Not in the home Menno but right up your street (and you probably still see plenty), I nominate the choke lever.
I remember my now 23 year old daughter asking about “those big, black cd things”!
This weekend, my son and I stayed in an old & old-fashioned but very clean hotel somewhere in the NW part of The Netherlands for a sailing regatta. In our room, there was something I hadn't seen in ages - and my son spotted it for the first time in his life: a light switch cord above the bed with a small 'glow-in-the-dark' knob at the end to make it easier to find the cord in the dark. He was over the moon! "Oh, that's a nice gimmick! I want one above my bed!"
I realised that I hadn't seen a cord like this in ages! Modern (Dutch) houses don't have that high-just-under-the-ceiling switches anymore. Hence my question: why are they gone? And secondly: what else do you remember, that's gone now... but certainly worth having in your home?
Menno
Not in the home Menno but right up your street (and you probably still see plenty), I nominate the choke lever.
I remember my now 23 year old daughter asking about “those big, black cd things”!
Wall heaters in the bathroom..
Serving hatches from the kitchen to the dining room. With open plan living and incorporating the dining room into the kitchen there is no need for it.
Landline telephone. Haven't had one for a decade at home and don't miss it one bit.
Eye level grill on a cooker.
In my first house we were left an old New World cooker from the 50's/60's and the eye level grill was just so convenient. Don't know why they seem so unpopular these days.
Cheers,
Gary
When I bought my previous house, it had louvered windows. Bloody draughty!
What I miss the most from my childhood home was the joy of getting a warm towel from the airing cupboard. These days with combi-boilers, that has been lost forever.
Those tea-towel holders that took the form of a little pointy-edged rubber sphincter.
I don’t miss the outside toilet in the winter.
Nor tin bath in the kitchen.
Things that were in houses as I grew up but haven't seen in years:
Fish jugs
Geometric string pictures
Brown horses pulling barrels
Ash trays
Aspic
Soda stream
Paraffin heaters
Jack Frost
Twin Tub washing machines and their associated tongs
Music systems
Table cloths
Electric carving knives
Knitted toilet roll covers
Tea cosies
Fly paper
Got one in each bedroom but we live in a Victorian villa and I think it was put in by the previous owner. A great idea until the other half decided she wanted to move the furniture about. So now the cord hangs behind a wardrobe.
For some reason that made me proper laugh
Every kitchen when I was a kid used to have a dartboard on the wall. With zillions of holes on the wallpaper around it.
Stone fireplaces with a hole for the huge VHS / Betamax video to slot into... just below the wooden plinth where the tv went. The epitome of sophistication.
Formica (in general).
Wood paneling on walls.
China Cabinets. EVERY house had one. Some still will... but EVERYONE had them.
Polished brasses on the wall.
Toby Jugs.
Teas made
Radiograms.
Cocktail cabinets with a strip light inside which came on when you opened the door.
Twin-tub washing machines with a mangle.
Larders.
Back boilers.
Rails that held the stair carpets in place.
Pressure cookers.
Polystyrene ceiling tiles.
Picture rails.
A curtain over the front door.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
Pouffes that doubled as a magazine or storage holder .
As mentioned and I agree -
polished brass on the wall.
Eye level gas cooker with grill you lit for toast .
Airing cupboards for a warm towel.
Electric blankets .
A parlour or best room .
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Table lighters. My parents had a couple (both Ronson's IIRC), great big heavy metal things that you could stove someone's head in with.
Anything made of onyx.
Lacey material covers/protectors for the arms and head rest of sofas.
Pipe rack on the mantelpiece.
Living room bar complete with optics on the bottles of spirits.
Manually operated meat mincer.
Circular saw like device for cutting cold meats.
A kitchen cabinet
Sharps toffee hammers, there were always 3 or 4 in the kitchen drawer (of which there was only one).
The clothes rack on a hoist above the fire ?
Oil lamps (I'm not joking!).
Semi-rotary hand pump for water from a well.
Can openers that last more than a few months.
'Wild West' sprung small louvered doors to the kitchen - just why??
Roaring coal fire (my dad was a miner). Toasting fork at side of coal fire and resultant toast, a different smell and taste to what comes out of a toaster.
F.T.F.A.
Suprised nobody has mentioned the lady toilet roll holder!
and a soap press to make your own bar out of scrap ends.
I’m surprised that non of our divorced members have gleefully said “a wife” yet!
I spent my early childhood (in the 70s) on a middle class suburban estate, and it was surprising how faddy the families were. The houses were typical late 60s boxes, but as time went on you could see one following the other in terms of improvements and mod-cons, with a certain amount of (normally) good natured oneupmanship. Some cracking examples have already been mentioned.
Knocking through a serving hatch between the kitchen and dining area was one that almost everyone had on our road.
As was was adding a porch to the front of their 60s box!
Everyone got a colour TV within months of each other - rented, obviously. (And videos were a major status symbol in the 80s).
Teasmaids were the height of 70s sophistication, as were hostess trolleys and sodastreams.
I remember having a second telephone via an extension was quite a big deal (usually in parents’ room).
There was also an arms race of extensions - the simplest being a downstairs bog, to larger two floor dining room/addditional upstairs bedroom behemoths.
Outside toilet
Ashtrays in every room
Top load washing machine
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Ha ha, yes, one of those ‘wife’ things, thankfully 😅
My mum used to have a meat mincer, clamped onto the kitchen table. Ground up shit, and still tasted and looked like it on the plate yuk!
When I was a kid, I used to think those drinks cabinets in the shape of a globe were the acme of sophisticated living.
Wood chip wallpaper.
Oh, and we had something in our house as a child that I’ve never heard of anyone else having. A fag machine! Seriously, it was a wooden one bolted to the wall and people used to knock on the door at all times of the day to buy a packet of fags. I think my Dad got a cut of the takings. Even my wife doesn’t believe me but it was true.