I was thinking about these myself; we never had one, but many of my friends’ parents did when I was growing up. I couldn’t remember if they were just front-door intercoms, or if they were whole-house, because nobody ever used them for anything other than to quiz whoever was at the door.
I figured Ring doorbells and the like are essentially the same thing for front doors.
My dad has a bunch of power tools that I don’t own – a table saw, router, power sander. The only power tool I actually do own is a drill. I’ve got all the tools I need for most DIY home repairs, but I’m not really interested in tackling any sort of major carpentry/woodworking projects.
Kitchen gadgets:
My mom also has a big Kenmore sewing machine, probably from the 1970s. Aside from occasionally needing to hem something, I can’t see what I’d use one for. Maybe it would be nice to have one of those small handheld ones for that, but I wouldn’t want a big tabletop one.
My wife uses her food processor to grind shrimp when she makes wontons for soup. I don’t think ground shrimp is readily available at stores around here.
How could I forget - the “Veg-O-Matic”.
“It slices. It dices.”
I missed the edit window for my earlier post, so I’ll paste what I was trying to add here:
Looking at the post above [my earlier post], come to think of it, a doorbell is something they had that I don’t have. The house I grew up in had a doorbell that was hardwired to both the front and side doors. My house doesn’t have one. It appears there once was a wireless one there that the previous owners took with them when they left. I keep thinking I should get one, but people can just knock when they come to the front door so I haven’t bothered.
Are they illegal because of environmental reasons or sewage problems? Also, how would you ever get caught? We don’t have one because we don’t want to stress our septic system, but if they were illegal I could buy and install one, who’d ever know?
You don’t have a blender? They’re pretty indispensable for certain dishes/drinks, and for those a food processor just won’t do.
I can think of one that my parents had, and that I’ve had in the past, but that I don’t currently possess.
A lawnmower. I have a yard service come do my yard weekly, so I gave my old one to my brother since he had just bought a new house.
Well, those “certain dishes/drinks” are not indispensable. I’m not entirely sure what you’re referring to, but we haven’t used our blender in over a decade.
We use ours fairly frequently for some dishes and drinks, and a food processor just doesn’t work/work as well. In fact, we used our last one that we got for our wedding for about 14 years until the thing just wore out.
Not counting things like the big console hifi system that they had, things that were fixtures in my parents’ home in the 1970s, that my wife and I don’t currently have or use (most of which were mentioned upthread):
In the case of the water softener, we’re on Lake Michigan water (rather than the well water that my parents had), and don’t really need a softener.
We had an automatic dishwasher, which died a few years ago. We never replaced it, as it’s just the two of us, and we don’t entertain often, so it turned out that we didn’t miss it much.
We use our blender very infrequently, but use our immersion stick blender very often.
Like you, I don’t really use my Cuisinart for slicing. (Although if on occasion I want, say, 6 cups of grated carrots, I will use it for high-volume quantities.) But it’s invaluable for making things like hummus, chicken pate, pimento spread, baba ghanouj, frozen fruit yogurt … I guess anything you want to turn into a thick paste.
Are those quiet? I almost never use a blender partly because I can’t stand the particular noise. Plus which, blenders are a real nuisance to wash; and I’ll cheerfully eat a lot of things with a coarser texture which I can accomplish easily enough with a knife. And I never got in the habit of smoothies and such, though I might have if the blender weren’t such a problem.
I’m not @Die_Capacitrix and don’t live in Switzerland like her, but I suspect that it’s the same reason like it would be illegal in Germany: it’s not the disposal device that is illegal, but disposing the mixed trash. Disposing trash in Germany (and probably also in Switzerland) means separating and recycling, so I have to separate by compostable trash, plastic trash, glass, paper and some other categories like electrical trash and hazardous stuff like paint, batteries and such. Only the rest goes into the general trash, and the community which is responsible for your garbage removal will control it and fine you if you mix your trash.
My mom didn’t have much in the way of electrical appliances, but she did have one thing: a plug-in electric “skillet”. It sat on your table and you fried things in it. I haven’t seen one of these for decades, though I’m sure they must still exist.
I don’t know why she had it. My parents tended to scorn “fancy, new-fangled” stuff. And we only used it very occasionally.
Our stick blender just buzzes, unless you bump the side/bottom of the pot. Perfect for “Cream Of X” dishes.
They absolutely do; my mother still has one and uses it frequently (and which should have been on my list of devices that my parents have, and we don’t 
). Here’s one from Presto:
https://www.amazon.com/Presto-06852-16-Inch-Electric-Skillet/dp/B0007XRTDG/
Well, if I ever wanted to make smoothies or something, yes, I’d need a blender for that. But for most things I make the food processor does the job just fine. There are a few recipes I do need to modify slightly for the food processor. If it says to blend something with a large amount of liquid it just splashes everywhere if I do it in the food processor. So I just blend the solid ingredients plus a little liquid into a paste in the food processor, then combine the resulting paste with the rest of the liquid in a bowl.
They were illegal in NYC until 1995 ish. Due to concerns about the sewer system
I’m the same. I can’t remember the last time I’ve whipped out the regular blender that is in the cabinet. It’s been many years, and I cook a shit ton. I also don’t use the stand-up blender a lot because it’s a Ninja, and it’s essentially a vertical food processor with the way the blades are positioned.The immersion blender, though? That gets used pretty regularly.