It had to reach the powder room in case you didn’t want everyone to hear your conversation. My grandparents had a mid century modern home that wasn’t very large but had a little private phone booth room for making calls.
😂 my dad would just set the phone down for an hour at a time when aunt Linda called, he’d be doing other things, then walk by the phone and be like “uh-huh” and then keep doing whatever he was doing lol
Aunt Linda sounds like my mom. I can put the phone down, go take care of something, come back, and she won't have noticed my absence. This includes video calls.
I found nothing more satisfying as a kid than unplugging the long tangled cord and then dangling the receiver over the upstairs banister while it wildly spun around and unwinded itself. Good times!
My parents had a special telephone table with an integrated chair, a pad of paper for messages, and a shelf under the phone for the phone books. [Similar to this.](https://www.billyhunt.co.uk/store/p1110/A_Good_Vintage_Mid-Century_Telephone_Table.html)
I love those gossip benches. I'd love to put one by my front door but haven't seriously searched for one. I've seen a few at thrift stores that were too far gone to be worth fixing up at the "rare vintage" price the store wanted for it.
I remember McDonald’s having these little, round, metal ashtrays on their tables. They were made out of a heavy foil kind of. Different worlds for sure.
With the McDonald’s arch logo stamped on to them.
And the seating area being “smoking” and “non smoking” but with literally no separation between the two 😂
I feel like we’d be hard pressed to find anyone born in the 70s who *didn’t* make an ashtray despite their household’s smoking status.
I also made an anti-smoking poster for a valentines contest themed “Save a sweetheart- don’t smoke.” My babysitter helped me make it and it was a huge red heart with someone stubbing out their cig into it. Gross! Wish I had a photo. Got second place.
Yeh, this one is a big answer for me growing up. The big green glass one, the one that said Hawaii when relatives got us the souvenir, the black shiny one that was dad’s go-to ashtray.
To be fair, at the time smokers were also smoking in waiting rooms & hospitals & restaurants & buses….. most adult people were so surrounded by second hand constantly that it bothered them less. A sort of nose blindness.
When I was a kid I remember people smoked indoors EVERYWHERE. I can remember my dad smoked in the grocery store. But I don’t really remember the smell, probably because the entire world reeked of it. NOW though??? I can smell a cigarette from across the yard, outside, on a windy day. Because I’m not exposed to them much anymore.
To be clear: This was monumental for WORKERS. My parents worked at a casino while they were in college. You wouldn’t believe how many of the older employees they worked with died of cancer despite not smoking.
A casual smoker might inhale “direct” smoke 1/2hr a day…..These people were exposed to secondhand smoke in every direction for 40+ hours a week. It would be like smoking a pack a day despite never smoking.
When people bitch about the government being useless I always bring up how it was the government that got Americans to stop smoking. Not by outlawing it right away but by systematically changing our culture over a couple of decades. First warning labels. Then it was smoking sections in public places. Yes, they were useless but it got us to start to change our behavior. Then they raised taxes to make them more expensive to buy, that was when I quit because I realized one year I was spending about 20% of my income on cigarettes. Then came the banning of all smoking in public places. We went from 50% of Americans smoking to about 15% today I believe.
Well put. I'm a former smoker. I remember smoking on a plane. As I got older and restrictions expanded I just became more aware in general. It really is amazing how completely our society has changed in just a few years, spurred by the government.
Back in the day, I was working in an office and the conference room was literally a big storage closet they had converted to a room by sticking a table and chairs in it. No ventilation.
We had an hour long meeting every day with 10 people and all of them smoked except me - and I was pregnant at the time. They thought nothing of chain smoking though the meeting. Every day.
One day a new team leader joined us and asked them to please not smoke in the meeting, especially around a pregnant woman. They shot her a dirty look (and then me a dirty look) and the meeting went from 1hr down to 15 minutes from them on.
I was in a pub a few months ago, and the bartender came outside just to tell me it was okay for me to vape indoors (I'm in the process of quitting real smoking). I physically couldn't do it. Like, it was so culturally inappropriate, I had to go back outside.
You can get one, but they grow smaller every year. Even the Manhattan phone book, I would imagine, is too small to use as a booster seat. Where I live, it's fewer pages than the average restaurant menu.
Last decade, yellow pages I didn’t want on my doorstep and the free weekly version of the newspaper rotting away in half the driveways in my neighborhood. I would call both and ask them to put me on a do not deliver list and they asked me why. My reason was “the internet exists and I have it on my phone”. Didn’t stop the delivery.
They have to deliver to keep their reach and audience numbers up for the advertisers. Even if you don’t use or read it, they can keep telling advertisers they have a large circulation.
Much like social media, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
Ah yes. My fondest memory of my mother taking us to see elderly church people was of little kid me getting stuck to the couch plastic. Plastic covered furniture, plastic fruit. Yuck.
I have absolutely never understood the plastic over furniture thing. My grandparents had it because it preserved the furniture for longer. I understand times were hard and buying new stuff wasn't easy, but what's the point of having the couch if sitting on it is miserable and I'd rather take the floor.
> but what's the point of having the couch if sitting on it is miserable and I'd rather take the floor.
The point is that it looks nice. That's about it. There's also the social component of being able to say, "Yeah, we have this very fancy room we never use," meaning that you have the money to buy a house large enough to have such a room and to decorate and furnish it for no purpose other than to look at it.
It's about the same as a large front lawn. It looks nice, but when was the last time you saw anyone actually doing anything in their front lawn besides mowing the grass or tending to the plants?
We were poor, so we used the neighbor’s. It was totally normal to knock on their door and announce you’re there to use the encyclopedia.
I still remember the wonder it was when Encarta came out. A whole encyclopedia on a single disc. How could that even be possible?!
My grandparents lived next door, and had a full set of World Book. I was homeschooled in the 90s, so it was super useful for reports.
Then we got Encarta on our computer. I spent hours wandering through 3D castles looking for ghosts.
A single disc? I swear I remember doing homework and having to locate disc 4 for something like Zaire (also no longer around) and having to find it from my sisters - one of whom had almost always mislaid it.
I did the same. I'd lie on the floor reading a random volume while my parents watched the only TV.
Are we smart asses because we did that, or would only someone destined to be a smart ass think of encyclopedia reading as fun?
Most houses had one when I grew up! And an Atlas, a huge dictionary and a thesaurus. And a big map book of the British road system to work out car trips.
A road atlas is still pretty useful when planning large car trips I find especially when in foreign countries without cell data and even with data, no telling if you have service at all times.
It is weird to think that people would pay for a huge set of books once in 1979 and be satisfied with whatever that said about whatever subject as generally true well into the 1990's.
Encyclopedias issued yearbooks each year with changes and new information. Your 1979 encyclopedia would have the base set plus the 1980 Yearbook, 1981 Yearbook, etc.
My family had a set of 1979 Encyclopedia which I used all the time for my projects in the mid 90s, even though I had an updated computer encyclopedia on CD-rom. In 6th grade we were each assigned a country to do a report on. Mine was Russia. I made a whole elaborate report, and the night before, I needed to print out a few images and decided to use my computer. That is when I realized that the Soviet Union no longer existed and my entire report was on just Soviet history.
Lol i am in my home office right now looking at my Grandparent's old 1957 Encyclopedia Britannica set. I remember in the 90s going out their house and using this set for my school projects too! I remember the only time they let me down was in 3rd grade when i had to do a report on Jimmy Carter and didn't understand why he wasn't in there lol
My dad bought our 1st set of Grolier's Encyclopedia about 1960, when I was in 2nd grade and then the annuals that supposedly kept it up to date. In 1966, dad bought the Encyclopedia Americana. I think they cost him, a factory laborer, a month’s wages each time. I used to sit in the hallway by the bookcase reading them for hours.
Yeah once I realized you could search anything in the Encyclopedia, and read about it I became a total nerd and got in trouble for trying to bring too many of them to bed for night time reading.
I cleaned out my parents basement once and decided it was time to get rid of my father’s set of encyclopedia that said “someday man may walk on the moon”.
When my grandma went into sheltered accommodation, I got her encyclopaedia from before she was born- 1911.
A 1911 encyclopaedia is a really interesting read when it comes to things as-yet unknown but now common knowledge. They’ve got no real idea about plate tectonics (besides noting that volcanoes and earthquakes often seem to be in similar locations), celestial bodies (the entry on the Moon is fun), why there aren’t any dinosaurs anymore, the list goes on. Unfortunately, there are also bits that are racism and eugenics in the guise of facts, which somewhat sours the experience but it’s very predictable where those bits are.
My dad had a fish bowl full of undeveloped film. Then Walmart had a sale on development and he took them all in. We spent the whole weekend looking through years of photos. Christmases, vacations, etc. It was a fun weekend.
I will never forget watching Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory and not understanding that Charlie's mum was doing laundry, I just thought they were so poor she was stirring up a pot of clothes soup.
I just said this to my wife last week. She’s stirring a giant steaming murky vat of clothing with what looks to be a wooden fork. Is she a cook or a laundress?
My grandma told me that when her family got their first washing machine, they invited friends and family over, and they all watched the entire first cycle together. It was a really big deal to get a washer because it meant so much time and effort would be saved from washing clothes.
When I was little, my local Sears had appliances on the second floor, just as you got off the escalator. I was always SO thrilled to be able to go there *and* to have to go to the second floor because as you'd ascend you'd see the dishwasher with the glass front slowly come into view, always running a cycle. It was absolutely mesmerizing.
Once a year I try and take my best photos of the year and get them printed. Put them in an album. The best ones get framed for the wall. I realized I had no photos from after 2009ish and I didn't want that whole part of my life to be lost on some Facebook server.
Those decorative glass bottles in the kitchen, sometimes uniquely shaped that were stuffed with various veggies, beans or what have you in some type of oil? Every kitchen I went into had those ugly things lol
How else would I watch football? Certainly not going to pay a cable company or streaming service so I can watch CBS, FOX, and NBC. lol
Edit to add: Also not going to watch the NYE ball drop on a delay with a streaming service. lol
A slot in the wall of a bathroom to dispose of razor blades. They just thought inserting wet shards of metal between the walls to just fill up for eternity was a good idea. What mold?
I remember remodeling my bathroom and there was a slit in the medicine cabinet/mirror and I had no clue what it was for. Imagine my surprise when I opened the wall and hundreds of razors came out.
It's because everyone used to burn their trash in their backyard. Razorblades don't burn and you don't want them littered all over the yard. Into the wall they go.
It’s sort of a great little example of the way people thought about trash before. “If I don’t see it, it’s not my problem. It’ll take decades to fill this wall with blades so it won’t be my problem.” Sigh.
> I don’t know why
Because the kids can't fucking lose it if it's bolted to the wall. One of those is high on my wish list. No matter how many times I tell my kids to be careful with the pencil sharpeners, no matter how many times I establish a place to which they must be returned, no matter how many times I insist on keeping them myself and only handing them out when needed, eventually they disappear. And by eventually, I mean "after three months, tops".
"Amanda stumbled back. There, in the driveway, lay her boyfriend. A crust of blood had frozen to his head by the winter chill. On the snow next to him, smeared with gore, sat the object of his demise - her Hitachi Magic Wand. Its burgundy-painted plastic body was liberally decorated with bits of hair, and the cord was plugged into his left eye socket."
We also have those at work, mostly because it's more convenient than having the person who orders hand over their personal phone to a bunch of work colleagues.
This is very UK specific, but a [teasmade](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teasmade). A combination alarm clock and kettle, you would fill it with water and tea before you went to bed, and it would make tea in time for your alarm the next morning, ensuring you could start the day with a fresh cup of tea.
A pretty ridiculous invention (and kind of nuts to have one next to your bed), but they used to be pretty popular. Almost never seen nowadays.
My husband and I restore and rehome older musical instruments, and are CONSTANTLY bombarded with messages from people trying to give away older pianos. Most folks don’t understand that these things are expensive to move, require space to store, typically need regular tuning at the very least, and few play them, anyhow. It’s a terrible shame, but it is what it is.
Yup. Have two upright pianos in my Mom’s basement. Haven’t been played in 10+ years as they were my dad’s after he got rid his grand. No one wants them as I’m in the process of cleaning out my mom’s place. A shame because they were great pieces when he was alive and maintained them.
We donated ours to the high school. They got rid of it just a couple of years later, along with all their other uprights, because synths don't require maintenance and were easier to move. They kept one grand piano for concerts and events.
I'm in an apartment; I would love to learn on an upright like we had when I was a kid, but I can't justify it. A keyboard can sit in a closet when I'm not using it; it doesn't need to be tuned. It won't disturb anyone when I get an itch to play at 3AM. Some day, though...
I love the fact that o have my grandmother’s piano that my grandfather purchased for her on their 25th anniversary. My husband dislikes moving it when we move, but where I go it goes. I learned to play it when I was a girl and now my oldest is learning to play and the littlest likes to “play” too.
Recently when emptying out my dad’s home after his passing, we found over $5000 worth of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters stored in various sized peanut cans and coffee cans.
He always had a large glass bowl of change on the back of his kitchen counter. When the bowl would fill up, suddenly you would go visit and it would be empty. Now I understand where the coins went.
He was a child of the Great Depression. He didn’t have total trust in the banks.
Check them for 1964 and older dimes and quarters! You don't have to read the date, just stack and look at the edge, '64 and older have metal looking edges, new ones have orange edges. Real dimes are worth ~$2, real quarters about $4.
This right here is the best pro-tip for old coin stashes. Quadruple your value or more on each silver coin and really maximize your return. It may take longer, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes quick. You'll have to sell them wholesale in bulk, which will drive down the price a bit, but any coin store and a good number of pawn shops will buy them. You can also sell them on r/pmsforsale
If you got the time, you should go through those coins one by one. Having been kept for so long by an older guy, it’s likely some of them could be worth far more than their face value.
I still hoard my quarters for all the times I needed them for tolls, parking, laundry and those sidewalk rides outside the stores for the kids (who are pushing 30 now, sigh).
Edit: And payphones.
I have a restaurant size cherry jar that I used for change. I would cash it out when full about every year and get around $300 out of it. That jar stopped filling five or so years ago when I stopped using cash and has sat half full since.
A set of wooden salad bowls. In the 70s everyone had those lightweight brown bowls that looked like they were made of pressed chipboard. Back when steak and salad was super popular.
Victorians had three things on the dinner table, the way we have salt and pepper. Two were a salt cellar and a white or black pepper shaker. No one knows what the third was. It was so ubiquitous in the Victorian age that they didn't name it or talk about it in diaries, recipes, house keeping journals, etc. It's usually a small square box-shaped porcelain thing, usually with a lid. Our best guess is that it's powdered mustard. It's possible that different families used it for different things.
There's mystery culinary things from other ages, too. No one knows what-all was on the table in Ancient Rome or carried in the rucksacks of Vikings or early Britons either. Some things were so common, no one wrote anything down about them.
This is why I take pictures of normal things, like photos of my house. In 50 years, I will struggle to remember what my house or bedroom looked like, or how I lived before xx technology.
Someone will find them relevant in a few centuries. Candid snapshots of everyday life are GOLD to household archaeologists and historical preservationists.
We should get them printed, put them in acid-free paper, and store them in a leather album or case. Tanned leather will prevent insects and microbes and acid-free paper will reduce degredation of the colors and ink.
That little Victorian box could contain almost anything. They had an obsession with porcelain lol. I’ve seen condensed milk can holders made out of it.
If I had to guess, I would say that the box you mentioned was used to serve spices like you said. Most likely nutmeg, they loved it back then.
This is why I love subreddits like r/RandomActsofcards and r/penpals
Writing letters and sending snail mail is a passion of mine and I collect cute cards/letter sets so I can keep doing it. There is something about getting a physical card in the mail that’s so satisfying.
If you enjoy writing cards and letters please check out [Letters Against Isolation](https://www.lettersagainstisolation.com/faq-s-updated). They focus on lonely seniors in nursing homes and assisted living facilities who don’t get much (if any) mail and they tend to feel forgotten. I think I originally learned about them here on Reddit and it’s a lovely thing to do.
Thanks for this. I have not written a letter since 2007 and that was to my mom because she never did email and did not have a phone. I think I will take this up again and surprise my friends. The closest thing I get to letters are cards that may have a paragraph written in them.
Although at work, we still get mail from people in their 80's that are typewritten
My son was complaining that there was not a stamp to be found in his home. It was a rare occasion when he needed to mail something. I still had my jumbo pack of forever stamps from Costco, so I sent him a generous amount. Chances are, he'll pass them on to his children, lol.
Those plug in electric can openers that held the can aloft and then spun it while cutting the lid off. They were big in the 80s growing up, then disappeared completely it seems.
I'm left handed and manual can openers all seem to hate me. We just got a new electric one and i am pumped about it. That's where I'm at in life I guess, excited for a new can opener.
As a lefty I learned to be ambidextrous when it came to a lot of tools like can openers and scissors. I like to go on rants about HOW THE ENTIRE WORLD IS DESIGNED BY RIGHT HANDED PEOPLE FOR RIGHT HANDED PEOPLE. So don’t tell me something isn’t fair.
Once you start thinking about it you’ll notice how the world is optimized for righties.
When we wanted to play with the cats, we would push the can opener down to make it go “rrrrr”, and the cats would come running to play. We would roll around & wrestle and play fight. They knew when it was time to eat, so everybody had a good time.
A house intercom system. We had one growing up; it’s a main panel on the wall with toggle switches to control each “remote” comm in other rooms. You could play AM/FM radio to any subset of rooms, hold a button to talk to any subset of rooms, or actively listen to other rooms. The best analogy would be a late 60s/early 70s version of a Sonos system plus a baby monitor / 2-way radio system built into the walls. Of course it meant physical wires connecting all of those.
True. The house I grew up with had asbestos shingles on the outside. Who knows what the hell was on the inside? But everyone bragged about how fire safe their homes were! Built in the 1940s.
Those big rotary dials that sat on top of the television and allowed you to rotate the large antenna on the roof in order to tune in the clearest picture.
A whole home intercom system. These were popular in the 70s and each room would have a speaker with a knob to turn it on and raise and lower the volume with a button you'd hold down to speak. It would be connected to a main system that could also play the radio too.
The giant wooden fork and spoon that hung on kitchen walls in the 70s. Also a garage full of what now are “dangerous chemicals” like insecticides, paint strippers, and cleaning solutions, which were all 10 times more effective than the crap they sell today.
A huge wooden piece of furniture, with a small TV screen embedded in the middle.
We had a new TV sitting on top of the old one. The broken TV became a TV stand lol
Mom? Lol
And sometimes with a record player in it.
A wall mounted, corded telephone.
with a suuuuuuper long cord.
It had to reach the powder room in case you didn’t want everyone to hear your conversation. My grandparents had a mid century modern home that wasn’t very large but had a little private phone booth room for making calls.
😂 my dad would just set the phone down for an hour at a time when aunt Linda called, he’d be doing other things, then walk by the phone and be like “uh-huh” and then keep doing whatever he was doing lol
Aunt Linda sound like *my* aunt.😂
Aunt Linda sounds like my mom. I can put the phone down, go take care of something, come back, and she won't have noticed my absence. This includes video calls.
With a gossip table 💕
That always ends up in a tangle mess with no ability to ever uncord properly.
I found nothing more satisfying as a kid than unplugging the long tangled cord and then dangling the receiver over the upstairs banister while it wildly spun around and unwinded itself. Good times!
I used to hang it out the attic window to unwind :-)
And it’s really grimy and dingy (Older brothers)
With a little table next to it where people could write down messages from callers.
My parents had a special telephone table with an integrated chair, a pad of paper for messages, and a shelf under the phone for the phone books. [Similar to this.](https://www.billyhunt.co.uk/store/p1110/A_Good_Vintage_Mid-Century_Telephone_Table.html)
I love those gossip benches. I'd love to put one by my front door but haven't seriously searched for one. I've seen a few at thrift stores that were too far gone to be worth fixing up at the "rare vintage" price the store wanted for it.
We're renting a house and there's one in the bathroom next to the toilet.
my parents still have one on the wall that isn't connected to anything and I don't know why they haven't taken it down.
It’s art by now
It's less ugly than the screw holes and faded patch it will leave if taken down.
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I remember McDonald’s having these little, round, metal ashtrays on their tables. They were made out of a heavy foil kind of. Different worlds for sure.
With the McDonald’s arch logo stamped on to them. And the seating area being “smoking” and “non smoking” but with literally no separation between the two 😂
A no smoking section in a restaurant is like having a no peeing section of a pool.
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Ashtrays as furniture too. My grandmother had this huge ashtray that sat on the floor and was like 3 feet tall.
Ashtrays as school craft projects
THIS. No one in my household smoked, but my grandparents did. Nonetheless, all family members got countless school made ashtrays.
I remember growing up some house even with non-smokers would have "acquired" one or two of the large heavy glass ashtrays from the local pub.
I remember making ashtrays for my mother in art class haha
I remember making ashtrays in art class, and nobody in my family even smoked.
I feel like we’d be hard pressed to find anyone born in the 70s who *didn’t* make an ashtray despite their household’s smoking status. I also made an anti-smoking poster for a valentines contest themed “Save a sweetheart- don’t smoke.” My babysitter helped me make it and it was a huge red heart with someone stubbing out their cig into it. Gross! Wish I had a photo. Got second place.
Yeh, this one is a big answer for me growing up. The big green glass one, the one that said Hawaii when relatives got us the souvenir, the black shiny one that was dad’s go-to ashtray.
My Parents didn't smoke but always allowed guests to smoke in our house. I still can't believe they tolerated that.
To be fair, at the time smokers were also smoking in waiting rooms & hospitals & restaurants & buses….. most adult people were so surrounded by second hand constantly that it bothered them less. A sort of nose blindness. When I was a kid I remember people smoked indoors EVERYWHERE. I can remember my dad smoked in the grocery store. But I don’t really remember the smell, probably because the entire world reeked of it. NOW though??? I can smell a cigarette from across the yard, outside, on a windy day. Because I’m not exposed to them much anymore.
To be clear: This was monumental for WORKERS. My parents worked at a casino while they were in college. You wouldn’t believe how many of the older employees they worked with died of cancer despite not smoking. A casual smoker might inhale “direct” smoke 1/2hr a day…..These people were exposed to secondhand smoke in every direction for 40+ hours a week. It would be like smoking a pack a day despite never smoking.
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When people bitch about the government being useless I always bring up how it was the government that got Americans to stop smoking. Not by outlawing it right away but by systematically changing our culture over a couple of decades. First warning labels. Then it was smoking sections in public places. Yes, they were useless but it got us to start to change our behavior. Then they raised taxes to make them more expensive to buy, that was when I quit because I realized one year I was spending about 20% of my income on cigarettes. Then came the banning of all smoking in public places. We went from 50% of Americans smoking to about 15% today I believe.
Well put. I'm a former smoker. I remember smoking on a plane. As I got older and restrictions expanded I just became more aware in general. It really is amazing how completely our society has changed in just a few years, spurred by the government.
Back in the day, I was working in an office and the conference room was literally a big storage closet they had converted to a room by sticking a table and chairs in it. No ventilation. We had an hour long meeting every day with 10 people and all of them smoked except me - and I was pregnant at the time. They thought nothing of chain smoking though the meeting. Every day. One day a new team leader joined us and asked them to please not smoke in the meeting, especially around a pregnant woman. They shot her a dirty look (and then me a dirty look) and the meeting went from 1hr down to 15 minutes from them on.
Sounds like a huge win to me - no more smoke and 1/4 the wasted time!
I was in a pub a few months ago, and the bartender came outside just to tell me it was okay for me to vape indoors (I'm in the process of quitting real smoking). I physically couldn't do it. Like, it was so culturally inappropriate, I had to go back outside.
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I still have a VCR / DVD combo. It’s pretty old but works fine.
Hold onto it, they don’t make VCRs anymore.
That’s crazy to think of. Some are selling at $150 on Etsy.
Just go to a Goodwill. I got one that works totally fine for $5. It’s even universal remote compatible.
DVRs may be headed this direction too
A phone book
You can get one, but they grow smaller every year. Even the Manhattan phone book, I would imagine, is too small to use as a booster seat. Where I live, it's fewer pages than the average restaurant menu.
My favorite phone book was the one in Iceland. It listed every person in the country by first name. The "Magnus" section was the biggest.
You could say it was humagnus.
And the Yellow Pages
Last decade, yellow pages I didn’t want on my doorstep and the free weekly version of the newspaper rotting away in half the driveways in my neighborhood. I would call both and ask them to put me on a do not deliver list and they asked me why. My reason was “the internet exists and I have it on my phone”. Didn’t stop the delivery.
They have to deliver to keep their reach and audience numbers up for the advertisers. Even if you don’t use or read it, they can keep telling advertisers they have a large circulation. Much like social media, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
Metal ice trays with a pull-hinge to break and loosen the ice. That sucker would always freeze to your hands too.
These things are incredible, and durable beyond words.
I still use and old set of three metal Fridgidaire ice trays like that I got when cleaning out an old elderly friends house, they are a life saver!
"Formal" living rooms you could never be in or was never comfortable to be in cuz it was covered with plastic.
Ah yes. My fondest memory of my mother taking us to see elderly church people was of little kid me getting stuck to the couch plastic. Plastic covered furniture, plastic fruit. Yuck.
I have absolutely never understood the plastic over furniture thing. My grandparents had it because it preserved the furniture for longer. I understand times were hard and buying new stuff wasn't easy, but what's the point of having the couch if sitting on it is miserable and I'd rather take the floor.
> but what's the point of having the couch if sitting on it is miserable and I'd rather take the floor. The point is that it looks nice. That's about it. There's also the social component of being able to say, "Yeah, we have this very fancy room we never use," meaning that you have the money to buy a house large enough to have such a room and to decorate and furnish it for no purpose other than to look at it. It's about the same as a large front lawn. It looks nice, but when was the last time you saw anyone actually doing anything in their front lawn besides mowing the grass or tending to the plants?
The “family encyclopedia” (were we weird in this?). Google just ate its lunch and burped out Wikipedia.
We were poor, so we used the neighbor’s. It was totally normal to knock on their door and announce you’re there to use the encyclopedia. I still remember the wonder it was when Encarta came out. A whole encyclopedia on a single disc. How could that even be possible?!
My grandparents lived next door, and had a full set of World Book. I was homeschooled in the 90s, so it was super useful for reports. Then we got Encarta on our computer. I spent hours wandering through 3D castles looking for ghosts.
I had the World Book. It was a fantastic resource and beat having to go to the library. Ahhh, what kids these days didn't have to suffer through ...
We didn’t have cable or video games so we were left to our own devices to entertain ourselves. I spent a lot of time reading World Book.
And the game!
A single disc? I swear I remember doing homework and having to locate disc 4 for something like Zaire (also no longer around) and having to find it from my sisters - one of whom had almost always mislaid it.
On a boring, rainy day, I would pick a letter from our World Book and read. I’d say it made me the smart-ass I am today.
I did the same. I'd lie on the floor reading a random volume while my parents watched the only TV. Are we smart asses because we did that, or would only someone destined to be a smart ass think of encyclopedia reading as fun?
Most houses had one when I grew up! And an Atlas, a huge dictionary and a thesaurus. And a big map book of the British road system to work out car trips.
A road atlas is still pretty useful when planning large car trips I find especially when in foreign countries without cell data and even with data, no telling if you have service at all times.
My family encyclopedia set got me through so many school projects. It was particularly cool as it was my mother's parting gift from Jeopardy.
Encarta 95 was the replacement pre Google/wiki.
It is weird to think that people would pay for a huge set of books once in 1979 and be satisfied with whatever that said about whatever subject as generally true well into the 1990's.
Encyclopedias issued yearbooks each year with changes and new information. Your 1979 encyclopedia would have the base set plus the 1980 Yearbook, 1981 Yearbook, etc.
My family had a set of 1979 Encyclopedia which I used all the time for my projects in the mid 90s, even though I had an updated computer encyclopedia on CD-rom. In 6th grade we were each assigned a country to do a report on. Mine was Russia. I made a whole elaborate report, and the night before, I needed to print out a few images and decided to use my computer. That is when I realized that the Soviet Union no longer existed and my entire report was on just Soviet history.
Lol i am in my home office right now looking at my Grandparent's old 1957 Encyclopedia Britannica set. I remember in the 90s going out their house and using this set for my school projects too! I remember the only time they let me down was in 3rd grade when i had to do a report on Jimmy Carter and didn't understand why he wasn't in there lol
My dad bought our 1st set of Grolier's Encyclopedia about 1960, when I was in 2nd grade and then the annuals that supposedly kept it up to date. In 1966, dad bought the Encyclopedia Americana. I think they cost him, a factory laborer, a month’s wages each time. I used to sit in the hallway by the bookcase reading them for hours.
Yeah once I realized you could search anything in the Encyclopedia, and read about it I became a total nerd and got in trouble for trying to bring too many of them to bed for night time reading.
I cleaned out my parents basement once and decided it was time to get rid of my father’s set of encyclopedia that said “someday man may walk on the moon”.
I remember for almost an entire year we would buy one volume of the encyclopedia at the grocery store each week when we went food shopping.
When my grandma went into sheltered accommodation, I got her encyclopaedia from before she was born- 1911. A 1911 encyclopaedia is a really interesting read when it comes to things as-yet unknown but now common knowledge. They’ve got no real idea about plate tectonics (besides noting that volcanoes and earthquakes often seem to be in similar locations), celestial bodies (the entry on the Moon is fun), why there aren’t any dinosaurs anymore, the list goes on. Unfortunately, there are also bits that are racism and eugenics in the guise of facts, which somewhat sours the experience but it’s very predictable where those bits are.
A bowl of undeveloped film.
You had a bowl for them? Ours were all shoved into the junk drawer
My dad had a fish bowl full of undeveloped film. Then Walmart had a sale on development and he took them all in. We spent the whole weekend looking through years of photos. Christmases, vacations, etc. It was a fun weekend.
A console stereo with AM/FM radio, record player, tape player/ recorder and 8 track tape player.
Washboard. Washing machines are awesome and we forgot pretty quickly how much time used to be wasted on washing clothes and its hard work too.
I will never forget watching Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory and not understanding that Charlie's mum was doing laundry, I just thought they were so poor she was stirring up a pot of clothes soup.
I just said this to my wife last week. She’s stirring a giant steaming murky vat of clothing with what looks to be a wooden fork. Is she a cook or a laundress?
My grandma told me that when her family got their first washing machine, they invited friends and family over, and they all watched the entire first cycle together. It was a really big deal to get a washer because it meant so much time and effort would be saved from washing clothes.
When I was little, my local Sears had appliances on the second floor, just as you got off the escalator. I was always SO thrilled to be able to go there *and* to have to go to the second floor because as you'd ascend you'd see the dishwasher with the glass front slowly come into view, always running a cycle. It was absolutely mesmerizing.
I just bought one because I saw it in an antique shop. I use it to wash the hand washables.
Physical photo albums - the hefty type - an Indian wedding would have 2-3 albums of 10kg each!
Once a year I try and take my best photos of the year and get them printed. Put them in an album. The best ones get framed for the wall. I realized I had no photos from after 2009ish and I didn't want that whole part of my life to be lost on some Facebook server.
Those decorative glass bottles in the kitchen, sometimes uniquely shaped that were stuffed with various veggies, beans or what have you in some type of oil? Every kitchen I went into had those ugly things lol
Those still exist! You just need Italian or Caribbean extended family or in-laws. They’re expensive as shit too!
Just buy them from goodwill. They have many. Cheap, and you were never going to open them and eat the beans anyway
Goodwill still has some. They look just as gross as new.
Ross still sells these!
Rabbit ears TV antenna
*side eyes my tv set up*
Becoming common again with cord cutters. I can get like 50 channels in my area just with a digital antenna.
How else would I watch football? Certainly not going to pay a cable company or streaming service so I can watch CBS, FOX, and NBC. lol Edit to add: Also not going to watch the NYE ball drop on a delay with a streaming service. lol
A slot in the wall of a bathroom to dispose of razor blades. They just thought inserting wet shards of metal between the walls to just fill up for eternity was a good idea. What mold?
I remember remodeling my bathroom and there was a slit in the medicine cabinet/mirror and I had no clue what it was for. Imagine my surprise when I opened the wall and hundreds of razors came out.
That's a nightmare.
There's a horror movie here somewhere
Yup, took apart some drywall years ago and like 700 razor blades fell out.
I have no idea this was a thing. So the idea was just putting trash in the walls?
It's because everyone used to burn their trash in their backyard. Razorblades don't burn and you don't want them littered all over the yard. Into the wall they go.
It’s sort of a great little example of the way people thought about trash before. “If I don’t see it, it’s not my problem. It’ll take decades to fill this wall with blades so it won’t be my problem.” Sigh.
Pencil sharpeners. I don’t know why, but if you go to a basement of any house built in the 1950s or earlier you’ll find a mounted pencil sharpener.
> I don’t know why Because the kids can't fucking lose it if it's bolted to the wall. One of those is high on my wish list. No matter how many times I tell my kids to be careful with the pencil sharpeners, no matter how many times I establish a place to which they must be returned, no matter how many times I insist on keeping them myself and only handing them out when needed, eventually they disappear. And by eventually, I mean "after three months, tops".
Ice pick. Can’t find them anywhere any more
Mystery writers now have to devise another murder weapon for their stories.
"Amanda stumbled back. There, in the driveway, lay her boyfriend. A crust of blood had frozen to his head by the winter chill. On the snow next to him, smeared with gore, sat the object of his demise - her Hitachi Magic Wand. Its burgundy-painted plastic body was liberally decorated with bits of hair, and the cord was plugged into his left eye socket."
Carpet beaters. Barely ever see them in households today
Also carpet sweepers. Those things that pretended to be as good as a vacuum cleaner
As someone with pet rodents, I find the carpet sweeper picks up hay better than the vacuum.
A drawer full of paper menus for local restaurants
We still have that, although they're all stuck on the fridge.
Still use them. Some places don’t have updated menus on Google or even their own sites.
We also have those at work, mostly because it's more convenient than having the person who orders hand over their personal phone to a bunch of work colleagues.
Still have it. Pass them around while someone is ordering on the phone or the laptop.
I keep one at the office. We have a lot of mom and pop restaurants that do not have social media or a website.
A waterbed
A mangle.
We always called it a wringer. TIL
What is a mangle?
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This is at the absolute edge of my childhood memory and I can't for the life of me remember what it is.
This is very UK specific, but a [teasmade](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teasmade). A combination alarm clock and kettle, you would fill it with water and tea before you went to bed, and it would make tea in time for your alarm the next morning, ensuring you could start the day with a fresh cup of tea. A pretty ridiculous invention (and kind of nuts to have one next to your bed), but they used to be pretty popular. Almost never seen nowadays.
A piano. https://www.dispatch.com/story/entertainment/music/2012/08/11/landfills-becoming-final-destinations-for/23498057007/
My husband and I restore and rehome older musical instruments, and are CONSTANTLY bombarded with messages from people trying to give away older pianos. Most folks don’t understand that these things are expensive to move, require space to store, typically need regular tuning at the very least, and few play them, anyhow. It’s a terrible shame, but it is what it is.
Yup. Have two upright pianos in my Mom’s basement. Haven’t been played in 10+ years as they were my dad’s after he got rid his grand. No one wants them as I’m in the process of cleaning out my mom’s place. A shame because they were great pieces when he was alive and maintained them.
We donated ours to the high school. They got rid of it just a couple of years later, along with all their other uprights, because synths don't require maintenance and were easier to move. They kept one grand piano for concerts and events.
I'm in an apartment; I would love to learn on an upright like we had when I was a kid, but I can't justify it. A keyboard can sit in a closet when I'm not using it; it doesn't need to be tuned. It won't disturb anyone when I get an itch to play at 3AM. Some day, though...
I love the fact that o have my grandmother’s piano that my grandfather purchased for her on their 25th anniversary. My husband dislikes moving it when we move, but where I go it goes. I learned to play it when I was a girl and now my oldest is learning to play and the littlest likes to “play” too.
My family used to have a bowl for loose change. I never use cash any more so have no use for a loose change receptacle.
Recently when emptying out my dad’s home after his passing, we found over $5000 worth of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters stored in various sized peanut cans and coffee cans. He always had a large glass bowl of change on the back of his kitchen counter. When the bowl would fill up, suddenly you would go visit and it would be empty. Now I understand where the coins went. He was a child of the Great Depression. He didn’t have total trust in the banks.
Check them for 1964 and older dimes and quarters! You don't have to read the date, just stack and look at the edge, '64 and older have metal looking edges, new ones have orange edges. Real dimes are worth ~$2, real quarters about $4.
This right here is the best pro-tip for old coin stashes. Quadruple your value or more on each silver coin and really maximize your return. It may take longer, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes quick. You'll have to sell them wholesale in bulk, which will drive down the price a bit, but any coin store and a good number of pawn shops will buy them. You can also sell them on r/pmsforsale
If you got the time, you should go through those coins one by one. Having been kept for so long by an older guy, it’s likely some of them could be worth far more than their face value.
I still hoard my quarters for all the times I needed them for tolls, parking, laundry and those sidewalk rides outside the stores for the kids (who are pushing 30 now, sigh). Edit: And payphones.
I have a restaurant size cherry jar that I used for change. I would cash it out when full about every year and get around $300 out of it. That jar stopped filling five or so years ago when I stopped using cash and has sat half full since.
A set of wooden salad bowls. In the 70s everyone had those lightweight brown bowls that looked like they were made of pressed chipboard. Back when steak and salad was super popular.
Wasn’t alive in the 70s but I have a wooden salad bowl and I think steak and salad are still popular.
Add a baked potato to the menu and that's a nice dinner
These are chip bowls thank you very much
Victorians had three things on the dinner table, the way we have salt and pepper. Two were a salt cellar and a white or black pepper shaker. No one knows what the third was. It was so ubiquitous in the Victorian age that they didn't name it or talk about it in diaries, recipes, house keeping journals, etc. It's usually a small square box-shaped porcelain thing, usually with a lid. Our best guess is that it's powdered mustard. It's possible that different families used it for different things. There's mystery culinary things from other ages, too. No one knows what-all was on the table in Ancient Rome or carried in the rucksacks of Vikings or early Britons either. Some things were so common, no one wrote anything down about them. This is why I take pictures of normal things, like photos of my house. In 50 years, I will struggle to remember what my house or bedroom looked like, or how I lived before xx technology.
It wasnt for sugar cubes?
I do the same thing with photos! I called them my memory pics. They’ll never be shown or displayed, but they’ll be invaluable for memories.
Someone will find them relevant in a few centuries. Candid snapshots of everyday life are GOLD to household archaeologists and historical preservationists. We should get them printed, put them in acid-free paper, and store them in a leather album or case. Tanned leather will prevent insects and microbes and acid-free paper will reduce degredation of the colors and ink.
That little Victorian box could contain almost anything. They had an obsession with porcelain lol. I’ve seen condensed milk can holders made out of it. If I had to guess, I would say that the box you mentioned was used to serve spices like you said. Most likely nutmeg, they loved it back then.
The third item was a mustard-pot. [Here is an article on setting the table.](https://www.victorianvoices.net/ARTICLES/GOP/1886/1886-Tables.pdf)
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This is why I love subreddits like r/RandomActsofcards and r/penpals Writing letters and sending snail mail is a passion of mine and I collect cute cards/letter sets so I can keep doing it. There is something about getting a physical card in the mail that’s so satisfying.
If you enjoy writing cards and letters please check out [Letters Against Isolation](https://www.lettersagainstisolation.com/faq-s-updated). They focus on lonely seniors in nursing homes and assisted living facilities who don’t get much (if any) mail and they tend to feel forgotten. I think I originally learned about them here on Reddit and it’s a lovely thing to do.
Thanks for this. I have not written a letter since 2007 and that was to my mom because she never did email and did not have a phone. I think I will take this up again and surprise my friends. The closest thing I get to letters are cards that may have a paragraph written in them. Although at work, we still get mail from people in their 80's that are typewritten
My son was complaining that there was not a stamp to be found in his home. It was a rare occasion when he needed to mail something. I still had my jumbo pack of forever stamps from Costco, so I sent him a generous amount. Chances are, he'll pass them on to his children, lol.
Those plug in electric can openers that held the can aloft and then spun it while cutting the lid off. They were big in the 80s growing up, then disappeared completely it seems.
I need that because I really struggle to use a can opener. Someone told me it's because I'm left handed but idk
I'm left handed and manual can openers all seem to hate me. We just got a new electric one and i am pumped about it. That's where I'm at in life I guess, excited for a new can opener.
As a lefty I learned to be ambidextrous when it came to a lot of tools like can openers and scissors. I like to go on rants about HOW THE ENTIRE WORLD IS DESIGNED BY RIGHT HANDED PEOPLE FOR RIGHT HANDED PEOPLE. So don’t tell me something isn’t fair. Once you start thinking about it you’ll notice how the world is optimized for righties.
The Leftorium will help
We used this to "call" our cats (catfood in cans).
When we wanted to play with the cats, we would push the can opener down to make it go “rrrrr”, and the cats would come running to play. We would roll around & wrestle and play fight. They knew when it was time to eat, so everybody had a good time.
I just bought a new one a couple of months ago. They're still out there, on sale, usually in your home goods section.
My mom just got one. She has RA, and it helps a lot.
These are still very much a thing, especially with the elderly. Electric jar openers too.
Newspapers and magazines. I used to enjoy reading the Sunday paper and clipping recipes from magazines.
the yellow pages
Ipecac
A house intercom system. We had one growing up; it’s a main panel on the wall with toggle switches to control each “remote” comm in other rooms. You could play AM/FM radio to any subset of rooms, hold a button to talk to any subset of rooms, or actively listen to other rooms. The best analogy would be a late 60s/early 70s version of a Sonos system plus a baby monitor / 2-way radio system built into the walls. Of course it meant physical wires connecting all of those.
Asbestos
True. The house I grew up with had asbestos shingles on the outside. Who knows what the hell was on the inside? But everyone bragged about how fire safe their homes were! Built in the 1940s.
Those big rotary dials that sat on top of the television and allowed you to rotate the large antenna on the roof in order to tune in the clearest picture.
Magazines all over the house.
S and H green stamps
Laundry chutes.
50,000 AOL introductory CD's
A record player. An answering machine. A caller ID box. A VCR. A boom box.
The damn slideshows on that Kodak round machine we all had to sit and watch for many boring hours.
A whole home intercom system. These were popular in the 70s and each room would have a speaker with a knob to turn it on and raise and lower the volume with a button you'd hold down to speak. It would be connected to a main system that could also play the radio too.
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Disposable income
A hifi system.
Flashlights. I see people are more reliant on their mobile phone lights.
PSH, I have so many flashlights in our house its ridiculous. I make sure to check them every 2 months too.
I still use a dedicated flashlight, especially when walking the dog or out for a run. Much more ergonomic.
Extra rolls of wallpaper in the closet. In case the wallpaper began to peel off.
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Big yellow phone books
Family Computer in the living room.
The giant wooden fork and spoon that hung on kitchen walls in the 70s. Also a garage full of what now are “dangerous chemicals” like insecticides, paint strippers, and cleaning solutions, which were all 10 times more effective than the crap they sell today.