It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

ladyholly

Siebrie said:

My Mum (86) told me she never understood people who had to break the ice on the water to wash themselves in the morning; they used the water from the hot water bottles

As did we.
My brother in law who is 90 later this year tells of times when they had a choice each week of buying 1 gallon or half a gallon of paraffin depending on what they could afford. The heater was their only heating for the house as they couldn't afford  coal. When he inherited the house after his parents died in the 1970s there was still no running water in the house. They had a well in the garden.

nannygladys

I was granny reared but I wouldn't say I was taught to be thrifty, yes we had coal fires, ice inside Windows, coats on beds etc  but when I started work I used to spend every penny buying things I was not allowed. So for years I had had no sense to save money only spend it and in all honestly (and I'm 70 in a couple of months, it was eldest dd who really showed me the way. Now I have no debt, own my house and manage quite well, (all be it very carefully) on just a state pension. My next door neighbour was telling me yesterday she was worried about her mum as after paying her bills there's not much left for food, but she's on the same money as me, but as I don't know her circumstances it's hard to give much advice and then some people don't want any. All dds seem to be a lot more savvy with money than I ever was, they work hard, have their own houses and neither follow the trends, I'm not sure where they came from!!!  but I'm proud they haven't taken after me on the money side!

linz

London_1 said:

QueenJess, I know people often think of the times gone past with fondness, but the fondness I recall is not the idea of comfort and warmth, as there was very little of that in the post war years when coal ,especially in the bad winter of 1947 was really hard to get hold of I certainly wouldn't want to be cold today as my aged bones would just seize up

But the courtesy and politeness of those days would be nice, along with the inate kindness of people who often were in the same boat as oneself yet they shared stuff,even if it was a quick shout over the garden fence about what was in the local shop at the moment .
I think there was probaly a lot less of the 'keeping up with the Jones' in those days as the absolute lack and availabilty of so many things made folk a lot more inventive than today.

Today many teenagers would think the world had ended if they had little or no wi-fi or phone coverage and seeing how the shops (even with empty shelves at the moment ) are full of goods to buy that my late Mum would have never thought possible.

When as during rationing you bought things like sugar and tea or cheese by the ounce, and eggs by a stipulated amount by the week you really couldn't run out of things as it was a week before you could buy anything else. My Mum didn't hold with black marketeers at all having relatives in the merchant navy who risked their lives to bring food to this country. So she stuck to what she was allowed to buy.

 I wonder what she would have to say to see the shops today full of so much stuff and to hear that so much of it would end up in landfill sites.I'm pretty sure she would be horrified.

I have no rose tinted specs about life back then as it was often cold ,houses damp, little decent sanitation and a bath was a thing that happened once a week after boiling lots of kettle and saucepans to get enough hot water. Then the bath was once more hung on the back of the cellar door until the following week. I was always first in the tin bath as I was the youngest followed by my two brothers who were a lot more mucky than I was   Ice on the inside of windows was the norm and extra coats over your feet was also normal for a lot of people. But a cuddle from Mum went a long way to make you feel warmer.

Children did chores as a matter of course and it wasn't considered unusual in our house mY brothers both chopped firewood and dug the garden and shoveling  horse dung onto the garden helped to produce the food we ate. We kept chickens for their eggs and then happily ate the chickens when past laying . We had an uncle who owned a market garden in herne bay and every year we would make trips on the train from London down to the seaside and come home with lots of fruit and any spare veg. things were never binned when it came to eating as it was important to streetch the rations as much as possible. 

Sadly I think that there will be many people struggling this winter to heat and eat through no fault of their owns so squireeling away a few extra things may help. but so many folk are struggling now to feed themseelves , perhaps instead of cookery programmes full of chefs telling us about food the majority of people can't afford to cook and eat may at some point have a replacement for food they can learn to cook. Many people have never had the opportunity I had , to watch my late Mum turn something bland and boring into something tasty. I alway find it funny to see bagged up veg 'ready made and peeld to cook. How hard is it to peel a carrot or slice and dice onions I know there are folk who have problems with perhaps arthritis (I know I do at times )but there are an awful lot who just haven't got a clue when it comes to basic cooking
My late husband was 18 and a young RAF recruit in 1951 before he tasted any veg from a tin. So many things are available now to learn from Even looking on YouTube you can learn how to make your food streetch a bit better. 

Maybe this coming year will be an epiphany for many people and they will learn how to make their budgets work better for them. Hopefully less food waste at least would be a great start

JackieO xx

JackieO you always speak with such wisdom, I love reading your posts. I remember when I was little (mid-40's now so were talking early 80's) my mum would always make my brother and I do jobs around the house on a Saturday morning before we got our pocket money. I remember polishing all the brass stuff we had around the fire place and weeding the flower beds in the garden I'm from a working class background so we were never that well off but I don't ever remember feeling 'poor'. I just wonder how close to the breadline we actually were as my mum only worked part-time in the evenings and my dad got laid off a few times so i'm sure there must have been some scares. 

Anyway I will be forever thankful that we were taught that you have to work for money as i've grown up into a careful/frugal person. I get far more pleasure from a day out walking with a picnic than traipsing round the shops spending money on stuff I don't need. Love the 'small' things in life. Never been interested in material things like the latest mobile phone. I understand some people can't afford to buy a smartphone outright and that's why they are on a contract but I only recently upgraded from a 2nd hand Samsung Galaxy s6 to an s8 and that was because one of my mobile banking apps stopped supporting the s6 so i was forced to get a newer one (2nd hand from *m*z*n).

It certainly is a worry for the rest of the year if people are struggling now. Perhaps there needs to be more educational type programs on tv like Eat Well for Less, Shop Well for Less etc. I don't know what the solution is though really. Worrying times

GaleSF63

London_1 said:

Hot water bottles were prized and I remember my Dad bringing home some spare stoppers for my Mum in case the rubber rings perished on the stoppers. 


JackieO xx

I have a stone hot water bottle which I use occasionally, and the seal has long-since perished and I haven't found a replacement. I use a rubber band wrapped round and round and so far, so good. So if anyone has one languishing in a cupboard because the washer/seal has gone, it's possible to bring it back to life.

OrkneyStar

I am going to put it out there and point out that it's not only 'young' people who are going to have to adapt the the current cost of living crisis - I know people of all ages who appear to live fairly luxurious and entitled lives, going 2-3 holidays abroad a year, owning several properties, driving big cars with private number plates (which they renew fairly often), buying expensive food, getting their hair done lots more than is necessary, and so on. Many of these people are the 'boomer' generation, and many of them laugh at younger folk who are trying to take action against climate change and so on. I love this site, but I hate the generalised bashing of younger folk. It's not fair. There are naive people and greedy people in all generations.

tooldle

All this talk of hot water bottles made me think of electric bed warmers. I had one, acquired from a jumble sale in the mid 70’s. It was pink in colour and basically a metal shell with a light bulb inside. Probably about the same diameter as a dinner plate. 

OrkneyStar

tooldle said:

All this talk of hot water bottles made me think of electric bed warmers. I had one, acquired from a jumble sale in the mid 70’s. It was pink in colour and basically a metal shell with a light bulb inside. Probably about the same diameter as a dinner plate. 

Never heard of such a thing - did it work well? We never really had electric blankets as kids, rarely hot water bottles either, it was just another blanket on the bed. I don't remember feeling that cold. We did have double glazing, but didn't use the heating that much (it was air vent things that blew out hot air), I did have warm pyjamas and I remember drinking hot Ribena to warm me up. My teeth suffered from the Ribena, but otherwise good memories. We were happy.  

in_my_wellies

tooldle said:

All this talk of hot water bottles made me think of electric bed warmers. I had one, acquired from a jumble sale in the mid 70’s. It was pink in colour and basically a metal shell with a light bulb inside. Probably about the same diameter as a dinner plate. 

My grandmother, born 1900, used a brass bedwarmer filled with embers from the fire every cold night right up until she died in 1996. I was always intrigued by it. It was like two large 14" frying pans facing each other on a meter long handle. A clip at the end held them together. I don't remember it being messy to fill or making the bed dirty.

Just like this: https://laurelleaffarm.com/brass-bed-warmer.htm 
  
When my brother and I stayed over his bed would be warmed first, then it was topped up for mine then into her bed. I used the handle to push it around the whole bed like an iron

GaleSF63

When my mother was growing up the beds were warmed by bricks heated on the fire and then wrapped. 

tooldle

OrkneyStar said:

tooldle said:

All this talk of hot water bottles made me think of electric bed warmers. I had one, acquired from a jumble sale in the mid 70’s. It was pink in colour and basically a metal shell with a light bulb inside. Probably about the same diameter as a dinner plate. 

Never heard of such a thing - did it work well? We never really had electric blankets as kids, rarely hot water bottles either, it was just another blanket on the bed. I don't remember feeling that cold. We did have double glazing, but didn't use the heating that much (it was air vent things that blew out hot air), I did have warm pyjamas and I remember drinking hot Ribena to warm me up. My teeth suffered from the Ribena, but otherwise good memories. We were happy.  

Yes, it did work well. The advantage being these didn’t burst, as had happened with several of our hot water bottles at the time.  We had single glazed sash windows and no heating other than a coal fire and as others have mentioned, the good old Aladdin paraffin heater (in our case used in the bathroom but only at bath time). I’ve robbed the image from eBay. The listing says this particular item was from the 60’s