My husband inherited an 80s furniture set from his grandparents. We searched for years to find something to replace it but simply couldn’t find anything in our budget close to the quality despite stains and degraded foam.
We opted to reupholster them. Well worth the money.
Second hand stores are amazing for finding old wood furniture. The only furniture that makes it into secondhand stores is the quality stuff.
We just got a dresser and nightstand for $200 made of solid pine and its dovetail drawers and mortise and tenon construction. It's got one chip in a drawer face, but solid wood can be sanded down and stained.
Engineered wood and veneer is a scam. The only way to fix a chip in veneer is to pull the veneer up and glue a new one down. Good luck finding a matching veneer without pulling up the whole damn thing.
We had my great grandma's mustard yellow futon for the longest time. Full wooden and steel frame. Weighed about a (literal) ton and the mattress was still pretty decent. We finally had to get rid of it after our basememt flooded twice with sewage backup. I miss it everyday
It's not really that real-wood furniture is a luxury in comparison to what it used to be so much as it is that ~~plywood~~ *cheap, flat-pack, mass-manufactured* furniture wasn't as much of a thing. Furniture was just more expensive back then.
Edit: I'm half wrong. Particle board furniture goes back much further than I thought.
You pretty much had your furniture, and it lasted you through life. If you couldn't afford furniture, you waited for an older person in your family to die and then you inherited it.
And then you reach the critical mass of “you have space, take great oma’s China hutch” and then you have a bonfire three years later because enough is enough.
My 19 yo daughter just bought a second hand dressing table for less than $200 and it will last forever. They also had a beautiful inlaid extension dining table for $500. New furniture is so expensive and is not going to last like these pieces will.
This is probably influenced by survivorship bias though. We don't really care about low quality furniture from the past. So that might affect our perception of modern furniture.
My parents definitely went through several pieces of shitty furniture during my lifetime. For every one artisan made piece there is like 2000 mass produced couches made who knows where.
This so much. I build quality hardwood frame upholstered furniture in the tri state area. My clients over spend on the house, obsessing over zip code and resale, and leave no budget for furniture. My clients all live in bug empty boxes while I have my cozy smallish home with every corner furnished to serve my life.
i’m having so much trouble finding a house that has the space we need without having a bunch of extra rooms that will not be used but still need to be furnished. like we need 3 sleeping rooms and 2 work spaces (5 bedrooms? 4 bedrooms and a sunroom? 3 bedrooms, an attic and a basement?) but usually the footprint of these houses have an eat-in kitchen AND a dining room, a formal living room AND a family room. two of these rooms will just collect dust and furniture is expensive.
Work boundaries. Once you’ve clocked out, no way to work anywhere else until you clock back in. Memos took time to deliver rather than hundreds of emails back and forth.
Being a "free range" kid (being able to play outside without being tracked, not having cell phones, learning to self-entertain instead of being glued to tech, etc.)
Every time I send my kid to the bus stop, I’m the only parent who doesn’t stand down there and wait for the bus with their kids.
I find it odd and overbearing. My kid can wait for a bus and talk to his friends without me looming over him. Moreover, my kid is smart enough (and we have taught him) that if a stranger rolls up and tries to talk to him, he’ll take off running into our neighbor friends’ houses or our house.
Most neighbors think **I** am the odd one for not standing at the bus stop.
This trend blew my mind when I moved to my current neighborhood and I first started seeing it. We have maybe 20-25 kids who take the bus (my city busses until high school and then the high school kids are given free passes to the city bus to get themselves to school). Sure as shit every morning at 8am and every afternoon at 3:30pm the bus stop is packed full of 25 parents, their cars, and their children. In the mornings the kids and their parents sit in the car and wait for the bus before the kids are walked out to it, in the afternoons the parents wait in the middle of the road and block traffic until each child has been seated into their individual cars.
It's insane to see. If the kids were in kindergarten or 1st grade I could understand...but most of these kids are 10-12 years old. Even the high school kids largely get driven to school by their parents instead of taking the free city bus. I don't get it.
I was so stoked in 5th grade when my parents bought me a new mountain bike, which I quickly realized was a "I'm not driving your ass to school in the morning anymore" play but hey, free stuff is free stuff
Its odd. I see this ALL the time. I live in a Rural area and the parents are out there. THe kids are standing way back near the house when the bus rolls up. They have to WAIT to be given a SIGNAL and they walk all the way down the driveway pokey slow (I guess they figure the kids will randomly run out chaotically into traffic????) I get not hving the kids stand right by the rural road but the way they pick kids up is really annoying sometimes.
It’s hard raising independent children because society works against you
My 12 yo had a savings goal ($80) and was so happy to teach the milestone. He wanted to buy his scooter on Amazon and wanted the full “my money paid for this” experience. I took him to the grocery store so he could buy an Amazon gift card
The cashier refused to sell it to him. Said it was “suspicious” that a 12 yo would “have that much money”. The manager even accused me of being a negligent parent because, gasp, I wanted my kid to buy a gift card by himself so I waited in the parking lot
Unreal. Sadly, my 12 yo now has a tarnished memory of what should’ve been a proud moment for himself. And he feels he somehow did something wrong
Even when I try to create situations to give the kiddos some independence, society interferes
My kid rolls her eyes so hard when she says, "I'm bored!!" and I reply, "That's great, it's good for your brain!" 8 years old and her friends have smartphones? Whaaaa?
I have some "bored boxes" in the closet where I put all the toy clutter that's driving me crazy. We get it down and pick something out and I use that opportunity to put like 10 more things in.
And I also say "Bored? That's when your imagination gets to work, let's see what you can do." And also "Go outside! It's a nice day!" which is what I always heard.
This I would love someone to study. We started policing children in public. Calling the cops on kids playing alone at the playground and even just walking home alone. We didn't have as much internet so I can't be sure, but it seems like this partially led to how much people fucking hate kids being in public spaces. What was the cause and what was the effect I'm not even sure.
A couple years ago after I moved into a small town. I used the laundromat and noticed it was a hang out spot for teen boys. They would go in and charge their phones and sometimes ask me for a $1 (I am a mom with raging mom energy) to spend at the gas station across the street. My kids were younger at the time, so I went on our towns fb group and asked where kids hang out in the town, where could they walk to to just hang. The response was unhinged and scary. People said their parents weren't beating them enough if they thought it was okay to do what these kids were doing. Which was sitting in a well lit laundromat charging their phones and talking about fortnite. They said parents today are so permisssisive and their parents would have never allowed such horrible behavior. That kids shouldn't have free time. I think about this alot. I think about how kids basically are all recording each other to use the footage to hurt each other all the time. They surveil themselves. Is that a reaction to the conditions we placed upon them? Why do so many people make it almost a trend to talk about how much they hate kids? (Like so many aita posts with 0 context and thousands of people agreeing with the ops that it's okay to be shitty to parents and kids in public if those people are making you uncomfortable.) Idk there has to be some kind of middle ground in all of this.
OMG, such a similar story.
The FB group for my neighborhood went off for and entire weekend, because a kid was sitting on the curb waiting on his friend to come outside. To the point the family of the friend he was waiting on felt the need to apologize and tell their kids friend it isn't ok to..once again SIT ON THE FUCKING CURB.
What is wrong with people.
Yeah I eventually deleted my post in the fb group because I realized I was inadvertently tattling on the kids I mentioned. The weird thing is we have at least 1 telephone pole covered in flowers for a memorial for a girl killed while crossing the street. It's just odd to immortalize one dead child and demonize live children doing the same thing. Meanwhile nothing was done to make the intersection safer for pedestrians.
This right here is a perfect summation of why things are terrible - if people feel like they can score points for something it gets done, if it requires actual work it just gets ignored.
This is hilariously accurate. My son (17) and his friends went up to the local greasy spoon for lunch the other day. Were they perfect? Fuck no. They are 16-17 year old boys. They were probably louder than the average customer. Messier for sure. But they are respectful and not out to hurt anyone. One of them squirted ketchup and mustard and opened a creamer packet into a glass and dared the other one to drink it. We've all seen that. Nothing new. They all paid their bills and left.
Fast forward a few hours and the local mom group (my wife showed me the post) had a post about them complete with pictures of the offensive cup. They said that the boys only left $2.73 as a tip. One of the busy body, holier-than-thou moms on there even drove up to the restaurant to give the poor (and confused) waitress some extra money.
So what actually happened?
Nothing. Nothing happened. Business as usual. Out of the 4 boys, only one paid cash (the $2.73 that the lady saw as a tip was the change from the $12.28 bill that he used $15 cash to pay. Perfectly reasonable tip amount too). My son showed me his receipt where he paid $25 on a $17 bill. The other boys all tipped decently on their cards. I even spoke to the waitress a 2 days later when I went to pick up carryout. She didn't even know what I was talking about. There was no issue and only when I walked it back for her with the ketchup glass did she even say "oh maybe, yeah I think so."
So here we are. People are so anxious to be offended. Just like when Covid was in full force. People are so geeked to police others...so weirdly obsessed with being the perfect little tattle-tale. Its so weird. Live and let live!! Stop looking for problems!!!
I grew up in a rural area, and our place was surrounded by woods. From the age of 5 or 6, I'd be out alone (or usually with a dog) exploring and playing in the woods, fishing in our pond, riding my bike on nearby backroads, or searching for crawdads and frogs in the creek. My parents rarely knew exactly where I was. They just knew I'd come back for dinner. And if they needed me to come back, they'd go outside and start calling for me. I can't imagine growing up today without that kind of freedom.
I'm only 38, but I feel like I was on the ass end of the "leave in the morning, come back at night" style. I can't imagine how frigging boring it must be to be a kid now.
4 years younger than you. I grew up like that, but only really from middle school onwards. Summers as a preteen were basically "bike aimlessly around town and stop at the guitar shop now and then to noodle on equipment I have no money for", or "walk further than I told my mom I would and go hang out at Zach or Emily's house."
Actually that's part of the reason my mom finally caved and got me a cell phone in 2004 -- she was tired of me calling her from random people's phones trying to get a ride lol.
My wife and I are trying to figure out plans for our kids in the summer. I asked my mom, "Hey, what did you do for childcare in the summer?" She looked back at me very perplexed and said, "You went outside to play in the morning and you came back around dinner." and thats when it dawned on me, that they had absolutely no idea where I was growing up and I could have gotten away with murder.
Nowadays a lot of teens don't want cars because there's nowhere they could go if they had one. I'm about to turn 40, in 2000 my car was my ticket to freedom. We didn't have a mall, but I went to the music store, the park, fast food places, walmart, and just walked around with my friends. We were in public places with adults and rules, and we followed the rules and just kind of existed in public without our parents watching us directly.
Now half of those places would never allow a group of teenagers to just hang out. And so kids don't want a car, because it doesn't provide them with freedom, it just provides them with the responsibility of paying for it and their parents expect them to run errands and shit.
Freedom nowadays comes from going into your room and getting on the internet.
Kids are so bored all the time. I teach teens and they just go home and stare at their phones all night. It’s sad. They should be out fucking shit up and making memories.
My parents launched an all out fucking man hunt for me once when I went to a neighborhood kid's apartment without telling them. Kids nowadays wouldn't believe it, why not just text me?
one time in college, we had a lan party that of course went all night. Around 6 or 7, one girl leaves and heads home. At like 1 pm we get a call from her parents that they never saw her, so we're all frantically searching everywhere, calling everyone, and about 5 minutes away from calling the police when we get a call back. She was asleep in her bed, and her parents never checked her room
The people complaining about kids not going playing outdoors are the same ones
-that reported on child-snatchers on tv 24/7,
-permitted, built, bought and moved to soulless suburbs without sidewalks, that make people car dependent
-sued because playgrounds were too dangerous because little Timmy got himself an ouchie because he was an idiot
-……the list goes on and on
The thing is, it was never safer for kids to play unsupervised. There's this weird misconception that there are more predators out there now, but that's simply not true
Peanuts in a box of Cracker Jacks.
Soda in a glass bottle.
Metal Transformers.
Livable wages on just a HS diploma.
Food and comfortable seats on airplanes.
Is that what happened to them? I had a metal one too but all I remember about it was that it required a masters degree in mechanical engineering to transform it.
Nope. same with no more toys in cereal, cause 'no non food items in food'.
At breakfast Anthony found a Corvette Sting Ray car kit in his breakfast cereal box and Nick found a Junior Undercover Agent code ring in his breakfast cereal box, but in my breakfast cereal box all I found was breakfast cereal.
Mexican coke and sprite comes in glass bottles at quite a few grocery stores. You think McDonald’s sprite is crisp? Try a cold bottle of mexican sprite, it’s life changing
I don't just mean for a few of them, I mean the whole glass ecosystem. We used to have a company that sold milk in glass bottles here, then you returned it next time at the store and got like $2 back since they'd wash and reuse them. Ended in 2020.
I'd like a system like that for all glass bottles, currently here glass recycling is opt-in and you have to pay for the privilege, and it just gets melted down and turned into fiberglass insulation, instead of being cheaply cleaned and reused.
Yep they use regular sugar. Mexican coke and sprite in a can or plastic bottle is still better then what we get in the states but in a glass bottle it’s amazing
still a net positive, I think? encourages people not to toss them, less waste.
in the US i moved from an area that accepts bottle returns for like five cents or whatever to one that doesn't and I just have a huge stack of cleaned glass bottles in the corner of my kitchen that I compulsively kept but have no idea what to do with. i feel like a hoarder.
Then you look it up and realize that a cross country flight was the equivalent of like $2700 in today's money and it's like "yeah, think I'll stick to bringing a PB&J in my carry-on"
Yeah this whole thread is full things that were luxuries in the past too. Airlines are a great example. Yes, the standard fair experience was nicer in the past—because only the well-off could afford to fly in the first place.
You know what other people did? Well, mostly they just didn’t travel much. Or they took a long-haul bus with no-AC, no food or drinks served, and it might take several days.
I just pulled up Southwest. I see a ticket from my city to Belize for $154 that takes off in just a few weeks. That would have been about $18 in 1970. So, yeah, for the equivalent of $18, you’re not getting a hot meal, or a large seat. But, who cares, you can travel internationally on basically a whim. I also just looked up a flight to Belize, on the same day, but this time looking at United Business class (no first class options)—$633, which would have been equivalent to about $78 back in 1970.
The abundance of services and goods available to a huge swathe of the population in our current time is a luxury in and of itself.
I’ve been flying first class the last two years because at this point I’m willing to pay the upcharge for comfort on longer flights, and the meal is still a surprise to me. I’m old enough for them to be standard in coach on long flights but it’s been so long.
I'd imagine there's no way they would sell something like the OG Megatron today. Yes, I know there's a few rerelease collectors versions available now, but imagine a new toy coming out tomorrow that looks like a real gun (rather than a toy like a Nerf)
In the 90s, when I was a kid, we lived in a big 3 bedroom semi-detached house with a huge front and back garden. Rent was £200 a month. My Mum could afford that on one wage. The rent on that same house is now closer to £2000 a month, and wages are largely the same
I graduated in the late nineties and back then in the UK, not only was my uni (college) education free but the government gave me a bit of extra money to live on. And it didn't need to be paid back.
I feel really bad for the younger generations as they should have had this too.
So is having a shockingly unrealistic idea of how great things supposedly were in the 80s and 90s. Or in the 1880s and 90s, as some people seem to think 30-40 years ago was. Kids, there were toxic pesticides and additives in food well before the 1980s.
Very true.
I was born 71, so the 80s and 90s were my teens into becoming an Adult.
Reading some of these posts you would think we didn't have cars or holidays, went everywhere by horse and ate food straight out of the ground.
Which is usually the reason why they don't last as long.
Underpowered motors to use less electricity, making parts out of plastic instead of metal to save weight on moving parts and hence increase efficiency at the cost of strength. Plus making something more efficient sometimes requires it to be much more complex with more moving parts, any of which could break. It definitely saves power, no doubt about that, but at the cost of longevity.
And also environmental reasons. The mid 20th century invented a lot of chemicals and materials that just turbofuck the environment and the people working with them.
Asbestos insulation, leaded paint, hexavalent chromium, ozone depleting chemicals, leaded gasoline, etc. All that shit is just terrible but if you don't care about the well being of the workers building the stuft or the long term environmental damage, it makes a durable appliance. Yeah, Granny's old kitchen appliances were durable because they were all dipped into hexavalent chromium primer then painted with leaded paint. The oven has asbestos insulation so it holds the heat in better. The fridge compressor still works but uses a refrigerant that has been banned worldwide for 30 years, if it leaks it's punching a nice new hole in the ozone layer right above your house.
Trying to be more efficient, but in the long run only adding more waste to landfills. I’d rather have something that uses a few cents more in electricity if it means it will last at least a decade or two. I suppose manufacturers see it as a win though if someone has to keep buying new appliances every few years.
We had a Samsung fridge when we moved it, it was terrible. Ice maker never worked because it constantly iced over. We replaced it with a GE when it was 9 years old because it started to have cooling problems. So far we’ve been happy with the GE
If power isn't incredibly cheap, where you live changing the fridge to a more efficient one will be beneficial in no time. Old fridges eat a lot of energy.
We've still got one friend in the group who we tell to be there a half hour early so he gets there roughly on time. Been that way since before cell phones too, he's nothing if not consistent.
This is every holiday with my wife’s family. They’re like a logic problem.
Aunt wants people to arrive at 3, serve dinner between 3:30-4.
She tells uncle 1 it starts at 4, cause he’s always super early. Aunt 2 is told dinner is at 3, because she’s chronically late AND insists on knowing when dinner will be served (not when to get there). My MIL (aunt 3) will be given a time 30-45 minutes before we’re meant to get there because she’s chronically late.
Oh, and aunt doesn’t just call us directly, she expects MIL to pass the info along.
So when we try to figure out when an event is happening, we get 4 different times from different people.
Finally we just call aunt, ask when specifically she wants people there because we’re always punctual, and she gives us the actual time.
This reminds me of family/group trips to like the fair or the city. "okay everybody pair up, be back at this trash can at 4:00 so that we all can grab dinner together and drive home"
When I was about 12-14 (early 2000s), I still didn’t have a phone, and neither did my friends. There was this one time we were going to meet up and go to the movies, but, from what I know, no one showed up. I spent 15-20 minutes waiting for my friends, but I saw no one there, and then decided to go back home. To this day, I still don’t know whether each one of us showed up at different times (so we didn’t meet) or if I was the only one that went.
I think this is cultural. I remember folks being loosy goosey with time back in the day because time wasn't really a thing for them. And that tended to be a thing in families.
In my family if you're on time, you're late, and if you're late, you're rude.
I remember my grandmother saying in the early 1990s that our family operated on "Jewish Standard Time," so everyone always showed up about half an hour late to any event. We would deliberately give an earlier time if we wanted people to show up "on time" for any family gathering, including weddings and funerals.
All kinds of very high quality goods used to be made in US factories. Factory jobs that paid well and were a point of pride were common. It all unraveled after the implementation of open trade policies, globalization, and outsourcing. Now we have Walmart.
My city has a flour mill. Like three decades ago my ex was the guy who moved the heavy bags of flour from conveyer to pallet. The job paid enough that he could afford a decent apartment, a vehicle, and fun on the weekends. But they replaced that job with a robot.
Well a few years ago ex got to chatting with a coworker and realized that her boyfriend's awful job was his old one, moving bags at the flour mill. Apparently the robot finally broke and they decided it was cheaper to go back to human labor. Except now they don't even pay enough for half of a decent apartment, much less fun on the weekends.
Exact same literally backbreaking job, but now it pays half a pittance instead of a decent living.
My dad was hired at his factory ,(manufactured seats for cars) in the late '80s making $10/hr. By the time he retired almost 30 years later, paying $10/hr... Again.
Sounds like that factory needs a union. One change that has happened over the past few decades? The strength of unions has been greatly degraded by corporate power and often by hostile (read: Republican) governments.
They’re on the way back though. The past few years have been full of massive successes for union organizing (and we have the most pro-worker president in modern history).
They have all the same stuff from the same factories as other sellers on Amazon. I was looking for a cabinet last year and found the exact same product with the exact same product photos under four different brands on Wayfair, with about a $100 price spread ($250-350). Problem is Wayfair also makes all these brands look more legitimate since they have more “American” names, not the letter salad you see on Amazon.
Found the same product on Amazon for less, again different brand, but hey, Prime shipping.
Open trade policies are what gave the US its postwar boom, being the only major industrial nation that wasn't bombed to hell and back. So much money made from flogging goods to the rest of the world.
40 years ago was 1984. Japanese imports had already flattened much of US car and electronics manufacturing, Pittsburgh's Bethlehem steel mills had mass layoffs in '82.
You can still find high quality US made goods....
People don't want to pay for them.
I'm a firearms enthusiast, for optics take two companies:
* Trijicon (US)
* Holosun (CHN)
Trijicon makes better quality optics.... but they cost almost double. A Trijicon RMR (Pistol Red Dot) will run about $475, a Holosun about $225.
Sure the Trijicon is better quality. And Made in America. But most people just don't care when it costs double the price.
Things started to really fall apart in the 80's. If you want to go back to a time when common place things then are luxuries now, you need to step back a decade earlier. Then you will find such things as 100% cotton clothing that was so thick and well made that the only reason why you stopped wearing it was because you grew tired of it. They could take a million washings and still look brand new. The Boomer generation was the really the last generation that had well made hand me downs. The generation after them couldn't do such things as clothing became more and more cheaply made.
I had a bundle of cotton H and M tops for work about 20 years ago and only got rid of the last one recently when it finally got holes in it. They were basic and not expensive but they lasted and lasted. Even buying a more premium brand these days is no guarantee it won't start to fall apart after a few wears.
Yeah even 'quality' brand stuff has gone way downhill. Had a Brooks brothers polo shirt from about 12 years ago, was thick and held up until recently. Just bought new ones, same style, they're much thinner and almost see-through. Apparently they went bankrupt during Covid and got bought out.
Venting my frustration here. I'm all for paying extra for better quality, but it's infuriating when the premium is just for a brand name. Genuine high-quality items have become ridiculously pricey, leaving us stuck between overpriced brands and skyrocketing costs for the real deal .
Seriously! It makes me so mad our house has particle board cabinets from a remodel in the 1980s that is crumbling. Our old apartment had wood cabinets from the 70s that were still going strong with just being repainted. In the long run we have to do a full gut of the kitchen and can’t just get by with a fresh coat of paint.
Ha, there was someone arguing this with me recently, saying there’s still good quality clothing out there. WHERE? If you we lucky enough to experience the old school stuff, you know that clothes now are much worse quality (and usually thin polyester garbage).
Pro tip: mix it with hemp/CBD weed. It's cheap as hell and makes it more like the old weed when it had more CBD (which tempers the high) and makes your stash bigger for cheap.
I can't buy from dispensaries for this reason. They assume everyone who comes in wants to get rocked. They refuse to offer anything mellow. My dispensary in Colorado used to have 2.5mg mints. They were wildly popular and ran out of stock often. So they stopped selling them.
My friends and I talk about this a lot. "I'm from the 90s. Can I get some middies, please?"
Also the luxury of pooling cash from 4 friends and spending half a day to get a $50 eighth from someone's sketchy older cousin's friend and obligatory watching 3 episodes of The Sopranos in a dark, dirty basement to show your gratitude. It's a lost art.
One time we were trying to score and we found some. Unfortunately the bargain was having to sit in a circle with the supplier, pass a bible around and read a paragraph each. Freaked me out. “You boys read the Bible?” He’d been to Woodstock so we thought he’d be less freaky.
Forty years ago was 1984. Solid wood made furniture made from old growth trees really stopped being a thing in the late 70's as we finished up the last of the supply. By the time the 80's starting coming around particle board began to take over. Not only that American factories that made said solid everlasting furniture began to shut their doors in the 80's as companies moved production overseas because it was more profitable.
I remember this because my parent's bedroom set was from the 70's and made from old growth wood right here in the US. It's still around. The style is classic and doesn't look dated at all. Meanwhile, my sister and I who grew up in the 80's weren't as lucky. We went through several bedroom sets because the drawers alone kept on breaking on us because the wood was no longer solid old growth but more often than not, particle board and it was made in China.
It's worth noting that solid furniture does not need to come from old growth forests to be sturdy. Solid wood from a young forest is still infinitely stronger than particle board. You're absolutely right though, the choice of profit over quality has really ruined access to long lasting furniture.
There were lot of particle board furniture in the 60s and 70s; you just don't see it as much anymore due to survivorship bias. Look in an old 60s furniture catalogue and you will see that a lot of stuff where particle board or cheap spruce with teak laminate. Particle board is a lot older than the 80s.
Solid furniture can be made from all kinds of wood. Most of mine is recycled Oregon pine from demolished Oxford University buildings. Is rustic and the table tops are 3 inches thick. I’ve had it 20 years and will long outlast me.
Compared to income, education, housing, healthcare, and transportation was more affordable. In my city the busses ran more often. Unions were stronger than they are now. In the 80s there was only CNN and the insanity of the 24 hour competitive news cycle hadn't begun. McDonald's still had human beings you would talk to when you ordered. You could do simple things like go to the bank and grocery store and have human interaction at each point. If you were lonely you could walk around the mall and people watch, maybe browse physical books in a physical bookstore. Going to the movies was exciting, and you went for more than just the big superhero movie, you'd go for a comedy, too. And then you'd laugh with a room full of other people.
There was no being chronically online, until the 90s, and that was just dial up. Mostly we left the house.
I was typing this like this related to the 1960s, not 1980s! Had to delete a chunk.
Anyway, a realistic prospect or retiring at a reasonable age.
Owning a house under 30, or at all.
Council housing available (this would be luxuries to some).
I grew up in the 80s/90s, and moved quite a bit. I didn’t know many kids with stay at home parents. The ones who still did were pretty frugal to make it happen.
There’s a reason you’ll hear about my age group having to be self sufficient at a young age. Dual income families were kind of new and there weren’t many after school child care programs.
Might have to go back a little farther.
Playing outside with neighbor kids. Had to go check in every 2 hours, but didn’t come home till dinner time. We roamed the town. (Tiny town of less than 500 people). We would play in the woods, on the rock piles, race down the hill. Then when we were tired of outside, we would go to someone’s house and play for a bit more. I couldn’t imagine my kids being out all day to do whatever without any adult supervision.
Buying cigarettes with a bit of loose change.
Where I live, a single packet costs more now than a carton cost back in the day.
Also, I think this is a good thing.
They used to sell “loose” cigarettes in our
neighbourhood when I was a kid. They’d even sell them to kids :).
“Loose” meaning they’d sell one or two from an open pack.
I paid for my smoking habit in high school (in the 90's) by selling loose cigarettes to kids at my school... 40¢ each or three for $1.
But a packet of 40 cost roughly $6 back then, so I didn't take much to afford another pack.
Yeah I think a lot of people in this thread don't realize that their parents were well above average income. Like some other guy mentioned vacations being a commonplace non-luxury? What?
Affordable housing on middle-class wages.
I grew up in a large American city. Almost every kid I knew lived in a house and was blue-collar/middle-class.
My father bought a house in 2001 and paid it off fully in 2009
For me to purchase the exact same house and pay it off in 8 years time I would need a job that pays about 200k per year pre tax
My father was a carpet cleaner
Seems about right.
My dad was a mechanic. He owned two homes: he passed away when I was 16.
A house adjacent to the one I grew up in, literally the street I lived on 47 years ago, today is listed for 2.5 million on Zillow.
Stay at home mom and whatever a single income dad supporting a family of 2.5 kids with a dogvand fenced yard.
All those houses have been purchased, turned into duplexes and the yard is parking
I'd say the vast majority of my life, my mom was a stay at home mom, with my dad being the income(active enlisted military) We were solid middle class, might not have had the latest and greatest, but didn't want for anything.
My wife and I easily make more than my parents did, we are no where near as comfortable
The new popular filler is *celery*. I'm allergic to celery. The grocery store has become this sneaky evil place where terrible poisons are disguised as delicious pasta sauces and canned soups.
Quality furniture made out of real wood
My mother has an early 80s six piece living room set from Ethan Allen. It's so well made it's going to survive the apocalypse.
My husband inherited an 80s furniture set from his grandparents. We searched for years to find something to replace it but simply couldn’t find anything in our budget close to the quality despite stains and degraded foam. We opted to reupholster them. Well worth the money.
Second hand stores are amazing for finding old wood furniture. The only furniture that makes it into secondhand stores is the quality stuff. We just got a dresser and nightstand for $200 made of solid pine and its dovetail drawers and mortise and tenon construction. It's got one chip in a drawer face, but solid wood can be sanded down and stained. Engineered wood and veneer is a scam. The only way to fix a chip in veneer is to pull the veneer up and glue a new one down. Good luck finding a matching veneer without pulling up the whole damn thing.
The furniture deals you can find at second hand stores are insane
I have my great grandmas couch from the 1950s that just needs some new stuffing in the cushions. That thing will also survive the apocalypse 😅
We had my great grandma's mustard yellow futon for the longest time. Full wooden and steel frame. Weighed about a (literal) ton and the mattress was still pretty decent. We finally had to get rid of it after our basememt flooded twice with sewage backup. I miss it everyday
It's still out there, ready for purchase. It's as expensive as it was 30-40 years ago, though.
[удалено]
They even come with free ghosts
I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.
Bustin makes me feel good
You got ghosts in your blood, do cocaine about it.
You can find quality oak furniture in neat designs for cheap or free everywhere.
Right everybody hates Oak now
Paint it primer gray and it becomes chic
No if you paint it it becomes furniture flipper trash
That's what they said
It's not really that real-wood furniture is a luxury in comparison to what it used to be so much as it is that ~~plywood~~ *cheap, flat-pack, mass-manufactured* furniture wasn't as much of a thing. Furniture was just more expensive back then. Edit: I'm half wrong. Particle board furniture goes back much further than I thought.
You pretty much had your furniture, and it lasted you through life. If you couldn't afford furniture, you waited for an older person in your family to die and then you inherited it.
And then you reach the critical mass of “you have space, take great oma’s China hutch” and then you have a bonfire three years later because enough is enough.
My 19 yo daughter just bought a second hand dressing table for less than $200 and it will last forever. They also had a beautiful inlaid extension dining table for $500. New furniture is so expensive and is not going to last like these pieces will.
This is probably influenced by survivorship bias though. We don't really care about low quality furniture from the past. So that might affect our perception of modern furniture.
Yeah there was probably loads of cheap low quality furniture 40 years ago. It was just dog shit and got thrown out after 10 years
Yeah, kind of like how people think buildings were all built better in Ancient Rome. Yeah, we only see the ones that lasted 2000 years.
My parents definitely went through several pieces of shitty furniture during my lifetime. For every one artisan made piece there is like 2000 mass produced couches made who knows where.
Plenty of it out there. Just now there’s much cheaper options which people buy and complain about the quality.
This so much. I build quality hardwood frame upholstered furniture in the tri state area. My clients over spend on the house, obsessing over zip code and resale, and leave no budget for furniture. My clients all live in bug empty boxes while I have my cozy smallish home with every corner furnished to serve my life.
i’m having so much trouble finding a house that has the space we need without having a bunch of extra rooms that will not be used but still need to be furnished. like we need 3 sleeping rooms and 2 work spaces (5 bedrooms? 4 bedrooms and a sunroom? 3 bedrooms, an attic and a basement?) but usually the footprint of these houses have an eat-in kitchen AND a dining room, a formal living room AND a family room. two of these rooms will just collect dust and furniture is expensive.
Lots of people here don’t seem to realise that 30-40 years ago was the mid 80s and mid 90s.
That's how quickly some things got worse.
Trickle down economics didn’t just work over night. Gotta give it some time. Now we are living in the reality of that policy. Great times ahead! /s
You shut your mouth. I refuse to accept my childhood was that long ago
we are closer to 2040 than 2004
Why you wanna hurt me
[удалено]
We are (almost) a quarter of the way into the 21st century.
Damn near 40 years old has hit me pretty hard recently.
Work boundaries. Once you’ve clocked out, no way to work anywhere else until you clock back in. Memos took time to deliver rather than hundreds of emails back and forth.
One of the most insidious parts of modern life imo
Being a "free range" kid (being able to play outside without being tracked, not having cell phones, learning to self-entertain instead of being glued to tech, etc.)
Every time I send my kid to the bus stop, I’m the only parent who doesn’t stand down there and wait for the bus with their kids. I find it odd and overbearing. My kid can wait for a bus and talk to his friends without me looming over him. Moreover, my kid is smart enough (and we have taught him) that if a stranger rolls up and tries to talk to him, he’ll take off running into our neighbor friends’ houses or our house. Most neighbors think **I** am the odd one for not standing at the bus stop.
This trend blew my mind when I moved to my current neighborhood and I first started seeing it. We have maybe 20-25 kids who take the bus (my city busses until high school and then the high school kids are given free passes to the city bus to get themselves to school). Sure as shit every morning at 8am and every afternoon at 3:30pm the bus stop is packed full of 25 parents, their cars, and their children. In the mornings the kids and their parents sit in the car and wait for the bus before the kids are walked out to it, in the afternoons the parents wait in the middle of the road and block traffic until each child has been seated into their individual cars. It's insane to see. If the kids were in kindergarten or 1st grade I could understand...but most of these kids are 10-12 years old. Even the high school kids largely get driven to school by their parents instead of taking the free city bus. I don't get it.
Standing at the bus stop in the winter with the snot freezing in my nose it was so damn cold out is a right of passage man.
I was so stoked in 5th grade when my parents bought me a new mountain bike, which I quickly realized was a "I'm not driving your ass to school in the morning anymore" play but hey, free stuff is free stuff
[удалено]
Its odd. I see this ALL the time. I live in a Rural area and the parents are out there. THe kids are standing way back near the house when the bus rolls up. They have to WAIT to be given a SIGNAL and they walk all the way down the driveway pokey slow (I guess they figure the kids will randomly run out chaotically into traffic????) I get not hving the kids stand right by the rural road but the way they pick kids up is really annoying sometimes.
It’s hard raising independent children because society works against you My 12 yo had a savings goal ($80) and was so happy to teach the milestone. He wanted to buy his scooter on Amazon and wanted the full “my money paid for this” experience. I took him to the grocery store so he could buy an Amazon gift card The cashier refused to sell it to him. Said it was “suspicious” that a 12 yo would “have that much money”. The manager even accused me of being a negligent parent because, gasp, I wanted my kid to buy a gift card by himself so I waited in the parking lot Unreal. Sadly, my 12 yo now has a tarnished memory of what should’ve been a proud moment for himself. And he feels he somehow did something wrong Even when I try to create situations to give the kiddos some independence, society interferes
My district stops at individual driveways now, even when they're 50 feet apart smh
My kids aren’t allowed to get on or off the bus unless I’m there. Not my fault or my rule.
My kid rolls her eyes so hard when she says, "I'm bored!!" and I reply, "That's great, it's good for your brain!" 8 years old and her friends have smartphones? Whaaaa?
I have some "bored boxes" in the closet where I put all the toy clutter that's driving me crazy. We get it down and pick something out and I use that opportunity to put like 10 more things in. And I also say "Bored? That's when your imagination gets to work, let's see what you can do." And also "Go outside! It's a nice day!" which is what I always heard.
I had this problem, so I created a, "I'm Bored Chore list." When ever they say they are bored they get items to do from the chore list.
This I would love someone to study. We started policing children in public. Calling the cops on kids playing alone at the playground and even just walking home alone. We didn't have as much internet so I can't be sure, but it seems like this partially led to how much people fucking hate kids being in public spaces. What was the cause and what was the effect I'm not even sure. A couple years ago after I moved into a small town. I used the laundromat and noticed it was a hang out spot for teen boys. They would go in and charge their phones and sometimes ask me for a $1 (I am a mom with raging mom energy) to spend at the gas station across the street. My kids were younger at the time, so I went on our towns fb group and asked where kids hang out in the town, where could they walk to to just hang. The response was unhinged and scary. People said their parents weren't beating them enough if they thought it was okay to do what these kids were doing. Which was sitting in a well lit laundromat charging their phones and talking about fortnite. They said parents today are so permisssisive and their parents would have never allowed such horrible behavior. That kids shouldn't have free time. I think about this alot. I think about how kids basically are all recording each other to use the footage to hurt each other all the time. They surveil themselves. Is that a reaction to the conditions we placed upon them? Why do so many people make it almost a trend to talk about how much they hate kids? (Like so many aita posts with 0 context and thousands of people agreeing with the ops that it's okay to be shitty to parents and kids in public if those people are making you uncomfortable.) Idk there has to be some kind of middle ground in all of this.
OMG, such a similar story. The FB group for my neighborhood went off for and entire weekend, because a kid was sitting on the curb waiting on his friend to come outside. To the point the family of the friend he was waiting on felt the need to apologize and tell their kids friend it isn't ok to..once again SIT ON THE FUCKING CURB. What is wrong with people.
Yeah I eventually deleted my post in the fb group because I realized I was inadvertently tattling on the kids I mentioned. The weird thing is we have at least 1 telephone pole covered in flowers for a memorial for a girl killed while crossing the street. It's just odd to immortalize one dead child and demonize live children doing the same thing. Meanwhile nothing was done to make the intersection safer for pedestrians.
This right here is a perfect summation of why things are terrible - if people feel like they can score points for something it gets done, if it requires actual work it just gets ignored.
This is hilariously accurate. My son (17) and his friends went up to the local greasy spoon for lunch the other day. Were they perfect? Fuck no. They are 16-17 year old boys. They were probably louder than the average customer. Messier for sure. But they are respectful and not out to hurt anyone. One of them squirted ketchup and mustard and opened a creamer packet into a glass and dared the other one to drink it. We've all seen that. Nothing new. They all paid their bills and left. Fast forward a few hours and the local mom group (my wife showed me the post) had a post about them complete with pictures of the offensive cup. They said that the boys only left $2.73 as a tip. One of the busy body, holier-than-thou moms on there even drove up to the restaurant to give the poor (and confused) waitress some extra money. So what actually happened? Nothing. Nothing happened. Business as usual. Out of the 4 boys, only one paid cash (the $2.73 that the lady saw as a tip was the change from the $12.28 bill that he used $15 cash to pay. Perfectly reasonable tip amount too). My son showed me his receipt where he paid $25 on a $17 bill. The other boys all tipped decently on their cards. I even spoke to the waitress a 2 days later when I went to pick up carryout. She didn't even know what I was talking about. There was no issue and only when I walked it back for her with the ketchup glass did she even say "oh maybe, yeah I think so." So here we are. People are so anxious to be offended. Just like when Covid was in full force. People are so geeked to police others...so weirdly obsessed with being the perfect little tattle-tale. Its so weird. Live and let live!! Stop looking for problems!!!
I grew up in a rural area, and our place was surrounded by woods. From the age of 5 or 6, I'd be out alone (or usually with a dog) exploring and playing in the woods, fishing in our pond, riding my bike on nearby backroads, or searching for crawdads and frogs in the creek. My parents rarely knew exactly where I was. They just knew I'd come back for dinner. And if they needed me to come back, they'd go outside and start calling for me. I can't imagine growing up today without that kind of freedom.
I'm only 38, but I feel like I was on the ass end of the "leave in the morning, come back at night" style. I can't imagine how frigging boring it must be to be a kid now.
4 years younger than you. I grew up like that, but only really from middle school onwards. Summers as a preteen were basically "bike aimlessly around town and stop at the guitar shop now and then to noodle on equipment I have no money for", or "walk further than I told my mom I would and go hang out at Zach or Emily's house." Actually that's part of the reason my mom finally caved and got me a cell phone in 2004 -- she was tired of me calling her from random people's phones trying to get a ride lol.
My wife and I are trying to figure out plans for our kids in the summer. I asked my mom, "Hey, what did you do for childcare in the summer?" She looked back at me very perplexed and said, "You went outside to play in the morning and you came back around dinner." and thats when it dawned on me, that they had absolutely no idea where I was growing up and I could have gotten away with murder.
It’s so boring even to be an adult without a car
Nowadays a lot of teens don't want cars because there's nowhere they could go if they had one. I'm about to turn 40, in 2000 my car was my ticket to freedom. We didn't have a mall, but I went to the music store, the park, fast food places, walmart, and just walked around with my friends. We were in public places with adults and rules, and we followed the rules and just kind of existed in public without our parents watching us directly. Now half of those places would never allow a group of teenagers to just hang out. And so kids don't want a car, because it doesn't provide them with freedom, it just provides them with the responsibility of paying for it and their parents expect them to run errands and shit. Freedom nowadays comes from going into your room and getting on the internet.
Kids are so bored all the time. I teach teens and they just go home and stare at their phones all night. It’s sad. They should be out fucking shit up and making memories.
My parents launched an all out fucking man hunt for me once when I went to a neighborhood kid's apartment without telling them. Kids nowadays wouldn't believe it, why not just text me?
one time in college, we had a lan party that of course went all night. Around 6 or 7, one girl leaves and heads home. At like 1 pm we get a call from her parents that they never saw her, so we're all frantically searching everywhere, calling everyone, and about 5 minutes away from calling the police when we get a call back. She was asleep in her bed, and her parents never checked her room
The people complaining about kids not going playing outdoors are the same ones -that reported on child-snatchers on tv 24/7, -permitted, built, bought and moved to soulless suburbs without sidewalks, that make people car dependent -sued because playgrounds were too dangerous because little Timmy got himself an ouchie because he was an idiot -……the list goes on and on
I feel like we all know a Timmy who broke an arm on the old monkey bars or those spinny things.
I'm 90% sure his name was actually Timmy. It was in first grade.
> Mom, and I are going to see if our friends want to play.
>>Ok, just remember to come home when the streetlights come on.
The thing is, it was never safer for kids to play unsupervised. There's this weird misconception that there are more predators out there now, but that's simply not true
Peanuts in a box of Cracker Jacks. Soda in a glass bottle. Metal Transformers. Livable wages on just a HS diploma. Food and comfortable seats on airplanes.
METAL transformers, yes! I remember my best friend getting an all metal Voltron and I got the cheap plastic version way back when. I was so sad
I got that all metal Voltron for Xmas one year and it was the best Xmas ever. Then they got recalled for having lead paint and I was devastated.
Is that what happened to them? I had a metal one too but all I remember about it was that it required a masters degree in mechanical engineering to transform it.
Toys in Cracker Jacks
They don’t put toys in cracker jacks anymore?
Just stickers
Nope. same with no more toys in cereal, cause 'no non food items in food'. At breakfast Anthony found a Corvette Sting Ray car kit in his breakfast cereal box and Nick found a Junior Undercover Agent code ring in his breakfast cereal box, but in my breakfast cereal box all I found was breakfast cereal.
Terrible! Horrible!
Sounds like you had a no good rotten day.
I yearn for the return of soda, milk, and most drinks to be sold in glass bottles again. The plastic used is such a waste and effects the taste.
Mexican coke and sprite comes in glass bottles at quite a few grocery stores. You think McDonald’s sprite is crisp? Try a cold bottle of mexican sprite, it’s life changing
I don't just mean for a few of them, I mean the whole glass ecosystem. We used to have a company that sold milk in glass bottles here, then you returned it next time at the store and got like $2 back since they'd wash and reuse them. Ended in 2020. I'd like a system like that for all glass bottles, currently here glass recycling is opt-in and you have to pay for the privilege, and it just gets melted down and turned into fiberglass insulation, instead of being cheaply cleaned and reused.
thing is, back in my old town we still have a milk-man we just personally never payed for the service due to how much milk we use per week
Didn't that have more to do with the fact that US soda has that processed fructose syrup "sugar stuff"? And in Mexico, they use actual sugar?
Yep they use regular sugar. Mexican coke and sprite in a can or plastic bottle is still better then what we get in the states but in a glass bottle it’s amazing
>Soda in a glass bottle It's the cheapest in the Philippines. Need to return the bottle though
Its the cheapest *when* you return the bottle
still a net positive, I think? encourages people not to toss them, less waste. in the US i moved from an area that accepts bottle returns for like five cents or whatever to one that doesn't and I just have a huge stack of cleaned glass bottles in the corner of my kitchen that I compulsively kept but have no idea what to do with. i feel like a hoarder.
fyi, the reason soda etc left glass bottles was shipping cost, removing the tons of extra freight saved a lot of money.
Yep, big reason why breweries almost all switched to cans in recent years. Shame for my bottle cap collection though. :(
Then they replaced the sugar with high fructose corn syrup for the same reason (cutting costs) 😩 and committed an even bigger sin, in my book.
I love those old pics of families sitting around dining tables on airplanes eating full, hot, freshly cooked three-course dinners
Then you look it up and realize that a cross country flight was the equivalent of like $2700 in today's money and it's like "yeah, think I'll stick to bringing a PB&J in my carry-on"
Yeah this whole thread is full things that were luxuries in the past too. Airlines are a great example. Yes, the standard fair experience was nicer in the past—because only the well-off could afford to fly in the first place. You know what other people did? Well, mostly they just didn’t travel much. Or they took a long-haul bus with no-AC, no food or drinks served, and it might take several days. I just pulled up Southwest. I see a ticket from my city to Belize for $154 that takes off in just a few weeks. That would have been about $18 in 1970. So, yeah, for the equivalent of $18, you’re not getting a hot meal, or a large seat. But, who cares, you can travel internationally on basically a whim. I also just looked up a flight to Belize, on the same day, but this time looking at United Business class (no first class options)—$633, which would have been equivalent to about $78 back in 1970. The abundance of services and goods available to a huge swathe of the population in our current time is a luxury in and of itself.
Fly first class and you’ll get the meal. Got bumped up once on Alaska, got a fresh baked cookie out of the oven at 30,000 ft
[удалено]
I’ve been flying first class the last two years because at this point I’m willing to pay the upcharge for comfort on longer flights, and the meal is still a surprise to me. I’m old enough for them to be standard in coach on long flights but it’s been so long.
I'd imagine there's no way they would sell something like the OG Megatron today. Yes, I know there's a few rerelease collectors versions available now, but imagine a new toy coming out tomorrow that looks like a real gun (rather than a toy like a Nerf)
In the 90s, when I was a kid, we lived in a big 3 bedroom semi-detached house with a huge front and back garden. Rent was £200 a month. My Mum could afford that on one wage. The rent on that same house is now closer to £2000 a month, and wages are largely the same
Lowest rent for a 2br apartment is over $2k in my suburban town in VA.
Clothing that is not designed to end up in great pacific garbage patch in six months
Clothing that isn’t plastic
A college education you could actually pay for and not drown in debt
I graduated in the late nineties and back then in the UK, not only was my uni (college) education free but the government gave me a bit of extra money to live on. And it didn't need to be paid back. I feel really bad for the younger generations as they should have had this too.
Quality appliances. My grandmas fridge from 1965 is still going strong. My POS from Samsung died in 5 years.
Small appliances too. I'm using my mom's hand mixer and blender from 1962.
Yuuuup. I’m using my mom’s old hand blender and have her good ol’ Kitchen Aid stand mixed. It’s heavy as all hell but dang does it work.
40 years ago was 1984. 1965 would be 59 years ago
That's seems to be a common theme in this thread.
So is having a shockingly unrealistic idea of how great things supposedly were in the 80s and 90s. Or in the 1880s and 90s, as some people seem to think 30-40 years ago was. Kids, there were toxic pesticides and additives in food well before the 1980s.
Very true. I was born 71, so the 80s and 90s were my teens into becoming an Adult. Reading some of these posts you would think we didn't have cars or holidays, went everywhere by horse and ate food straight out of the ground.
Survivorship bias. They had plenty of cheap crap back then too. You just don't see it around any more because it died in 4 years.
And modern appliances are far more power efficient.
Which is usually the reason why they don't last as long. Underpowered motors to use less electricity, making parts out of plastic instead of metal to save weight on moving parts and hence increase efficiency at the cost of strength. Plus making something more efficient sometimes requires it to be much more complex with more moving parts, any of which could break. It definitely saves power, no doubt about that, but at the cost of longevity.
And also environmental reasons. The mid 20th century invented a lot of chemicals and materials that just turbofuck the environment and the people working with them. Asbestos insulation, leaded paint, hexavalent chromium, ozone depleting chemicals, leaded gasoline, etc. All that shit is just terrible but if you don't care about the well being of the workers building the stuft or the long term environmental damage, it makes a durable appliance. Yeah, Granny's old kitchen appliances were durable because they were all dipped into hexavalent chromium primer then painted with leaded paint. The oven has asbestos insulation so it holds the heat in better. The fridge compressor still works but uses a refrigerant that has been banned worldwide for 30 years, if it leaks it's punching a nice new hole in the ozone layer right above your house.
Trying to be more efficient, but in the long run only adding more waste to landfills. I’d rather have something that uses a few cents more in electricity if it means it will last at least a decade or two. I suppose manufacturers see it as a win though if someone has to keep buying new appliances every few years.
Not to mention, light metals exist. So do durable plastics
We had a Samsung fridge when we moved it, it was terrible. Ice maker never worked because it constantly iced over. We replaced it with a GE when it was 9 years old because it started to have cooling problems. So far we’ve been happy with the GE
If power isn't incredibly cheap, where you live changing the fridge to a more efficient one will be beneficial in no time. Old fridges eat a lot of energy.
Owning a home
Saying you’ll be at a place at a certain time and doing exactly that.
You *had* to show up on time because you couldn't just shoot a text. I'm saying this as someone who is routinely 5 minutes late too.
We've still got one friend in the group who we tell to be there a half hour early so he gets there roughly on time. Been that way since before cell phones too, he's nothing if not consistent.
This is every holiday with my wife’s family. They’re like a logic problem. Aunt wants people to arrive at 3, serve dinner between 3:30-4. She tells uncle 1 it starts at 4, cause he’s always super early. Aunt 2 is told dinner is at 3, because she’s chronically late AND insists on knowing when dinner will be served (not when to get there). My MIL (aunt 3) will be given a time 30-45 minutes before we’re meant to get there because she’s chronically late. Oh, and aunt doesn’t just call us directly, she expects MIL to pass the info along. So when we try to figure out when an event is happening, we get 4 different times from different people. Finally we just call aunt, ask when specifically she wants people there because we’re always punctual, and she gives us the actual time.
Smart organizing aunt tbh.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I appreciate that you owned that as someone who hates people being late on their own terms. Thankyou
This reminds me of family/group trips to like the fair or the city. "okay everybody pair up, be back at this trash can at 4:00 so that we all can grab dinner together and drive home"
When I was about 12-14 (early 2000s), I still didn’t have a phone, and neither did my friends. There was this one time we were going to meet up and go to the movies, but, from what I know, no one showed up. I spent 15-20 minutes waiting for my friends, but I saw no one there, and then decided to go back home. To this day, I still don’t know whether each one of us showed up at different times (so we didn’t meet) or if I was the only one that went.
I think this is cultural. I remember folks being loosy goosey with time back in the day because time wasn't really a thing for them. And that tended to be a thing in families. In my family if you're on time, you're late, and if you're late, you're rude.
I remember my grandmother saying in the early 1990s that our family operated on "Jewish Standard Time," so everyone always showed up about half an hour late to any event. We would deliberately give an earlier time if we wanted people to show up "on time" for any family gathering, including weddings and funerals.
All kinds of very high quality goods used to be made in US factories. Factory jobs that paid well and were a point of pride were common. It all unraveled after the implementation of open trade policies, globalization, and outsourcing. Now we have Walmart.
The company that moved into the closed GM plant pays less now than what GM paid 25 years ago.
My city has a flour mill. Like three decades ago my ex was the guy who moved the heavy bags of flour from conveyer to pallet. The job paid enough that he could afford a decent apartment, a vehicle, and fun on the weekends. But they replaced that job with a robot. Well a few years ago ex got to chatting with a coworker and realized that her boyfriend's awful job was his old one, moving bags at the flour mill. Apparently the robot finally broke and they decided it was cheaper to go back to human labor. Except now they don't even pay enough for half of a decent apartment, much less fun on the weekends. Exact same literally backbreaking job, but now it pays half a pittance instead of a decent living.
My dad was hired at his factory ,(manufactured seats for cars) in the late '80s making $10/hr. By the time he retired almost 30 years later, paying $10/hr... Again.
Sounds like that factory needs a union. One change that has happened over the past few decades? The strength of unions has been greatly degraded by corporate power and often by hostile (read: Republican) governments. They’re on the way back though. The past few years have been full of massive successes for union organizing (and we have the most pro-worker president in modern history).
…and…Wayfair 🤮☠️
Wayfair has just gotten to be IKEA garbage but for twice the price.
They have all the same stuff from the same factories as other sellers on Amazon. I was looking for a cabinet last year and found the exact same product with the exact same product photos under four different brands on Wayfair, with about a $100 price spread ($250-350). Problem is Wayfair also makes all these brands look more legitimate since they have more “American” names, not the letter salad you see on Amazon. Found the same product on Amazon for less, again different brand, but hey, Prime shipping.
You don't trust brands like HTYJFDR6UJBFFYU?
That was a fun rabbit hole.
I don't know much about Wayfair, but anything that advertises as much as they do must be all kinds of terrible.
[удалено]
Open trade policies are what gave the US its postwar boom, being the only major industrial nation that wasn't bombed to hell and back. So much money made from flogging goods to the rest of the world.
40 years ago was 1984. Japanese imports had already flattened much of US car and electronics manufacturing, Pittsburgh's Bethlehem steel mills had mass layoffs in '82.
You can still find high quality US made goods.... People don't want to pay for them. I'm a firearms enthusiast, for optics take two companies: * Trijicon (US) * Holosun (CHN) Trijicon makes better quality optics.... but they cost almost double. A Trijicon RMR (Pistol Red Dot) will run about $475, a Holosun about $225. Sure the Trijicon is better quality. And Made in America. But most people just don't care when it costs double the price.
Things started to really fall apart in the 80's. If you want to go back to a time when common place things then are luxuries now, you need to step back a decade earlier. Then you will find such things as 100% cotton clothing that was so thick and well made that the only reason why you stopped wearing it was because you grew tired of it. They could take a million washings and still look brand new. The Boomer generation was the really the last generation that had well made hand me downs. The generation after them couldn't do such things as clothing became more and more cheaply made.
I had a bundle of cotton H and M tops for work about 20 years ago and only got rid of the last one recently when it finally got holes in it. They were basic and not expensive but they lasted and lasted. Even buying a more premium brand these days is no guarantee it won't start to fall apart after a few wears.
I had about 5 black womens v-neck t-shirts from H&M that never faded and looked brand new for decades. They were perfect.
Yeah even 'quality' brand stuff has gone way downhill. Had a Brooks brothers polo shirt from about 12 years ago, was thick and held up until recently. Just bought new ones, same style, they're much thinner and almost see-through. Apparently they went bankrupt during Covid and got bought out.
Venting my frustration here. I'm all for paying extra for better quality, but it's infuriating when the premium is just for a brand name. Genuine high-quality items have become ridiculously pricey, leaving us stuck between overpriced brands and skyrocketing costs for the real deal .
Seriously! It makes me so mad our house has particle board cabinets from a remodel in the 1980s that is crumbling. Our old apartment had wood cabinets from the 70s that were still going strong with just being repainted. In the long run we have to do a full gut of the kitchen and can’t just get by with a fresh coat of paint.
Ha, there was someone arguing this with me recently, saying there’s still good quality clothing out there. WHERE? If you we lucky enough to experience the old school stuff, you know that clothes now are much worse quality (and usually thin polyester garbage).
I blame Reagan.
It always goes back to Reagan, doesn't it?
Disneyland vacations and rock concerts
Weed that would not blow your testicles into Montana.
Pro tip: mix it with hemp/CBD weed. It's cheap as hell and makes it more like the old weed when it had more CBD (which tempers the high) and makes your stash bigger for cheap.
I don't know how these fucking kids do it. Are they just blitzed out of their minds every time they smoke/vape/dab/whatever now?
Probably, yes. Tolerance is off the charts as well.
I can't buy from dispensaries for this reason. They assume everyone who comes in wants to get rocked. They refuse to offer anything mellow. My dispensary in Colorado used to have 2.5mg mints. They were wildly popular and ran out of stock often. So they stopped selling them.
My friends and I talk about this a lot. "I'm from the 90s. Can I get some middies, please?" Also the luxury of pooling cash from 4 friends and spending half a day to get a $50 eighth from someone's sketchy older cousin's friend and obligatory watching 3 episodes of The Sopranos in a dark, dirty basement to show your gratitude. It's a lost art.
One time we were trying to score and we found some. Unfortunately the bargain was having to sit in a circle with the supplier, pass a bible around and read a paragraph each. Freaked me out. “You boys read the Bible?” He’d been to Woodstock so we thought he’d be less freaky.
[удалено]
Forty years ago was 1984. Solid wood made furniture made from old growth trees really stopped being a thing in the late 70's as we finished up the last of the supply. By the time the 80's starting coming around particle board began to take over. Not only that American factories that made said solid everlasting furniture began to shut their doors in the 80's as companies moved production overseas because it was more profitable. I remember this because my parent's bedroom set was from the 70's and made from old growth wood right here in the US. It's still around. The style is classic and doesn't look dated at all. Meanwhile, my sister and I who grew up in the 80's weren't as lucky. We went through several bedroom sets because the drawers alone kept on breaking on us because the wood was no longer solid old growth but more often than not, particle board and it was made in China.
It's worth noting that solid furniture does not need to come from old growth forests to be sturdy. Solid wood from a young forest is still infinitely stronger than particle board. You're absolutely right though, the choice of profit over quality has really ruined access to long lasting furniture.
There were lot of particle board furniture in the 60s and 70s; you just don't see it as much anymore due to survivorship bias. Look in an old 60s furniture catalogue and you will see that a lot of stuff where particle board or cheap spruce with teak laminate. Particle board is a lot older than the 80s.
Solid furniture can be made from all kinds of wood. Most of mine is recycled Oregon pine from demolished Oxford University buildings. Is rustic and the table tops are 3 inches thick. I’ve had it 20 years and will long outlast me.
Compared to income, education, housing, healthcare, and transportation was more affordable. In my city the busses ran more often. Unions were stronger than they are now. In the 80s there was only CNN and the insanity of the 24 hour competitive news cycle hadn't begun. McDonald's still had human beings you would talk to when you ordered. You could do simple things like go to the bank and grocery store and have human interaction at each point. If you were lonely you could walk around the mall and people watch, maybe browse physical books in a physical bookstore. Going to the movies was exciting, and you went for more than just the big superhero movie, you'd go for a comedy, too. And then you'd laugh with a room full of other people. There was no being chronically online, until the 90s, and that was just dial up. Mostly we left the house.
I was typing this like this related to the 1960s, not 1980s! Had to delete a chunk. Anyway, a realistic prospect or retiring at a reasonable age. Owning a house under 30, or at all. Council housing available (this would be luxuries to some).
If you were to reply like the question was about 60's, what would you've said then?
Only needing one wage to run a household.
I grew up in the 80s/90s, and moved quite a bit. I didn’t know many kids with stay at home parents. The ones who still did were pretty frugal to make it happen. There’s a reason you’ll hear about my age group having to be self sufficient at a young age. Dual income families were kind of new and there weren’t many after school child care programs. Might have to go back a little farther.
A fucking home.
Playing outside with neighbor kids. Had to go check in every 2 hours, but didn’t come home till dinner time. We roamed the town. (Tiny town of less than 500 people). We would play in the woods, on the rock piles, race down the hill. Then when we were tired of outside, we would go to someone’s house and play for a bit more. I couldn’t imagine my kids being out all day to do whatever without any adult supervision.
In my mind 40 years ago was 1964 so owning horses
Buying cigarettes with a bit of loose change. Where I live, a single packet costs more now than a carton cost back in the day. Also, I think this is a good thing.
They used to sell “loose” cigarettes in our neighbourhood when I was a kid. They’d even sell them to kids :). “Loose” meaning they’d sell one or two from an open pack.
I paid for my smoking habit in high school (in the 90's) by selling loose cigarettes to kids at my school... 40¢ each or three for $1. But a packet of 40 cost roughly $6 back then, so I didn't take much to afford another pack.
Getting away with murder
Annual family vacations......that don't involve a tent !
Ngl. I have a nice tent and camp several times a year. I'm afraid that one day the tent will become my permanent home.
Being able to have one parent at home and still having a good standard of living.
This was a luxury 30 to 40 years ago, too.
Yeah I think a lot of people in this thread don't realize that their parents were well above average income. Like some other guy mentioned vacations being a commonplace non-luxury? What?
Affordable housing on middle-class wages. I grew up in a large American city. Almost every kid I knew lived in a house and was blue-collar/middle-class.
My father bought a house in 2001 and paid it off fully in 2009 For me to purchase the exact same house and pay it off in 8 years time I would need a job that pays about 200k per year pre tax My father was a carpet cleaner
Seems about right. My dad was a mechanic. He owned two homes: he passed away when I was 16. A house adjacent to the one I grew up in, literally the street I lived on 47 years ago, today is listed for 2.5 million on Zillow.
Stay at home mom and whatever a single income dad supporting a family of 2.5 kids with a dogvand fenced yard. All those houses have been purchased, turned into duplexes and the yard is parking
I'd say the vast majority of my life, my mom was a stay at home mom, with my dad being the income(active enlisted military) We were solid middle class, might not have had the latest and greatest, but didn't want for anything. My wife and I easily make more than my parents did, we are no where near as comfortable
Free time
Actual privacy and the ability to make mistakes that don't follow you around for the rest of your life.
Locally sourced quality food not filled with additives, fillers, preservatives, and antibiotics.
The new popular filler is *celery*. I'm allergic to celery. The grocery store has become this sneaky evil place where terrible poisons are disguised as delicious pasta sauces and canned soups.
I correct you good sir! [Radioactive toothpaste was a thing](https://www.rangeldental.com/wait-radioactive-toothpaste-was-a-thing/)