2022 Frugal Living Challenge

Primrose

JackieO.    Enjoy sharing  your memories.
 I was 7 in 1947 during that dreadful winter when snow was on the ground continuously for more than 3 months.  Despite the war ending 2 years previously rationing was worse than wartime as we were also having to divert food to feed Germany who was in a worst state than we were.

We had one coal fire to heat the whole house. Yes  coal was severely rationed .  I recall my dad taking my brother's pram to the local woods a mile away to search for firewood when the coal ran low and returning with little as others had already foraged before him.  The toilet cistern froze. No water came out or the bathroom taps and there were regular powercuts. Windows were  continually glazed with frost. We wore our coats indoors to try and keep warm.

Apparently they had to use pneumatic  drills to  dig parsnips and cabbages out of the frozen fields.     Relatives in Canada sent us a small wooden case of dried bananas wrapped completely in calico which my mum used to make a blouse for me which was so scratchy!  All clothing and materials were still on coupons and rationed.  The bananas were stored in a cold bedroom and looked like dried dog turds.  I'd never seen a fresh banana, let alone a dried one so wouldn,t touch them!    When sandals grew too small the top leather in the toes was cut out to allow growing feet to expand. My mum became the family cobbler, using a cast iron shoe last to stick on soles.  Who remembers those awful metal tipped blakies?

Years later my granny gave me her enormous well used cast iron preserving pan as an engagement gift, which had been used to make preserves through two world wars .  I thought  at the time what a bizarre present it was but now realise she had given me something very precious.   I used it often when first married but now use something lighter. It,s still in the loft and I can't bear to part with it because of its history and the years of hardship it saw

I,ve no idea how my mum coped with the war years and post war austerity hardships. They went on for such a long time. Everybody became so weary.   It prematurely aged my mother.  I wish she was alive now so I could react with more understanding of how hard life must have been then.  Truly, however difficult things get this winter, it will be hard to match the conditions of winter 1947.

wort

Thank you all for your replies. I think possibly it was in the warm for around 5 hours! It’s still a bit too warm to cook beef , but I will definitely do the nose/sniff test when I get it out.
 I begged for Blakey’s on my Royals shoes when I was a young teen as everyone had them it was the fashion!!

marycanary

When I married my ex-husband in the 1980s, we brought a small terrace house with a cellar. The celler was divided into a room for coal, the coal 'ole we called it which was empty and a keeping cellar. The keeping cellar has two shelves of, I think sandstone. They certainly weren't marble. 

We could not afford a fridge so used to keep perishable food in the cellar. Milk was kept in a terracotta milk cooler to which you added water which evaporates cooling the milk. It had been left in the cellar by the previous owner. I have never seen another one. We left it for the next owners when we sold the house about 5 years later.  

Meat was placed in a metal box on one of the shelves. It did not keep long so we would cook and eat it within a day or two of purchase. This wasn't a problem as there were only the two of us and I worked in the city centre near shops so could nip out in my lunch hour to buy fresh supplies. 

Butter was kept in a dish on the counter in the kitchen. In the summer it was soft and in the winter it was as hard as a brick.  I don't remember it ever going rancid.  All our vegetables were kept in the cellar. As were soft drinks and cans of beer.  Jam, condiments and the like which I now keep in the fridge were kept in kitchen cupboards.

We managed like that for quite a long time until we could afford to buy a fridge from a second hand shop at the top of the road.  The shop owner brought it to the house on a sack barrow.  The house wasn't centrally heated and was perishingly cold in winter so I suppose that helped. I think it would have been more difficult to manage without a fridge once the children started arriving.  I always worked outside the home, at least part time and I think that frequent trips to the supermarket to keep a large family supplied have been very difficult especially since we did not own a car.

Turning off the fridge and using a keeping cellar (if you have one) is certainly an option for those in a position to shop frequently. I suppose you would have to work out whether it  saves enough money to make the extra effort worthwhile

florianatwobob

We have my aunties diary from the winter of 1947, she does talk about her knitting and being ‘much enamoured with fair isle’ patterns. She also mentioned the family dog being poorly, they were all very worried. My dad gets a passing mention when he rejoins his ship after being on leave but clearly him
coming home on leave wasn’t very interesting to my aunt. 

London_1

Gosh I remember so well as a skinny little London child queueing up with my Mum for the Saturday morning jumble sales and wriggling through the throng of women to grab any jumpers I could find no matter waht colour to get for my Mum for pennies then it would be take them home unpick wash ,wind and reknit.grey was valued in our house as I had two brothers who went through school sock at an alarming rate and I have a long and abiding hatred of both grey wool and knitting sock as by the time I was 10 i could knit a pair the same as my mum. Turning sheets to middle when they were gettigna bit threadbare was also another task my late Mum and I did .She would cut them in half and pin and tack sides to middle and then she would be at one end and I would be at the other and we would sit and hand sew them together.
Nothing ever went to waste as things were so difficult to buy and get and post war things were even more difficult as shops had few available goods. My Mums sister in New Jersey would sent parcels to us and they were full of unheard of things like tinned pineapple chunks (I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I first tasted them )
Every corner of the parcel was stuffed full of things you couldn't buy or get, I can remember my Mum literally having tears in her eyes when she got her first pair of nylons.They were treasured and kept for high days and holidays American Tan they were called and bless her she felt like a filmstar when she wore them
We once received some small tins of Heinz apple purree meant for babies I think, and Mum made us use it on toast as a spread I swore I would never inflict such stuff on my babies when I had any ,and I never did.

Its actually surprising what you can make out of very little if you have to , I can remember seeing my Mum make brawn from a pigs head and having to eat it and I thought that was pretty awful as well. The worse thing was tripe which is the one thing I really found hard to eat, but eat it we did, along with a tinned fish from South Africa called Snoek which seemed to be all bones 

But again we survived and didn't go to bed hungry at least ,which was more than many displaced people did.

I have no illusions about the 'good old days ' it was often cold ,grey and extremely foggy in London ,but the bombsites were exciting at least, and digging around you could find all sorts of stuff.The wood my brothers usually brought home for the range for my Mum

JackieO xx

[Deleted User]

Sorry to digress, and I hope you don't mind, Jackie0, but I've been trying to find the post where you mentioned your helpful suggestion for microwaving rice. 

I tried to make some and it wasn't all that successful (I ate it though!) and I couldn't find the post where you mentioned it.  I'm nearly certain it was one of your helpful posts and I'd like to try your system, please.

Many thanks.

P.S. My first pair of nylons, my favourite ones, were American Tan - about 1962 or 1963 I think!

Primrose

Deleted_User said:

Sorry to digress, and I hope you don't mind, Jackie0, but I've been trying to find the post where you mentioned your helpful suggestion for microwaving rice. 

I tried to make some and it wasn't all that successful (I ate it though!) and I couldn't find the post where you mentioned it.  I'm nearly certain it was one of your helpful posts and I'd like to try your system, please.

Many thanks.

P.S. My first pair of nylons, my favourite ones, were American Tan - about 1962 or 1963 I think!

Gosh I remember those first early American Tan tights. The first ones came in "one size fits all".  Oh No they didn't!    I have longer than average legs and the crutch on them usually ended up halfway down my thighs.!   So uncomfortable!   I was for ever trying to yank them up and ending up laddering them all!

Primrose

jackie O, you,re triggering another memory about food parcels from USa. In 1946 just after the war had ended my dad was sent to the USA for 2 months  as part of a delegation to study heavy engineering generation as part of the country,s post war rebuilding.   He was astonished at the amount of luxury foods there.

He got a kind ,person over there at one of his stopovers to help him make up a big parcel containing bags of sugar and soap flakes to send back home as both were on strict ration here   .     I recall watching my mum sobbing after  she had opened the parcel.        All the bags had burst and the contents were all mixed up and beyond redemption.     She kept everything until my dad returned and he got an industrial chemist to try and help separate everything out, without success, so short were we of these two products.   The whole lot had to be thrown away a nd my mum still recounted the disappointment of that moment in her nineties. 

zafiro1984

marycanary said:

We could not afford a fridge so used to keep perishable food in the cellar. 

When we got married in the 60's, we moved as far away as possible from my DH's father, actually to the other end of the country. A flat and car came with the job so I supposed we were very fortunate.
Both of us worked and DH thought that because we washed the dishes every day we would buy a dishwasher before a fridge. I was somewhat naïve in those days. strange but true

ladyholly

MY Mum used to talk of the winter of 1947.  She and my dad were married in August 1946 so it must have been very tough as a new housewife.