I really admire my ancestors for living without...

[LFS]

An elderly relative admitted to hospital in the 80s had to ask how to switch the light on and how to use the radio - she and her brothers lived in a farm with spring water (not mains) and no electricity.  I never had a particular problem with their earth loos, but I guess they wouldn't go down well today.  We didn't have a fridge ourselves until the 70s - though keeping milk fresh was a bit of an art, involving a bucket of water and a wet tea towel, if I remember.  Come to think of it some of my earliest memories involve helping Mum do the washing by turning the handle of the mangle - and wasn't she pleased to get her first washing machine!
Linda

[Headbanger Veron]

Come to think of it some of my earliest memories involve helping Mum do the washing by turning the handle of the mangle - and wasn't she pleased to get her first washing machine!
Linda

Snap, Linda! My mum as I remember, didn't get her first spin dryer until after my sister, her third child, was born - this in the days of terry nappies, and she also had our grandmother and great grandmother living in the house - Mum always said that if she had to choose between them, she'd have a spin dryer over a washing machine any day as you could always do the washing in the bath!
What a red letter day!

And.. when I bought my first house (in 1978) it had been owned by an old man who had lived there with no alterations since 1923 - there was no hot water or bathroom, an outside toilet in the yard, and there was electric light but some of it only worked when it rained    That's less than 30 years ago and it wasn't unusual by any means.

Veron

[bearkat]

pensions and state benefits - when you look throught the census and see very elderly Ag labs who had to keep working till the bitter end..............

[GRACELAND]

a nice warm shower first thing in the Morn to wake you up ,how could i live with out my shower !!

   No really you ain't seen me in the Morn !! 

[Zelley]

the fast pace world of today is involved in a never ending
changing of rules & regulations and fresh new buzz words
that keep us hopping up and down, changing pace, being politically correct in all the right places, and putting logic
& common sense on the trash heap of yesterday's world

[PrueM]

Ladies sanitary items 
Steph.

I'm with you there Steph.  I reckon I could do without almost everything else, but not those.   

Prue

[Shaztoni]

PA!, the good old days, they weren't that long ago for some of us.
Back in the early eighties when I was a kid in the Irish countryside we had an outside toilet until I was five. Most baths were taken in the tin tub in front of the fire, as it was easier.
We did have a bath but no hot water, my poor mother would push the twin tub into the hall fill it up with water and put the hose into the bath so the hot water would empty in there. Then the baths went eldest to youngest, myself and my sister sharing of course, moving our feet out of the way when mam would bring the kettle in to "top up" the water. When we were all done all the clothes that were all over the floor would be chucked in the water to soak.
We had a spring to provide water to the house and during August this always dried up so we would walk about quarter mile to the well with bottles and buckets to "fetch a pail of water"

Sharon

[Gadget]

We had a spring to provide water to the house and during August this always dried up so we would walk about quarter mile to the well with bottles and buckets to "fetch a pail of water"

Sharon

Hi Sharon

We still had one until two years ago. A really hot dry summer and by August a dry dry bed For two months we had to carry water  - from our nearest neighbour, a mile away- where we had showers and did washing. Eventually, when we had decided to dig very deeply into our savings and arranged for an artesian to be bored, the rain came and came and came and came............................. Don't think the old spring has dried up since

It does mean that I don't have to worry about how many showers/baths and loads of washing  are done per day now though. That artesian just keeps coming..........crossed fingers

Gadget

[Shaztoni]

Great fun wasn't it Gadget 

Sharon