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

Blackcats

My mum loved bread and dripping (I don't like it at all).  There was always an enamel bowl of it in the fridge.  She also loved a sugar sandwich which was her treat as a child in the 1930's.  

Frugalfaffing

-taff said:

linz said:

Washing is drying in front of the log burner and i'm drinking a cuppa in a travel mug so it stays hot for longer. Another one who boils the kettle once and puts the rest in a thermos, especially on a weekend. I also reuse teabags for a 2nd cup too.

If the log burner is on, no  need to boil a kettle, a saucepan on top will do it

We have a stove top teapot (don't have height for a kettle) and we use than & a saucepan & can do both of them twice a night (stove lit at 5pm) this is usually for hot water bottles or sometime to heat water for cooking. 

euronorris

Blackcats said:

My mum loved bread and dripping (I don't like it at all).  There was always an enamel bowl of it in the fridge.  She also loved a sugar sandwich which was her treat as a child in the 1930's.  

My mum used to give me sugar sandwiches as a kid. That was in the 80s. She grew up with dripping sandwiches as well, but gave them up some time ago due to high blood pressure and needing to cut back on the salt.

London_1

Back in 1969 I was at home in London  with two small children under 3, I would walk to the butchers about a mile away as he would be knocking down the price of joints after 4.00p. I could buy a leg of Lamb for 17/6d (88p) and we had roast on Sunday, cold with mash and pickles on Monday, some of it minced up for sheperds pie on Tuesday, and the last either curried on Wednesday or Rissoles and chips and peas.
Thursday was normally sausage and mash, Friday H M fish and chips, and Saturday sometimes corned beef hash or occasionally kippers and brown bread and butter as my late husband loved kippers.

Breakfasts were usually cornflakes or porridge but if I could afford it we would have scrambled eggs and bacon with mushrooms. My housekeeping for the four of us was £8.10.00 a week and I would buy fruit in season and bake my own cakes and biscuits .My husband had a packed lunch every day and the children and I would have a sandwish and maybe HM soup for lunch. We ate reasonably well, and I obviously had to watch the pennies but there were no charity shops around ,but local churches had jumble sales which was handy for all sorts of stuff.

 I knitted most of the childrens stuff that I couldand we were living in two rooms ,no bathroom ,but shared a loo with two other families. We had no phone,but then we didn't know anyone to call
Holidays were a day out to the coast , or a bus ride out to the country side and a picnic . We rented a TV as buying one was out of the question .

Until my second daughter was born I didn't even own a washing machine. After I had her, we had saved up enough for a Hoover washing machine.Before that I had a Baby Burco boiler for nappies etc and a spin dryer that was third hand and sounded like Concorde taking off anything else was handwashed in the sink but I did have a glass scrubbing board which I used to scrub my husbands collers and cuffs of his shirts on.

Anything larger like sheets etc I took to the local launderette. We lived on the first floor but there was a tiny balcony outside the window, and my husband ran a long 150 foot washing line and pulley down to the bottom of the garden and tied it to a large tree and I used to get all my washing dried on my washing line as being high it got a good blow.

Life was tough at times ,but we saved for everything we needed and never bought anything on credit .The first thing we ever had creditwise was the mortgage on our first house which was in 1971.It was a delapitated Victorian three bedroomed semi which cost us £6750.00 which seemed a huge debt to us..We lived there for three years before selling and buying a more modern one.In the three years we never had a stair carpet ,only an underlay, and the dining room had lino on the floor as we just couldn't afford to carpet it . It did have a bathroom but the loo was downstairs in the wooden built-on conservatory at the back of the house.It was 1974 before I finally had my own bathroom and toilet and by then I had been married 12 years I had hard times and times when cash was short ,but we all survived them ,even when the mortgage rate hit 15-16%.

Today I have central heating ,double glazing and relatively few money worries ,but I still budget carefully as I have done since leaving home at 17. I still bake my own cakes and biscuits and make my own home made soups and cook from scratch as I have done for well over 60 plus years.

Todays problems will be tough at times but we will surmount them hopefully , and if it means people are a bit more economical and less likely to bin perfectly good food, then it won't be a bad thing .just prioritiseing what you need, as against what you think you want will help.

Belt tightening is on the way again chums 

JackieO xx

Flugelhorn

@London_1 - they were different times weren't they? but the skills that everyone had in money management make anyone who was around that time much more careful about spending - they know what it can be like

When I was a child in the midlands my parents lived in a house bought for £2000 in 1953, had a garden, with lawn and flowers - I realise now why this was a big deal - they weren't growing veg or keeping the pig any longer

The lady opposite was b 1904, she and her husband, cared for their lovely rented house - they still grew endless veg in the garden - the loo was half way down the garden and they went to a friend's for a bath once a week - they had no fridge even when everyone else was getting one , just a meat safe and they got sterilised milk (don't get me on that, the taste was awful) . 

poppy811

Yes,  Jackie, very similar experiences of life in the 60,s and early 70,s
 when I was still at school I had a Saturday job and the shop opposite had a lovely skirt and jacket for sale and told me I could pay for it weekly.  My mother was horrified and marched me back to the shop to return it.  No credit in our house!  I was mortified but it was a good lesson.

Rosa_Damascena

Flugelhorn said:

@London_1 - they were different times weren't they? but the skills that everyone had in money management make anyone who was around that time much more careful about spending - they know what it can be like

When I was a child in the midlands my parents lived in a house bought for £2000 in 1953, had a garden, with lawn and flowers - I realise now why this was a big deal - they weren't growing veg or keeping the pig any longer

The lady opposite was b 1904, she and her husband, cared for their lovely rented house - they still grew endless veg in the garden - the loo was half way down the garden and they went to a friend's for a bath once a week - they had no fridge even when everyone else was getting one , just a meat safe and they got sterilised milk (don't get me on that, the taste was awful) . 

This post and JackieO's gives us some context. Life used to be incredibly hard and we cannot go back to hardship such as this

Its getting tough because it's costing a huge amount more to maintain the everyday privileges that we and society as a whole has become accustomed to for the last 50 years (my living memory).

Spendless

Decided to have a sort out of my food cupboards. Have found some extra dried stuff that needed decanting into larger containers and also 1/4 of a large jar of instant coffee. Really pleased to have found this. For the past few days we've been out and just using the sachets Mr S fetches back when he stays away. Was on my shopping list too, now that can come off. If I'd done this a week ago I could also sent DS back to his student digs with more items and reduced the grocery bill I bought for him. I've been working a 42.5 hr week since November which is why so much has gone undone at home.  

MovingForwards

The good old days of sterilised milk, still makes me smile occasionally seeing the bottles in shops.

Growing up it wasn't food banks as we know them now, a local church would have butter and other staple items, people would be queuing with their income support books to get a few things.

When I left the family home and rented my first property, finally moving out of shared digs, I hit a jumble sale. Got my kitchen kitted out for a couple of quid, crockery, cutlery, pots and pans. My prized purchase was a pressure cooker for 50p and it served me well for many years.

ladyholly

We were very lucky in some ways both as a child and when I was first married. As a child my Dad wa in the RAF so our housing was married quarters. Plain but adequate. No central heating (except when we lved in Germant=y and had a huge boiler in the cellar which ate coal - good job it was cheap to buy), double glazing. Carpet were sqares with lino round them, no phone etc Mum salted veg grown in the garden if we were there long enough, made jams and pickles. Certainly nothing was wasted.

When I was first married in 1973 we rented a small very ancient cottage but always had a bathroom and husbands Grandmother bought us an automatc washing machine. We didnt buy a house until our daughter was born in 1977 with help from in laws (our pay was so low  the mortgage company literally laughed at us). They only helped after we described the ice on the inside of our daughters bedroom window. 

Our main problem over the years has been that DH grew up in a relatively wealthy home and spent all we earned. He is much better now but it has taken years of being in debt for him to learn and on the whole he is pretty good now.