We used to do this, but stopped recently.
Low flow toilets make this practise problematic, anyhoo.
Low flow toilets are the derth of civilization.
Which is why I am glad our toilets predate this insane law.
…Apart from the gifts being in the middle of the room instead of under the tree, and being able to open the odd present to yourself, that’s more or less how we do it at our house, too. What other way would you do it?
I don’t find. Nor was it tedious. Even as kids, we liked seeing what other people got, and it was a special thrill when Mom and Dad would open whatever hideous thing we clumsily handmade with love for them.
That’s sad. And besides being all family and stuff, isn’t it just more efficient to cook one meal and serve it one time?
I mean, we had tons of shit to get to as well (when you’re in a house with a doctor, a reporter, and two kids who have soccer/baseball/singing/piano/public speaking/gay youth group/God only knows what else, you end up having dinner at odd hours sometimes), but eating dinner separately was the exception, not the rule.
In my family, we never ate TV dinners or other processed dinners, white bread, white rice, or heavily sugared cereal. I never realized eating this way was especially unusual until much, much later. To this day I don’t care for white bread and I can’t stand sugary cereal (I find it tends to tear my hard palate to shreds). A good bowl of Raisin Bran is all the excitement I need, thanks.
We also only got to watch a few hours of TV a week, which for me was fine because I only wanted to watch TNG and DS9, *Garfield *, and Square One. That’s right, I actually watched educational TV of my own accord, for entertainment value. Christ, what a geek.
Since mom_mcl is a doctor, I grew up reading her medical books; my mom has this hilarious/embarrassing story of being with me on the playground one day, when I climbed up into this sort of sphere thing on the end of a rocket-ship-shaped climbing structure, and yelled to her, “Look, Mom, I’m in the uterus!” Anyway, we grew up expecting to have someone right in the home we could ask about whatever medical problems we might have.
Likewise, my dad was quite a skilled handyman, so we accepted it as quite normal that there would be renovations going on somewhere around the house, pretty much at all times. He used to tell this great story of bringing a friend from work home, and showing him his workshop. Friend goggled in amazement: “You have TOOLS?!!”
Another Christmas one.
After a previous year in which us kids devoured all the presents in a 5minute frenzy, we were then forced to open presents one at a time so we could all appreciate what santa had got each one of us.
Also, growing up we were perplexed why as kids we got presents from everyone else in the family except from our parents… so a tradition evolved, that in the mornings we opened santa’s gifts and post christmas dinner we opened a gift from our parents and other family members.
Even now our parents still withhold a gift to us till after dinner.
My parents’ solution was to label some gifts “love, mom and dad” and put them out earlier; and others “love, Santa” and put them out on Christmas Eve.
My parents didn’t like being “bothered” by trick-or-treaters, nor did they allow us to go out. So we either went out for pizza, or stayed in the house with all the lights off except in my parents’ room, which had black curtains. Pop also tacked a piece of wood over the doorbell to not hear that all evening. It’s amazing our house wasn’t more attacked; we occasionally saw an egg or shaving cream but nothing major.
Frugality: we ate used bread from the used bread store, Pop melded all the thin shards of soap into a “new” bar.
We never ate fast food in the restaurant; on the rare occasions we had it, Pop would go in and order (no drive-through, they cheat you) and then we’d go home and eat. We had pizza to celebrate report cards (the only time we ate out), and that we would eat in the restaurant.
The only chores my brother and I had to do were take our laundry down and back up, make our beds and occasionally clean our rooms. Otherwise, our job was to be good students. Keeping the house was Mom’s job.
We celebrated birthdays but no one outside the four of us ever came over for them.
AdoptaTeens said I need to come back to this thread and share what we’re doing that they consider weird now.
We don’t watch television during the week. In our not so humble opinions, it takes away from family, homework, and down time so we just don’t do it. There are a few exceptions … if school is canceled the next day they can watch, or DH sometimes watches the news. Occasionally I will watch a Netflix DVD, but overall it doesn’t even get turned on. We’ve been adhering to this for about five years now.
They say they’ve been emotionally scarred as a result. Fine by me, they can sue us over it when they come of legal age 
We kept our bread in the fridge after finding out that one of our cats a) loved bread and b) could open the breadbox.
Towels were definitely not “one-use-only”, as we didn’t have enough room to keep a week’s worth of fresh towels. However, there was a strict recycling policy when it came to end-of-use. Worn-out towels (and articles of clothing) were cut into large rags. When the large rags wore out, they were cut into smaller rags, ad infinitum or until you had something with which to clean eyeglasses.
One of my family’s quirks involved school lunch. When I started kindergarten, my parents sent me to school with a Smurfs lunchbox. By grade three, that lunchbox was getting me some mighty rough teasing. But despite my pleas they refused to replace it, because it was still functional. In a burst of youthful ingenuity I ripped off the picture on the front, so that it became a plain old blue lunchbox. Peace was restored.
Fast-forward to the first year of high school. “You know,” I said to my parents, “I’m getting a little old to be carrying around a lunchbox. Can’t I bring my lunch in a bag, like the other kids?” They agreed in principle, but their frugality wouldn’t permit the use of paper bags. From that day on, I carried my lunch to school in one of those tough plastic bags oatmeal comes in. I still get a little nostalgic in the grocery store’s cereal aisle…
Hee. We didn’t have TV at all and look how we turned out! ::twitch
Adoptamom: I was not allowed to watch TV on the weekends. During the week, fine, but nothing on Sunday until prime time, and nothing on Saturday at all, unless a movie was on that my parents were okay with. I hate to say this to all the devotees of Scooby-Doo and Sid & Marty Kroft, but I don’t think I missed much.
We had a laundry chute too! I haven’t thought of it in years! Ours really was a chute, though: a metal one. Once, some article of clothing got stuck halfway down, where two pieces of metal were welded together. I rigged up a stick with salad tongs tied to the end, and used a long string to work them like a claw. Took for-fracking-ever, but I finally un-snagged it. (Incidentally, it didn’t occur to me until years later to wonder if it was a good idea to let clothes drop onto the basement floor. Sure, they were dirty, but they weren’t basement-floor dirty.)
My mom always had throw rugs, area rugs, whatever you call them, in the kitchen. I don’t know why. If it was because the floor was cold, I’d suggest not going barefoot. Anyway, I spent about a week in my first apartment before I realized that I didn’t have to have these things on the floor, to get rucked up and spilled on and slip all over the place.
Whoever turned off the TV had to turn the volume all the way down first. This stemmed from my dad once turning it way up so he could hear it in the other room, and my mom turning it on later to almost get her ears blown out. This I still do, even though that TV had a knob and now I have to lower the volume on the remote.
When I was a Girl Sprout, back in the day when you took orders to be delivered later, instead of having to table in front of the supermarket, my mom would order one box of each, to boost my sales. (Not that I needed that much help; I won prizes for selling, by going out and pounding the pavement like Juliette Low intended.) Then, when they arrived, I could not have another sweet until every cookie was gone. When I read the annual “Girl Scout cookies! Caramel-covered crack; I can’t stop myself!” threads, you guys might as well be talking about Rocky Mountain Oysters AFAIC.
Both Mr. Rilch and I were raised to believe that taking the last of anything is a mortal sin. Except, we don’t believe it. Somebody has to take the last one. Fruit goes bad and donuts get stale if you leave them too long. Donuts are not a staple anyway.
I always keep a box of baking soda on the back of the stove in case of fires. Mr. Rilch says, “But what if the BOX catches fire?” I try not to think about that.
Hot dogs were always wrapped in waxed paper. I should do that again, actually.
Well, if you think about it, your bath towel should techincally never get dirty and never need washing, as it only touches you when you are squeaky clean.
I heard that’s how it is in England. I’ve seem to recall seeing it done in a U.S.-set movie but I’m not sure which. Is it a particular ethnic/nationality/regional thing?
WHAT is the brand on that TV?!? we have a Montgomery Ward’s one that’s going on 20 & still thriving!
Yeah, we did this too!! We lived right next door to my grandpa, so sometimes he would take us for a “Sunday Drive”, usually after church (we were raised Catholic). Sometimes it would be the whole family–Mom, Dad and 4 kids, and if it was a hot day we would alot of times top it off by stopping at the Dairy Queen! Then home in time to catch “Wonderful World of Disney”. Back in the early 70’s there was alot of countryside around us, so us city kids would enjoy seeing horses, cows and other farm animals.
I also remember visiting the cemetary frequently, not in a morbid way, it was a “pay your respects” type of thing. Usually did this after church on Sundays too. Us kids didn’t like it too much…here was all this green grass and we couldn’t run and chase each other through the tombstones!
One of our Christmas traditions was that we could open ONE present on Christmas eve over at my grandpa’s house. The kids would all wear their PJ’s–I have lots of pics of my brother, sisters and cousins all running around in our footsie PJ’s.
I really can’t remember for sure, but I think we also used our towels only once. I don’t have any memories of having towels hanging up to dry for a re-use. No wonder we had so much laundry all the time! Now I use towels at least twice.
Hmm, looking back on what I’ve just typed none of this seems really odd, except maybe the cemetary visiting, but it’s not like we went there every week, it was more like once every other month, and on Memorial Day. So maybe we weren’t that odd.
That triggers another one for me (it’s so hard to think of things your family does as “odd”). We were allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve. I don’t know how many years it was before I noticed it was *always * a pair of new jammies.
To this day, my father makes his own soft soap. Why waste money on store-bought liquid soap? No, that’s wasteful. You have to take the slivers of Zest from the showers and sinks around the house, and throw them in a large jar with some water. Shake it up real good. Add more slivers as they become available. There’s your soft soap!
It is the most disgusting stuff ever. I can’t bring myself to use it. It looks like snot. It even sounds like snot when it comes out of the dispenser. It doesn’t have a uniform texture, so the squirter makes these horrible, clogged, wheezing sounds. And it’s always whitish-greenish-gray. Bleh.
I catch myself doing this too from time to time too. We didn’t have a remote in our house until I was about 12. Somehow my dad convinced my brother and I that being nominated as the channel switcher for the night was a reward. My brother and I would fight over who got to get up and change the channel when it was desired to be changed.
A few of the things that might seem odd are:
When I was a kid we lived in Oklahoma and had to deal with tornado’s. When one came close we would have to go into the basement and we would play board games while we waited. Those were the only times we played board games. We never played as a family any other times.
Another thing is occasionally my dad would smoke cigars and when he went to the store to get some he would buy my brother and I those “It’s a boy”/“It’s a girl” bubble gum cigars. He always got us the “it’s a boy” since we were boys. Then that evening when he would pull out a cigar he would give us the bubble gum ones and then we would all smoke our cigars. After awhile the buble gum gets all slimy and starts to “melt” and that’s when my brother and I would actually start chewing on them.
While my parents weren’t that bad, wasting food of any kind was a ‘sin’ TM. As such, on a semi-regular basis, my dad would slip halapeno pepper slices or other weird food items into my sandwhich for school. He’d make a point of asking me ‘how I liked that sandwhich today’, and if I didn’t know what practical joke he’d done with my food, he’d know that I had thrown the sandwhich out and had wasted food. So, I’d be in trouble. :rolleyes:
To add to the “smoking” the bubble gum cigars story I want to say that I have never smoked a cigarrette or a cigar. The idea of smoking just always seemed gross to me except for the bubble gum kind.
It’s not an English tradition. Possibly some families do it but not many.
We had a bread bin. We also had one bathroom towel. For the whole family. Or at least we did until I approached my teens and became squicked by the idea and started reserving a towel for my own use (primarily by taking it up to my room after using it). To this day my parents have only one towel hanging in the bathroom and anyone using that room is supposed to use the same towel as everyone else. Admittedly it gets replaced once a week or so but still. I’m also not sure where this idea came from. It’s not as though we didn’t have loads of towels sitting in the cupboard.