I have not seen the article but when we grew up in the 50's / 60's we had coal fires and no central heating, no washing machine and in my early years a larder in the pantry instead of a fridge. When my grandmother came to live with us, Mum had her first washing machine and we had a big fridge.
The village we lived in had 4 grocer shops, 2 butchers, a chemist shop and a bakery as well as a shoe shop, a newsagent and a separate post office, and a sweet shop and every week we had a visit by a baker in a van, a fishmonger and a horse and cart came laden with fruit and vegetables. We were never short of food but we bought as we needed it rather than loading up from supermarkets ,which did not exist. Treats were for Christmas and birthdays only.We could buy small quantities as we needed them and we ate simply but well. We did not have many clothes apart from our school uniforms and Sunday best. I made a lot of my clothes as a teenager and was proud to wear them even though they were not bought.
When I became a student, my first year was spent in comfortable digs but in the second year three of us ventured into a flat. The kitchen was filfthy and we spent three days cleaning the grease from the cooker and floor, the bath was heated by a geezer fed with old pennies. Each time it fired up the lid blew in the air and it was quite a terrifying experience - a bath cost 4 pennies. There was a metal framed sofa bed which had a habit of folding up unexpectedly and all the furniture was old and battered but it was home for a year. We brightened it up by decorating large boxes with magazine cuttings and turning them into bookcases or waste bins and covered up the walls with big posters.
The next flat we had was half a house with a cellar that filled up with rainwater in the winter and we could hear the mice. Again the furniture was sparse and old and I recall my first bed had a horsehair mattress which I replaced as soon as I could with a cheap mattress which three of us carried through the streets as we could not afford delivery costs. I painted the dull and scuffed boards a nice pale blue and kept warm over a little convector heater with my duffle coat over the bed to keep warm. there was no central heating, no washing machine and a shared fridge. We never thought of ourselves as poor but had very little money to spare, walked everywhere to save money ( no need to diet then!! ) and supplemented our income with little part time jobs that were advertised from time to time in the student union. I found one which gave me sixteen shillings a week - enough to have a few treats. By the end of term there was little money left and it is amazing how good a fried onion and pea sandwich can taste!!
Married life in a rented flat started for us - with our bed, my wardrobe from home, a second hand three piece suite with one collapsed chair, an old television cabinet to hold our food , two fold up garden chairs and a little table with a hole in the centre that had been used in the garden with a parasol. After a few months we could afford a rented television and bought a spin drier and a fridge on twelve months instalments and a pre-used cooker. We had very little cash to spare, did not smoke and went out infrequently but we did not expect to have everything at once.
I do not dispute the fact that there is poverty now and it is very hard for people to manage on low wages with high living costs and things have changed very much since I was young but we did struggle at times and did without things rather than go into debt.
The freecycle sites and freegle sites are great now if you do need things and it is amazing what you can do with old furniture and a can of paint.
Today, it is very hard for young people to start off in homes of their own and some landlords can exploit people with high rents and there should be more social housing so that people can live in their homes at reasonable rates. Life in the old days was probably better and we did learn how to live within our means because we were not able to have everything we wanted and had to learn to wait for things as children.
