:

"I’ve always thought that this family was rich and we’ve never had any money."

I like that - I remember family days out and things we did rather than presents.

Its all very well wanting to dress like Doris Day and marry John Boy but would you do it without your automatic washing machine for instance?

I know for sure my mother would never have given up her automatic washing machine once she got it and the relief was palpable in the whole house on a Sunday as the day wasn't given over to doing the washing.

I can't foresee a time when people will move back to these older and simpler ways and why would they, better to embrace what hand you have been dealt and introduce whatever frugality you wish to your lifestyle.

Justamum

*Chattie* wrote: »

Its all very well wanting to dress like Doris Day and marry John Boy but would you do it without your automatic washing machine for instance?

I know for sure my mother would never have given up her automatic washing machine once she got it and the relief was palpable in the whole house on a Sunday as the day wasn't given over to doing the washing.

I can't foresee a time when people will move back to these older and simpler ways and why would they, better to embrace what hand you have been dealt and introduce whatever frugality you wish to your lifestyle.

I couldn't have put it better myself. When we were younger my mum would either go to the launderette, or more often as she didn't have any money, she'd wash clothes in the bath. Eventually she got a twin tub, but wouldn't be without her automatic washing machine. I've been in the position of having to wash clothes in the bath, and I wouldn't want to have to live like that permanently. Civilisation is the washing machine :rotfl: